Book of Romans, 15:13-15 - The Imperatives of Romans 15, Pt. 3 (07/03/2022)

Imperatives of Romans 15: Bearing One Another and Building Up the Church

Romans 15, starting with about verse five, we had gone down through and we talked about several points. And these are imperatives where Jesus says, okay, once I save you, now that you're mine, here's how I want you to live.

First thing he says in verse 15, one, chapter 15, verse one, is bear the infirmities of the weak. Verse two says, do things that lift up or build up your brother, not tear him down. Verse four talks about the importance of the Old Testament and understanding the New Testament and building our faith.

And verse five talks about being like-minded in the church and in the home and as Christians. And verse six talks about the reason we're supposed to be like-minded is because it brings glory to God.

And that was mentioned by Dave at Sunday school. I appreciate Dave picking up where Brother Bill laid down the mantle and he did a great job this morning. In fact, he mentioned this concept. And then verse seven is where we were last time.

It says, receive ye one another. And that only makes sense if you understand the context of Paul preaching to Jews who didn't think God would save a Gentile. And Paul's telling them, no, he came to die for all kinds of men, not just Jews.

And he will save Gentiles. And then Paul begins to prove it again and again. But that's what he means by when he says receive one another he means you Jews over here, you need to receive these Gentiles over here as brothers.

And we looked in Galatians chapter three, where Paul said that for as many of you as have been baptized into Christ to put on Christ, therefore there is neither Jew nor Gentile, right? There's neither male nor female.

So in God's eyes, you're all saved by the same cross, the same blood of the cross that Jesus gave for all kinds of men. He will save some from every people group in the world. And that's what the blood was shed for.

And that's why we need to receive one another. So we talked about that last time. And then in Romans 15 verse eight is kind of the last place where we were. So let me review that because I want to pick up where I left off on that one.

Let's pray first. Lord, we ask you to bless the study of your word today. May your Holy Spirit be our teacher, amen. Romans 15, eight. Now say that Jesus Christ was a minister of the circumcision because of the truth of God to confirm the promises.

So Jesus had to come and die for the Jews because that was the Abrahamic promise. That was the part of the Abrahamic promise that was to the Jew, right? So that's what the first part of verse eight means.

And then verse nine covers the rest of us, the Gentiles. And that the Gentiles might glorify God because of his mercy. That word for in the Greek often means because of, not in order to get something, but because of something.

And that's what it means here. So that the Gentiles might glorify God because of his mercy because Gentiles are saved by mercy. And once saved, now we have grace. We have mercy and grace, but all of it comes from the Abrahamic covenant too.

We're all under that covenant. That was 400 years before the law of Moses, by the way. It predates the law, it supersedes the law. It's more powerful and more important than the law. And Jesus talked about it, but Paul especially talked about it.

So right here, it starts talking about the Gentiles because Paul is laying down his case to the Jew that God's gonna save Gentiles too. And he's still laying down that case in verse eight, nine, 10, 11, 12.

He says, and again, he starts quoting the Jews book. He quotes from the Old Testament, some from the Psalms and he ends up in Isaiah, but you go down through there and it says that for this cause, oh, wait, it says so that the Gentiles might glorify God because of his mercy.

This is verse nine, as it is written. So he's showing them, this is in your book too. Not just the fact he's coming and sitting on the throne of David someday for the Jews, but also it's written in your book that he's doing that for the Gentiles as well.

For this cause, I will confess to thee among the Gentiles and sing unto thy name. He's still quoting Psalms here. And again, he says, rejoice ye Gentiles with his people. Who's his people? The Jews. So they're gonna rejoice together.

They're saved together. And again, praise the Lord, all ye Gentiles and laud him, all ye people. And look at verse 12. It names, it goes and says, and again, Isaiah says, there shall be a root of Jesse, that's Jesus, and he shall rise to reign over the Gentiles.

In him shall the Gentiles trust. He just proves his case by quoting the Old Testament to the Jews. Well, that passage there in verse 12 came out of Isaiah chapter 11. I'd like you to turn there for me, 1110.

And I read it last time, but this time, what I want us to do is look at the nations that are named at the end down around verse 11. So let's read Isaiah chapter 11, verse 10 and 11, verses 10 and 11. And in that day, there shall be a root of Jesse.

You can see this is the scripture that Paul was quoting to the Jews, a root of Jesse. That means Jesse was David's father, and David is in the lineage of Jesus Christ who will sit on his throne in the millennial kingdom.

That's what it refers to. So he quoted, Paul quoted this verse, this passage in Romans chapter 15 that we're studying today. So in that day, there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand as an ensign, in other words, a flag that the soldiers follow as they go into battle, an ensign of the people.

To it, the Gentiles will seek. So the Gentiles will follow that flag of battle just as well as the Jews will. And his rest shall be glorious. His Sabbath is what the word rest means, or the other way around.

Sabbath means rest. His rest will be glorious because it's not just on Saturday like the Judaizers wanna tell us we have to worship on Saturday. We don't worship on Saturday. We worship every minute of every day because we rest in Christ every minute of every day.

So our rest is glorious as verse 10 prophesied that it would be there in Isaiah some 2 ,600 years ago. Now look at this one. And it shall come to pass in that day that the Lord will set his hand again a second time to receive the remnant of his people.

So in the end times, second time, first time was the Babylonian captivity and they were set free, sent back to the land. This is the second time it's going to be, it's already started. It started when, after World War II, when Hitler killed six to 8 million Jews and the United Nations or whoever it was, the group of nations at that time felt sorry for the Jews.

So they let them create a nation and took it away from the Palestinians, which of course, before the Palestinians had it, God had given it to the Jews. So it belongs to the Jews anyway, but it had been taken away and the governments of the world gave it back right after World War II because they felt sorry for all the Jews that were killed.

So now they're in the promised land. That is when the beginning of this prophecy was beginning to be fulfilled in verse 11. Isaiah 11, 11, the second time to receive the remnant. It started in 19, tell me again, I always forget, 47-ish, when Israel became a nation.

That's when this prophecy began to be fulfilled and the final fulfillment of it will be at the rapture and moving into the millennial kingdom where all Jews will go back to the promised land. 100 of them will be saved at the time of the second coming.

They will see him coming. They will bow the knee and receive him as their personal Lord and savior. He is the Messiah. They will know it, the Holy Spirit. How will they know it? Same way you know it now, the Holy Spirit calls them.

He opens their eyes and wakes them up. He awakens the dead and they are quickened. And while we were yet in our sins, has he quickened us? That's the same way we got saved. And he'll save a bunch of them at one time.

And Paul prophesied that all Israel would be saved. That's the moment that that happened. So this prophecy in verse 11 has already begun to be fulfilled in 1947. And as more and more Jews have gone back, there've been times when they sent whole, these huge cargo airplanes full of, I remember one time when they were persecuting black Jews in Africa and they were killing them.

And Israel sent huge, these huge cargo planes and huge helicopters and loaded it with these black African Jews. If you didn't know that existed, it does. And they brought them to Israel where they'd be safe.

They still live there now. I mean, it's been going on. God's been bringing them back, but it's gonna be in mass in the end times. So it's still being fulfilled. Now look where, how specific the scripture is.

It says that the Lord shall set his hand again a second time to recover the remnant of his people, that's the Jews, and which shall be left, the ones that are still alive. So this is pointing forward towards the tribulation period when so many hundreds of thousands of people will die because of the tribulation that comes upon the earth, worse than has ever happened since the time began or ever shall happen again.

And the Lord said that unless the Lord had cut it short, all flesh would die. So, and then it says in that passage, I like this, it says the Lord will make a short work on the earth, which means it's not gonna be another 2 ,000, 4 ,000, 8 ,000 years.

He doesn't, God doesn't allow this history to exist very long on the earth and it's over. Now to him, a day is like a thousand years. I understand that, but it's not gonna be millennia and millennia before the Lord comes back because it says he will make a short work on the earth.

Now we're kind of getting close, I think. And, but my grandmother thought that too. And so we'll see, Paul thought it too. So we'll see who's right, Paul, Nana, or my grandmother, Nana, or me, we'll see who's right.

I think I'm right, I think it's our generation. I think the little ones in here for sure will see the rapture. Anyway, so he begins to talk about where he's gonna bring his people, the Jews, from. It says, to recover the remnant of his people, which shall be left.

And this is why Paul said all Israel will be saved because all the ones that are still alive, left, alive, are going to be saved. And they're gonna be brought there by God himself. And they're gonna come from, look at this, Assyria, from Egypt, from Pathros, from Cush, from Elam, from Shinar, or Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the Isles of the Sea.

Now, this is pretty interesting when you look at these places and where they are now on our map today. Assyria is the first place listed. That is Northern Iraq and Southeastern Turkey. That's the place that Isaiah would have been talking about.

Now, you think about Iraq, the Bushes went in there and pretty well destroyed the leadership, which with hindsight, now who knows who runs it, right? The terrorists run it now. But it's that part of the world that so much of the world has been focused on in my lifetime in Iraq and right in that area.

That is ancient Babylon, by the way, the seat of it in Assyria is the Babylonish captivity was focused around that same place that we now call Iraq. And it includes Southeastern Turkey. Now, it mentions Egypt.

We know where that is, because it's still where it was. But then it mentions Pathros or Pothros. And that is upper, just the upper part of Egypt, the northernmost part of Egypt. And then it mentions Cush.

And Cush is North Africa, kind of where the country Sudan is now. And then it mentions Elam, which is Southwest Iran. So Iran and Iraq are right in the middle of everything that's happening right now in our modern history.

But it was back then in Isaiah's day and Isaiah was prophesying about things or preaching about things that happened hundreds and hundreds of years, centuries before his lifetime, even. All in the same parts of the world.

So the Jews from all these places will be brought back to Israel in the end times. And then it mentions Shinar. And Shinar is ancient Babylon. And how many of you remember the man in the Bible named Nimrod?

Nimrod was the first warrior. There was no such thing as war before this man. He invented war. So he brought soldiers that were like him. He was a man killer, is who Nimrod was. He brought soldiers who were like him and trained him and taught him how to kill people.

And huge army of people that he taught how to kill people. And he formed the first army. Now, Nimrod was the son of Cush, who is the great grandson of Noah. So we know the lineage. And Nimrod, we think, is the one who instructed his people to build the Tower of Babel.

Isn't that interesting? Which was staking his fist at God. He literally thought he could build a tower that would reach to where God was. Maybe he thought he could overtake God. He was a warrior. But God struck down that plan, didn't he?

He created the languages at that time and scattered the people so that they couldn't think with one mind. Like this scripture that we're studying in Romans 15 is telling us as Christians to be like-minded, to think with one mind.

And God said, if all of humans could have done that and kept the same language and had unity, they could have done anything they wanted to do. So God stopped them. So what does it tell us about Dave Huber's Sunday school lesson this morning where he was talking about unity?

If we could have oneness of mind as a church, no matter how the size of the church, if we just have oneness of mind, amazing things can be done. Almost anything that you put your mind to that you could draw on paper and say, let's do this, could be done.

By this little church, amazing things have already been done. I mean, we have hundreds of thousands of listeners. This church was on the radio in every major market in the country, almost every major market, many of the major markets of the country.

Now the podcast, who knows where that goes. And so this little church is sort of the backbone of a big, big ministry. And I didn't see that coming. Charlotte didn't see it coming, but the Lord did. And you guys are the foundation of all that, right here in this little church.

Don't tell me what else could be done, but the Tower of Babel and this little area that it's talking about in Shinar is about 60 miles south of Baghdad, Iraq. So if you have a modern map, you can spot exactly where this group of Jews will be coming from.

And so for 2000 years, this little area named Shinar has been the center of Mesopotamian civilization. And so they're gonna be Jews that list from all these different places. Now there's another one there at the end of verse 11 called Hamath.

That is Western Syria and the northern part, just north of Damascus, Syria. And so that's an area right now that very much hates Israel. The Syrians are really bad. Fortunately, the United States has kept them in check or they would have attacked Israel many, many times.

They still shoot missiles over the Golan Heights quite often. And then Israel will send jets in there and bomb them. And then they stop. And then it happened again two years later. It's still going on there.

And then this is very interesting. Look at the very last place that the Jews will come from, from the Isles of the Sea. I agree with the scholars who say that that is most likely referring to England and her progeny.

And her progeny, just before World War II, England was known as the nation upon whom the sun never set, the empire upon whom the sun never sets, because they had gone in and taken over India. They'd taken over much of Africa, many little islands around in the, where we go?

Where is it, Katie? Caribbean, I don't know why I couldn't think of that. But a lot of little Caribbean islands, if they're English speaking, it's because England took them over. And so the Isles, and then what's the biggest when England birthed is, well, Australia and New Zealand, but what's the biggest one that England birthed?

United States of America. So I do believe America is in the Bible. We've heard people say, nah, it's not in there, it's not listed. Yeah, it is. And it indicates we will still be here because Jews are gonna come from here and go back to Israel.

Now we might not exist with our infrastructure. Listen, it wouldn't take five cities nuked by Russia and our entire economic infrastructure would be gone. And so you better know how to grow some things.

You better have some gold and silver you know, for black market stuff. But I mean, we will still exist as a place on the planet. Isn't that at least nice to know, you know? So I don't know what state we'll be in though, but it is amazing to see God in his grace stop the abortion right at the lowest, what seemed to us to be the lowest, probably not anywhere near the lowest place America would get to be.

Because Paul said that great apostasy had to come before the Lord comes back. That's a falling away from the truth. On the whole earth sets up the tribulation in the Antichrist and all that. So who knows, but just at the, what seemed like the bottom with Washington just taken over by putrefied things and black birds flocking in the trees, so to speak.

And now abortion has ended by the Supreme Court. I just, I mean, we should be dancing in the streets that shows how bad we are, because we're not. We should be dancing in the streets because of this. And then to put the Bible and prayer back in the school, if I understand the ruling properly, I need to read a little more about that.

If you just looked at it, we need to look a little more into it and make sure exactly what it's going to allow. But I think a lot of the public schools in the South, like Texas, will be putting the Bible back in the schools and having prayer, having where adults can lead in prayer.

Again, teachers can lead in prayer. So God did all that right now. That's amazing. So it's kind of interesting to see how God has said from all quarters of the earth, I'm going to bring my people back.

Now in Isaiah chapter 11, if you look at the context that little passage was found in it, we just read though, you go up a little and you read a little bit above it. It's a little bit sombering for the world because it says, but with righteousness shall Jesus, it's talking about the root of Jesse, with righteousness shall he judge the poor and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth.

And he will smite the earth with the rod of his mouth. That is Armageddon. That is the point of Armageddon. And he destroys the armies of the world just with his word. He just speaks. And then there's blood to the bridles on the horses in the Valley of Megiddo.

At the end of this age ends that way with him speaking with his mouth. He will smite the earth with the rod of his mouth. And with the breath of his lip, shall he slay the wicked. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins and faithfulness, the girdle of his reins.

Now look at this. And then we move into the millennial kingdom, which is pictured here in verse six. And the wolf shall lie down with the lamb and Jesus will put it back like it was in the garden of Eden.

Children can play with snakes if they choose to. My kids won't be allowed to, but they'll be trained better than that. But that, I mean, it's a whole different world that we live in. And wolf also shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the kid.

That doesn't mean my kids, by the way, that's sheep. And the calf and the young lion and the fatling will lie together and a little child shall lead them. See how it left the snakes out? It's a good Bible, good preaching too.

All right, verse 12. And it shall come to pass in that day that the Lord will set his hand again a second time. We already read that part. So there's your context that all that was found in. Now let's go back into Romans and look at Romans chapter 15.

Now we're down to verse 13. So all of that little passage in Romans 15, nine, 10, 11, 12, it's all leading towards why we're supposed to receive one another, Jew and Gentile, and all the races who were born again are just part of one race, which is God's race.

He regened us, made us part of a new race and we should have love and peace together. And it just shows this expanse of that, how it goes all the way out through the tribulation period into the millennial kingdom and ends up with the wolf lying down with the lamb and everything is peace at that point.

Now let's look at verse 13. Romans 15, 13. And now the Lord of hope fill you. Why does it say now? Because of the stuff he just said. He just got through encouraging us with the fact that God's in control.

No matter how bad it looks, God's going to bring his people from the East and the West and the four corners of the world and bring them together into Jerusalem to be ruled by Jesus Christ for a thousand years in righteousness.

There won't be any bad rulers. In fact, you and I will be the rulers that help him because we're the kings and the priests and we'll be helping him rule for a thousand years. We'll be in our new bodies, our glorified bodies at that point, which will probably be good, but you can't die in battle.

You can fight in battle, but you don't die in battle. That's a nice improvement over these bodies. So yeah, now God of hope fill you with joy and peace in believing that you may abound in the hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.

That's to help us get through this time because we're not yet to the time where the wolf will lay down with the lamb, are we? We still have wolves that will eat lambs. Earlier in the word of God, that the Bible itself was listed as a source of faith in this study that we're doing right now.

Remember how we quoted the scripture that says, faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Now in this passage in verse 13, it begins to talk about the power of the Holy Spirit and how we see the Holy Spirit is listed as a second source of hope and peace and faith.

So it's like it always has been since Jesus spoke it the first time when he was in his ministry on this earth, when he said it takes two things to be saved and who was he talking to? Nicodemus, a man who believed he was a wizard of the law.

He believed you were saved by doing things. He believed you were saved by works, by keeping the rules that he himself had made up. And Jesus just simply looked at him and said, Nicodemus, listen, you must be born again because unless you're born again, you shall never see the king.

You, pointing to Nicodemus, you, the religious leader will never see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus says, well, how can these things be? Can I go back in my mother's womb? And Jesus just rolled his eyes and said, you, being a master of Israel, do not know these things.

If you don't understand physical things, how can I teach you spiritual things, he says. And then he says, listen, unless you're born of water and the spirit, you shall never see the kingdom of God. And there he listed it for the first time.

The water is the word of God and the spirit is the Holy Spirit. You have to have both to be saved, period. It has nothing to do with a little prayer formula that the preacher tells you down here. It has nothing to do with the church or religion.

It's this book or someone who read it to you on the radio or some missionary who told it to you or one of us in the room that told it to somebody or somebody that told it to you. It might've been your mom, in my case, my grandmom and mom.

Somebody had to share with you the gospel from this book right here. And number two, the Holy Spirit had to awaken you and call you or you never would have received it anyway. Takes both. So now we see in our study here, we've already talked about the word of God a lot.

Now in verse 13 starts talking about the Holy Spirit's role in salvation, but also in all these things that we're talking about. There was, I mentioned this once in a sermon, probably six months ago or so, time flies, I don't know, nine months, who knows.

But his name is Timothy Keller and he was a New York pastor. I think he's retired now, but he wrote a little book called The Psychology of Prayer. And the reason I know about this man is because when Paul's wife, Julia, was saved, she was saved on an airplane reading a book.

Called Mere Christianity. And she prayed and received the Lord as her savior. And then when she got back to Texas, the first thing she did was, she thought, I don't know anything about all this. I'm gonna try to find a preacher.

And my son, Paul, was not pushing her. He wasn't saying, oh, you need to read John MacArthur. He wasn't doing anything. He was letting her kind of find her way. And she just picked a podcast that had audio from this preacher named Timothy Keller.

Well, Paul and I started doing some research on this man. Lo and behold, he's a very sound preacher. And God had just led her to this particular preacher to listen, to learn about doctrine. It was really amazing how the Lord did that with Julia.

Well, she then read this book by the guy because she admired him from listening to his sermons. And then I said, I saw her reading it one day, I said, I'd like to read that when you're done with it. And so she gave it to me and I read it.

But what's interesting, there's this little place in here where he talks about what prayer is. And he quotes Jonathan Edwards and John Calvin and John Owen, some of these other people that you might wanna think about reading over 150 years, the Puritans, basically, what they thought about prayer.

And he mentioned that John Calvin talked about the fact that God had put in the heart of every human being, lost, saved, and matter, just that they're human, they have something in them that makes them think they can pray and that they ought to pray.

And they have a Latin word for it. I won't try to read the Latin word, but in theology, we study this. But he's talking about that. And so then he quotes Calvin, John Calvin, who was talking about the fact that every human, and when did Calvin write?

That would be, yeah, fairly early, right after Luther. So really early in the Reformation movement. And Calvin is talking about this concept that people can pray. And here we have Keller, who's a more modern man.

He has defined prayer, his own definition of prayer, is that prayer is a response to the knowledge of God. So he hypothesizes every human, lost or saved, doesn't matter, every human has the knowledge that God exists.

Romans chapter one says that, doesn't it? They're without excuse. They know because of the universe and the order in it that God exists. So every human knows there is a God, therefore that little hole in them that makes them wanna pray is because of that knowledge of God.

And what's interesting about that is that he quotes John Calvin, who mentioned the same thing. I don't wanna read this. This is pretty remarkable. Because what Keller thought was that if it's true that the definition of prayer is a response to the knowledge of God, that would mean that prayer is profoundly altered by the amount and accuracy of the knowledge of God that you have as a human being.

So in other words, you have one heathen out in the middle of the outback of Australia who's never heard of God, but he knows there is God because he's seen nature better than most of us will ever see it.

And he knows God is, and he's trying to pray in his own way. But if prayer is a response to the knowledge of God, his knowledge of God is virtually zero other than he knows he's there. He doesn't know anything personal about God.

He didn't have the Bible, right? So his prayers will be misinformed, misled. He will pray for stuff he wants, not for things that are God's will for him to have. He will ask amiss and never receive. And all these things will be happening to this man, even though he's praying because his knowledge of God is not an informed knowledge of God.

You see where Keller's going with that? I think it's great philosophy. But then he quotes Calvin, which takes it to a higher level, which these old guys always do. So Calvin says, while everyone may have this census divinitatis, which is the Latin word for this sense that God exists in his desire to pray, Calvin observed that when we're in a natural state before we're saved, we all refashion that sense of deity to fit our own interests and desires.

So you just pray for stuff you need and want. Right? The natural man, that's just all he can do because he doesn't know God. He just knows God's there. And his prayer is because he knows God's there, but he doesn't know God.

And so Calvin goes on to say this, that prayer will be fit for our own interest and desires only unless, and I put it in all caps, because Calvin is saying, unless this happens, and here's what he says, unless through the spirit, there's one of the two things required, and the scripture, there's the second one, there's the water and the word, unless through the spirit and the scripture, our view of God is connected and corrected, corrected and clarified.

So your natural view of God has to be corrected and clarified by the word of God and by the Holy Spirit, or you won't get there and your prayers won't be answered. Isn't that something? So Keller is correct.

He's in agreement with Jesus Christ, I think. John 3, 5, Jesus said, barely, barely I say unto you, and said the man be born of the water and of the spirit. He cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Ephesians 5, 26 says that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of the water of the word.

So the water is a picture of the written word of God. So we see it can be the spoken word, but it's a picture of the word of God, the Bible. So we see from our Romans 15 passage, we're not only saved by the water and the spirit, we grow and understand God better as we study the word, as the Holy Spirit is our teacher.

And so we grow in grace and in faith by the water and the spirit. Now in verse 14, back in Romans chapter 15, where we are studying today, it says, and I myself also am persuaded of you, my brethren, that you are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish one another.

So he says, I know about you, you have the Holy Spirit and the word of God. You've studied the word of God and you're able to admonish one another, lift one another up, teach one another in the right way.

And I would say that I would come in this church in the same sense. I would say the same thing to you. If the Lord were to ask me, I would say, Lord, Lord, I commend these people because they're full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and also able to admonish one another and help one another with scripture, with wisdom, with whatever we need.