How Do We Respond By Faith To All This?

SPEAKER 01 : 0:05

So let’s look at the wider implications of what Paul says in Romans chapter 8, where he says that I am persuaded that nothing can be against us. And then let’s look at the psychological implications of it. The verses that we’re talking about are Romans 8 and verses 37 to 39. Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Now, you know, there’s a quiet temptation in the back of our minds that tells us that Paul is being a little over the top here. He’s being a little super exaggerated in the way he describes things, and he’s not being really serious. And I am convinced that that is not the case. I’m convinced that Paul has had several massive revelations. The first one, of course, that smacked him sideways was his journey in Syria on the way to Damascus, and he was met with the Lord Jesus. This one that he was persecuting Christians over, arresting them, even having or allowing one of them to die, to be executed. I’m not sure whether there were others that were executed, but Paul really was very vicious. He was a young man. He was probably between 20 and 25 years. And he simply was beside himself with rage over these Christians who were setting themselves against, seemingly from his point of view, the Jewish faith. And so he would presumably have soldiers come to the house at five in the morning and have them arrested and taken to jail. And then Jesus knocked him off his horse, as it were, and told him who he was. I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. This Jesus then that was presumably dead from Saul’s point of view was in fact alive. He was stunned. He was blinded for three days. He probably was racing in his mind trying to think what was going on. And, of course, he finally concluded and came to the realization that Jesus had risen from the dead. But that took him back to the Old Testament, you understand, because Paul had to ask, how did I miss this? Where is it recorded? What’s the prophecy about the Messiah? If Jesus is the Messiah, then does it speak about him rising from the dead? And of course, he had to look at all the prophecies, and particularly he had to look at the way Israel was prophesied in the Bible. You see, the history of Israel was one of deep tragedy to Paul. We’re going to see that as we enter chapter 9 of Romans. That deep tragedy was that the temple had been wiped out in Solomon’s temple, that is, and Israel had been taken captive by the Babylonians, Jerusalem had been invaded, terrible things had happened, people had been slaughtered, and the descriptions are very, very vivid in the book of Lamentations, if you should want to read them, and also in the book of Ezekiel itself. But Paul would look at this history and say, well, does this mean God’s people are cast off or not? And he would then take notice that certain words and passages in the book of Ezekiel made new sense now, now that he knew that Jesus had been raised from the dead. You remember it said, as I mentioned the other day, that Israel was going to be raised from the dead. Ezekiel chapter 37. All of the house of Israel, the whole house of Israel, even though they were being so severely punished by God and taken into captivity. And the cause, the way this was going to happen was through an atonement through their sins. This is Ezekiel chapter 16, where God will forgive Israel for everything that they have done. The whole house of Israel. And so Paul now had to bring those prophecies together and focus them all into Jesus Christ, the one who had been raised from the dead. His mind must have been blown. Because this Paul now realized that the prophecies that he had not taken sufficient account of previously in the book of Ezekiel were all now focusing on this man who was contemporary to him, a mere ten years older, Jesus himself. And so, you see, there was an enormous amount of psychological upheaval and deep, profound, anxious search and research into Scriptures to pull all this together for Paul, which is what we now have in the book of Romans. And that’s why Paul can say, that’s why there is so much emotional content in these verses. I am persuaded. How was he persuaded? He didn’t say, I believe. He said, I’m persuaded. Well, he was persuaded by the presence of Jesus Christ on that Damascus road, this breaking into his life. He was persuaded then by the history of Jesus that Peter and others would have told him. that Jesus was the Messiah, that he died and was crucified and rose from the dead, and then he was persuaded by the prophecies that all seemed to converge upon Jesus Christ, especially those in the book of Ezekiel. And so we have in these verses an enormous confluence of energy and enlightenment and shock and awe. I am persuaded. that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come will be able to separate us from the love of God. How does he come to that conclusion? Well, he comes to that conclusion in that if Jesus has been crucified and risen from the dead and is the fulfillment of all the prophecies, then God’s love is unassailable. God’s love is not merely sentiment. It is not sweet, nice feelings towards us. God’s love is action. God, when he loves, moves upon the world to rescue the world. When God loves humanity… God saves humanity. When God loves humanity, God has mercy on humanity. He forgives humanity. When God loves, he acts. And that’s what Paul has come to the conclusion of. He has been persuaded. And this is what I believe is so very vital for us as Christians to understand. We don’t go to the world and ask them to believe. We go to the world and persuade them to believe, persuade them based upon the evidence. There is evidence. There is evidence from creation. There is evidence from the prophecies. There is evidence from the whole history of Israel, and there is evidence based upon Jesus’ death and resurrection witnessed by 500 people. There is evidence throughout history, and we need to learn to respectfully but gently respectfully and gently argue our way into the lives of non-Christians. It’s not an issue of intellectual argument. It’s not an issue of arguing over whether God exists or not. It’s an argument over who Jesus is and what is the significance of Jesus for the 21st century, for the whole history of humanity. So then we come to ourselves psychologically. How do we handle this truth? When everything goes wrong, remember, the world will not tell you what to do. The book of Romans, chapter 8, is telling you. The world will tell you things are disastrous, things are falling out of shape, things are going wrong, all is falling apart, and disaster is ahead of you, and don’t expect too much from this world because it will disappoint you, etc., etc., and on it goes. And our minds will repeat these messages that the world gives. In fact, of course, our minds naturally interpret all this tragedy as, well, tragedy. Now, you and I as Christians do something utterly bizarre. We by faith contradict our minds. We by faith say, Father, I give thanks to you for what happened today, as tragic and difficult as it is and as upsetting and disturbing as it is, because I am persuaded that you have overcome all all these problems in the world, that your resurrection in Jesus Christ means that you are not subject to the powers of the world that break it down. You, dear Jesus, have won the victory. Jesus himself said, that he had overcome the world. In the world, he said, you will have trouble. But take heart, I have overcome the world. What an odd thing for Jesus to say, because the fact that he has overcome the world, how does that help us? Well, the whole point is that Jesus overcame the world on our behalf. He is our victory. That is why we say in all these things, verse 37, in all these things we are more than conquerors. We? Did we do the conquering? No. Through him who loved us. Jesus did the conquering. And we? go into the kingdom on his coattails. This is how it is. We don’t think of ourselves as conquering. We think of Christ as conquering for us, and he has conquered all these forces in the world so that neither height nor depth nor any other created thing can separate us from the active, passionate, decisive love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. So you see, when we embrace this, then the mind is utterly besotted with faith. It is brought to a place where it has to relent and surrender to a faith that is quite contrary to the logic of the mind. Now look, when we go through these troubles, our first reaction will be panic. Our first reaction will be stress or depression or throwing in the towel or whatever it may be. But make sure you have the second reaction. The first reaction is natural. Don’t blame yourself for it. But the second reaction is faith. And the second reaction says, okay, I’ve had enough of depression or anger or panic. I’m now going to lift up my heart to God, my Father, and say, thank you, Lord, you are in control of this whole situation, and it doesn’t mean that all things are falling apart. for you operate through the forces of evil, and you bring about your victory through them. Thus faith counters the mind, and it does so because we have been persuaded, just as Paul was persuaded, that Christ has won the victory. Thank you for listening today. And if you’d care to make a donation, it would be so helpful to keep the radio broadcast going. Make it online at faithquestradio.com or send your donation to Faith Quest, P.O. Box 366, Littleton, Colorado, 80160. Thanks so much. I’ll see you next time. Cheerio and God bless.