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Teaching podcast from the Eagle Community Church of Christ in Mont Belvieu, TX.
Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Eagle Community Church of Christ podcast. This week, we are in, lesson number 10 on fix your focus, and we are talking about Romans 8, one more time this week. This is where, Paul says some things that again challenge us. I think, every week we've gotten some sort of challenge and, hopefully, this week is a is a pick me up.
John:It is something to know that we are promised from God, to be with him. That he's got us. Hope that helps you and hope you have a great week. We'll see you soon. Good morning again.
John:We, have been in this series called Fix Your Focus. This is a series primarily out of Colossians chapter 3. This is, I think, the 1st week I have not put the first four verses on here. Hopefully, we have internalized those by now. The first four verses talk about, since you have been raised with Jesus, there's a way you should live, there's a place your focus should be, and that is not on all the things down here, but fixing our eyes on Jesus.
John:And each week we have talked about what that should look like in our lives. Last week we talked about, maybe for me, one of the most relatable passages of Scripture found in Romans 7, where Paul talks about, There are a lot of good things I want to do, but often I find myself not doing them. And so we get a lot of, I want to do this and I do that, and I don't want to do that, and I end up doing that, and as confusing as reading it might be, we all understand it, don't we? That's how life can be, and man, I have a desire to do that, but often I feel this war waging within me, Paul says, pulling me away from what I want to do or towards what I don't want to do. And last week, we ended with, maybe some better news in Romans 8, but we ended with this scripture, in Romans 8 and 11, and if the the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of the Spirit who lives in you.
John:And through that, we have this living hope that we just sang about. We have a hope in Jesus because of God's blessing on us, His mercy poured out to us, that there is a way to Him. And if we have been given that Spirit, our promise from God is this, that He will give life to our mortal bodies because of the spirit that is within us. He continues on in verse 12. Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation, but it is not to the flesh to living to live according to it.
John:For if you live according to the flesh, you will what, church? You will die. But if by the Spirit, you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live. And I think that's an important verse in this. Because each each week as we have talked about all of these things, I I think sometimes we can kind of feel overwhelmed, like, I could never do that.
John:This morning in class, we talked about loving your enemies. What to do, even turn the other cheek when someone slaps your cheek. And that's that's all well and good if we're thinking in the theoretical, but if somebody does that to you this morning, it's about to get real. We're about to see if we're turning any cheeks. Right?
John:But a lot of scripture is very hard and we think, well, how how would I anybody ever live like that? I want to. I'd love to live like that, but I I don't. I don't do it. But this this passage right here talks about it.
John:But if by the Spirit, you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you are not alone. Amen. I know we're independent and we love getting stuff done. But sometimes it feels like we can be alone out there. Man, I, nobody experiences this like I do or and we feel like I'm the only one that experiences it at all.
John:But the way to live this way is by the Spirit. We had a whole series on it last summer about what it means to live with the Holy Spirit. That we live lives, again, according to the Spirit and by the Spirit and through the power of the Holy Spirit. That's the only way you can live this way. I'm convinced.
John:Because like Paul has just said in the chapter before, man, I'd love to do it, but I just keep not doing it. But if we will give ourselves again over to the Spirit, that is the only way to Him. Verse 14 says, For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. I don't know if he can get any plainer than that. I don't know if I can add anything to that.
John:For those who are led by the spirit of god are the children of god. Guess what? If you're not led by the spirit of god, what? Not children of god. We're being led by something else.
John:And I think often that's what we can find in our lives, that we are being led by some kind of motivation, some kind of thing I want to pursue, instead of being led by the very spirit of God, being a child of God, which is what I claimed, right? When I was baptized, I claimed, again, allegiance to Jesus that I would be a follower of his, that I would be his child, that he would call the shots. Again, as we've been reading, that our lives will be hidden, not just hidden, but hidden in Christ. Right? That we would be hidden in Jesus.
John:And again, leading a life that is led by the Spirit of God. The Spirit you receive does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again. Rather the Spirit you receive brought about your adoption to sonship, and by him we cry, Abba Father. By the spirit, you are a child of God. I've I've told the story before, and it hits home with people when I talk about me being adopted.
John:Even in pictures where I'm going into Katie's family. There are ideas where, when I was growing up, we would forget that I was even adopted, that I wasn't blood relation. I was 2 weeks old, I think, when my parents got me. And I was only 2 weeks old because the person, the lady who was giving me to my parents was on vacation. And she wanted to wait to be able to give them give me to them.
John:That had been brutal. Because you all know how fantastic I am. That's a week they missed that. Do you believe that? But we are adopted in the same way that I was adopted that you don't even know you weren't a part of it before, that you are fully a part of the family.
John:I tell a story about, you know, being in Katie's family, and when I first started coming around dating Katie, that even in the first few years of marriage, I started noticing that her nana, every time we got together and took a big family picture, I was on the edge of the picture. And I called her on it, I said, I know exactly what you are doing. You want to be able to cut me out real quick if you need to. And she would just blush and say, yeah, that's right. But after a few years, I started noticing that she made a point to put me in the middle of the picture.
John:Now, I think she could probably still get me out of it, but I think that's a great picture of being adopted into the family of God. We are being placed right in the middle of the family picture. It doesn't matter what you have done before, that God's grace and mercy has covered all of that. There's no reason to feel like I'm less than or I'm not enough, or, God, you just don't know, or if all these church people knew what I did, they wouldn't accept me. No.
John:You are fully a member of God's family. And because of that, we are called to live a life in the Spirit, the same Spirit that we receive that brought about your adoption, it says, to sonship. And by Him we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Amen?
John:Do you feel a burden in that, or do you feel joy in that? I hope you feel joy. You are sitting here with a burden of, I don't know if I could ever do it. I don't think you are experiencing the Christian walk as God would have you experience it. That we should be experiencing joy that we have been allowed this.
John:We know all the things we've done. I know all the, the ways I have lived and pretty thankful that I didn't live in the time of social media when I was a teenager. It's not documented anywhere on video. Some of you are real happy about that, aren't you? Yeah?
John:But even if it was, God has taken care of all of that. But I sit, I exist, I breathe, I move, resting in the family of God. The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Now, if we are children, then we are heirs. Well, I like that.
John:I don't know if it's true in Texas, but I know in Arkansas, and I think I've told you this before, you cannot include a natural born child in your will. You can leave them out, but if you have adopted a child, they have to be a part of that. You cannot write them out. There's something special about that. I don't know.
John:I've been doing some ancestry things lately, and, some of the some of the documents you find in in going back in ancestry that tells you a lot actually are wills, so publicly available. And one of my family member I I saw, had several children. In the first 4 or 5, it said to my son, I leave $1. To my son, I leave $1. To my daughter, I leave $1.
John:To my son, I leave $400. You're going, what happened there? I'd like to know I'd like to know. Do they still consider themselves heirs at that point? That we receive different things because of whatever happened?
John:But god's promise is not that, is it? I know we we have little sayings. I'd just be happy with a with a tent in heaven. Just on the outskirts. And I I know what we mean by that and and it's all good, but I think that's an insult to god because he said, man, I've got a place for you.
John:You come to live in my house. A place where you don't have to worry about anything. You don't have to pay bills. You don't have to mow the yard unless you love to mow the yard. Maybe he'll let you.
John:I don't know. But god wants us there, and we are heirs of god, co heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in the same glory. Can it let me make sense to you? That we share in the same glory. We share in his glory.
John:How does he make sense to me this morning? Verse 18, I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. That's your bulletin verse this morning. Maybe we need to read it one more time so you so you hear it. I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.
John:Sometimes, we get so far down on what's going on in the here and now that we forget the promises of God, don't we? We forget how much God has promised us. The the thing right now seems so big and so massive and how am I gonna get through it that I've forgotten that no matter what happens in the here and now, god has got me. That we get to experience this kind of eternity. You even think in eternity language.
John:We know about beginnings and ends. Right? Can you even think about eternity and what that's like? To live with God, to experience His glory, and Paul says, I consider our present sufferings are not even worth comparing. You may feel like you have it bad right now, but Paul says, I don't even think it's worth comparing to the amount of glory that we will be experiencing, that will be revealed in us.
John:We skip down to verse 22, he says, we know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up into the present time. He's just made the argument that that even nature is groaning, desiring for God to set the world right. So he says, we know that the whole creation is is groaning for this. He says, not only so, but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. And so what you see in this is that you have been adopted to sonship.
John:You're you are heirs, but you are heirs to something that's coming later as well. That we know we are waiting eagerly for something better to happen. Anybody ever look around at the world and think, Man, this needs to get better right now. Yeah. We groan inwardly for God to make the world right.
John:Can you even imagine a world that's set right, where Christians act like Christians? Isn't that a novel idea? That that people pledged to Jesus Christ, have the mind of Christ, that that love one another, that love God and love each other as they love themselves. Can you even imagine? We experience that, I think, a little bit from time to time, but can you imagine a world filled with that?
John:That everyone you meet is not someone to be feared or keep an eye on, but someone that you should love and loves you back. And we wait eagerly for this adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. I think I asked the question last week, I'd really like to know, wish Paul had some insight, like what age body am I getting? I was sad the other day. I grew up loving baseball.
John:And that's all I played. My parents really didn't want me to play football and our football team stunk, so it didn't matter. Baseball team was really good, and so I loved it. But right after high school, I had a shoulder surgery. But I saw over in Baytown there was like a men's league.
John:They were wanting a men's league over there, and I thought my first thought was, oh, that would be awesome, I will need to go play. And I realized, I'm out of shape, and I don't have an arm anymore. So, I'd really like to know, when the redemption of our bodies happens, does that clear everything up? Am I 18? Am I 25?
John:What am I? I would really like to know, but all I know is our bodies will be redeemed. I don't think we're going to walk around with arthritis. I don't think I'm going to have to worry about that shoulder when the weather changes or anything like that. But we will be redeemed and man, I do easily wait for that.
John:Somebody told me just the other day that you may have heard before the joke about man sitting in the pews and he asked everybody if they were ready to go to heaven and everybody, yeah, raising hands and everything. And He went and talked to a guy after service. He said, You know, when I was talking about that, I noticed you didn't move or raise your hand. He said, Well, I thought you were trying to get a party to go today. And I wasn't ready for that.
John:Sometimes I think our lives are so good, we don't think much about what's to come next. We can't even kind of conceptualize this idea of the glory that God has for us. But man, I want it. I want to be there. I have talked the last couple of weeks about just seeing people that have gone before me.
John:The way that I ended up finding my adopted family was because my 17 or 18 year old brother had died in a car wreck. It was that piece of information that attached me to all the other people I had been looking for. I'd kind of like to meet him, see if we have anything in common. All I know is, our bodies are going to be redeemed, that it doesn't matter what has happened here, that God is going to take care of all of that. He says, For in this hope we were saved, but hope that is seen is no hope at all.
John:Who hopes for what they already have? You can see that in the purchases you make, don't you? Man, I want x y z. I've gotta have it. I usually use the example of vehicles.
John:Because man, I want it, and then 4 years later, what is that, a piece of trash. You know that? I don't hope for that anymore. I already have it. I hope for the next thing.
John:Right? That's what he's saying. Who hopes for what they already have, but we hope for something that's coming that's even better. Right? He says, but if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
John:And I know we talked about in class this morning. I don't think patiently is part of the equation anymore, is it? I'd like to have it right now. But we wait for it patiently in the same way the spirit helps us in our weakness. Again, you're not alone.
John:We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. We don't even know how to pray or what to pray for. Do you ever feel do you ever cast judgment on your prayers? I need to pray in different way. I think that's okay.
John:I think it's also okay to understand that the Spirit who knows you, talks to God, and translates everything that you really need. And, man, I find comfort in that. But, yeah, I'd I'd love to be perfect, but I'm not perfect. God handles that. He says, and he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the spirit because the spirit intercedes for god's people in accordance with what?
John:The will of god. Now, there's a translation there that maybe there's some things I want. I I pray for all the time. It's my will And the spirit searches everything and puts that in accordance with the will of god. And we know that in all things, we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.
John:But I can have faith in that. Some of you may be going through a dark night of the soul as it is. A time where you don't know the way out or how things are going to get better. But we do know, no matter what happens, God has us. That He is working for the good of those who love Him.
John:You may not experience a change today, a change tomorrow, or 2 weeks from now, maybe in this lifetime. But at the end of it all, if you are pledging yourself to God, He has you. You are His, you are a son, you are a daughter of God. Can we rest easy on that? This morning, we are going to finish, as we finished the last few weeks, reading from Hebrews 12, verses 12.
John:Would you stand with me as we read together? Again, I encourage you to read this as a prayer. You don't feel it right now, ask God to convict you of the ways that you are not doing that. But if you want to experience this, would you read it with me? Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.
John:For the joy set before him, he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of god. That is what god has done for you this morning, church. If you have walked away from him, we'd love to, to pray with you, to talk to you about that, to encourage you along the way. If you need to put Jesus on in baptism this morning, we'd love to see you do that as well. Jordan's got an invitation song, picked out as we sing together.