Book of Romans Series, Session 4 - Audio
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Well you have been an excellent audience and I have been amazed at the good attention I've received from you. I always worry when I see someone with eyes closed and a dream of a staring out into empty space or alternatively shaking their wrists to make sure their watch is still running you know all of those things have seen a bit of that this week and I thank you very much not only for the privilege of being here but also for the privilege of having such an attentive and responsive group your questions after the meetings have indicated that you definitely interacted with the material that we presented. I may be entertaining and illusion tonight but I intend to finish Romans. I not only intend to finish it, I intend to finish it with plenty of time left for question. So we're going to plow right ahead and see if we can accomplish that. Will you open your Bibles to Romans chapter 8? We basically had considered the material in Romans chapter 8 down through verses 10 and 11. You remember that we consider these verses an important statement of the core of the Christian nice material and I hope that you have not forgotten since last night that verse 10 tells us that if Christ is in us the body is dead because of sin but the spirit is knife because of righteousness. I call this a snapshot of the Christian. Now our problem therefore is how do we express the life that is inside us through a body that is dead? The answer to that of course is in verse 11. If the spirit of him who raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies. He will make your physically dead bodies, your physical bodies that are spiritually dead. He will make them instruments and vehicles for the life of God. That leads to the conclusion that is expressed in verses 12 and 13. You see that overhead to some extent almost? What he is saying in verses 12 and 13 is the result of the exposition that he has given is that we are no longer deaders to the flesh to live after the flesh. We have no obligation to live in sin. Whereas before we were Christians there was nothing else we could do. Now we have the option. And notice that he says in verse 13, "For if you live according to the flesh you will die. If I live according to the dictates of my physical body, because my physical body is dead to the life of God, the only experience that can mediate to me is an experience of death." That may be understood in terms of losing contact with God and it can also be understood in terms of ultimately hastening my physical death. But if we live our lives in accordance with the flesh since of the body of flesh is dead, our experience will be an experience of death. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live. And so by the power of the Spirit it is possible for us to experience eternal life and to live it out through our physical bodies. Now in the following verses, verses 14 to 15, he points out to us that the experience that he has been talking about, the experience of living by the power of the Spirit, is the experience of adult sonship. As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. One should compare this particular passage with Galatians 4, 1 to 7, where the idea is that the law applied to men and treated them as minor children. But now that the Holy Spirit has been given to us, we are in the status of adult children and we live as adult children. And the realization of this status as adult children comes about when we allow the Holy Spirit to empower us
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Israel still has a future, but is temporarily set aside to bring in the Gentiles. In the future, Israel will be restored, but at this time the nation of Israel has become a vessel of wrath.