ROM-87-150315 - length: 65:42 - taught on Mar, 15 2015
Class Outline:
Welcome To
BARAH MINISTRIES
a Christian Church
Rory Clark
Pastor-Teacher
Good Morning!
Welcome to Barah Ministries…a worldwide Christian Church based in Mesa, AZ…my name is Pastor Rory Clark.
After you spend a week with teen-agers in close quarters, a reminder like this is timely…both to them…and to adults…the Lord says, through the apostle Paul, in Ephesians, Chapter 6, Verses 1 to 3…
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.
Honor your father and mother (which is the first commandment with a promise)…
…so that it may go well with you, and that you may live long on the earth.
The Lord is clearly saying that obedience is a primary lesson in this life…the Lord reiterates the lesson through the apostle Paul in Colossians, Chapter 3, Verse 20 in a brief treatise on family…
Children, be obedient to your parents in all things, for this is well-pleasing to the Lord.
The Lord is teaching all of us through these two passages, but His focus is on children…it’s the lesson that obedience works…and the Lord feels so strongly about obedience being critical in your life that with compliance to this request comes the promise of reward…the reward of a long life…“that you may live long on the earth.”
Just to be clear about what we mean by children…in the nuclear family children span the ages of 0 to 12…then they become young adults from ages 13 to 20…then at age 21 they have the full privileges of adults according to the laws of the land. At age 21, and even more so after marriage, the Lord would have parents butt out of their offspring’s lives. Unfortunately many parents attempt to extend their influence beyond the age of 21…justifiably understandable, by the way, if the offspring is living with the parents without paying room and board.
Parents must acknowledge, and in fact notice, the point when their influence is no longer interesting to people who realize they are separate beings from the parents and who must live their lives as unto the Lord, and not as unto the parent’s wishes. Children and young adults will learn from their experiences and mistakes just as we did, and there is no way to protect your children from themselves.
If influence is best defined as a request to free will…
INFLUENCE
A request to free will
…with that in mind, the whole Christian Way of Life is a lesson in obedience. God has no desire to coerce us. God has no desire to force us. God has no desire to “make us” do anything. Rather, he wants to see what is available from our own will in the matter of obedience to His requests. What God suggests always works, and often what parents suggest works as well, and it goes really well with children and young adults who realize this. When your will, and when your obedience line up with great advice, the result is wonderful. So says the Lord!
I find myself, often, to be very interested in influencing people…yet as I get older I realize that my advice is only useful when people really want it. I spend much less time offering advice to those who have a disdain for advice and to those who don’t seek advice. Yet I can tell you that everything that has gone well with me in this life has been a result of someone else’s influence that I chose to willingly obey, while enjoying the result their wisdom brings to my success. I encourage children and young adults to remember the value of considering advice from the Lord and advice from parents as precious, and I encourage children and young adults to consider obedience to advice from a trustworthy source to be even more precious. Honor your father and your mother and you honor the Lord. Obedience is, perhaps, the greatest form of honor.
Welcome to a place for where your influence is provided by the Word of God. It requests obedience from your free will.
MUSIC AND REFLECTION
Be Occupied with the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ
Enjoy the Singing of His Praises
Walk in the Light
Welcome back June. Let’s listen to June Murphy sing the opening song… WALK IN THE LIGHT.
OPENING PRAYER
Let us pray...
We’re grateful to you, Heavenly Father, for the privilege of studying Your absolute truth...the Word of God…
Teach us to believe all You say…help us to hear it…help us to believe it… help us to use it…help us to see the blessings that come from obedience to You and Your Word…and help us to see the destruction we introduce into our own lives when we think we have a better idea than an omniscient God who knows all that is knowable, both the possible and the actual…rescue us when our will does not line up with Your will for us…
We ask this through the power of God the Holy Spirit...in Christ’s
name...Amen.
TODAY’S STUDY
You Won’t See It Until You Believe It
We’re studying the first passage in Romans, Chapter 6, that extends from Verse 1 to Verse 11…and God the Holy Spirit sums up our study of this passage with these words…you won’t see it until you believe it. Pow!
You’ve probably heard the popular expression from the kingdom of death that is exactly opposite this…
POPULAR EXPRESSION
“I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Listening to the Lord, we can adamantly declare to those with this idea, “No…you won’t!” After all, didn’t most of the first century Jews who saw the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ face-to-face reject His Person and His Word, and His claim that He is God? In John, Chapter 10, Verse 30, the Lord Jesus Christ boldly declared…
“I and the Father are one.”
Literally, what the Lord was saying is that He and God the Father are the same…not in Person, for they are separate and distinct Persons, but the same in essence and the same in will. Yet most of the first century Jews rejected the Person they could see with their own eyes. “I’ll believe it when I see it?” Hardly. Second Corinthians, Chapter 5, Verse 7 says…
…for we believers in Christ walk by faith, not by sight…
We are faith based…we are not empirical. The Lord admonished doubting Thomas…turn in your bibles to John, Chapter 20, Verse 24…
But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with the other apostles when Jesus came (after His resurrection from the dead).
So the other disciples were saying to him, “We have seen the Lord!” But Thomas said to them, “Unless I see in His hands the imprint of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.”
After eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors having been shut, and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.”
Then He said to Thomas, “Reach here with your finger, and see My hands; and reach here your hand and put it into My side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing.”
Thomas answered and said to Jesus, “My Lord and my God!”
Jesus said to Thomas, “Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.”
God the Holy Spirit is telling us today that you won’t see it until you believe it. I have never seen the Lord Jesus Christ, who is MY Lord and MY God…Thomas put it well. But I believe…and because I believe I am saved…and because I believe, I see His hand and His salvation in everything I do. How funny are those who say they will believe as soon as they see it, when the truth is that when they see what they think they need to see to believe, they will just ask for more proof. The unbelieving Pharisees were always asking for proofs…and the Lord said to them in Matthew, Chapter 16, Verse 4…
An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign…
…yet they don’t believe it when they see it, for the best sign, the Lord Himself, stood right in front of them, in their very midst. God the Holy Spirit tells us that you won’t see it until you believe it. In Matthew, Chapter 21, Verse 22…the Lord says…
“And all things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.”
In other words, you’ll see it when you believe it. Turn to Romans Chapter 6,
Verse 1…you’ll see it when you believe it is a great summation to the first
passage of Chapter 6…
What shall we believers in Christ say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?
May it never be (absolutely not)! How shall we believers in Christ (such ones as we… spiritual royalty…the children of a King), who died to sin (as an established fact at the moment of our salvation), still live in sin (as if sin is still our master)?
Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into union with Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?
Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of God the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life (we might have a lifestyle in the new life…the resurrection life).
For if we believers in Christ have become united with Him in the likeness of
His death, and we have, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection…
…knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin…
…for he who has died to sin is freed from sin.
Now if we believers in Christ have died with Christ, and we have, we believe that we shall also live with Him…
…knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him.
For the death that Christ died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God the Father.
Even so, believers in Christ, consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
None of these things are things you see. Yet do you believe? After a short break we’ll sum up what there is to learn from this introductory passage to Romans 6.
BREAK
Better is One Day
Welcome back! Contained in this passage of Romans 6 are a series of established and irrevocable facts. Let’s take one. We died to sin. Yet you keep sinning. So do you believe what you see, your continued sinning, or do you believe the established and irrevocable fact of what God says in His Word…we died to sin?
You’ll see it when you believe it. Isaiah, Chapter 7, Verse 9b says…
“If you will not believe, you surely shall not last.”
The Lord is always telling us the truth…do you believe? You’ll see it when you believe it.
POINT TO PONDER
Faith is required when what you see is different than what God says.
We died to sin. That is not your feeling about the matter. That is not your experience. But that is the truth. If you have faith in God and in His Word, then you will treat your feelings and your experience as irrelevant. In fact, we don’t. That’s what this passage in Romans 6 is all about…it’s all about a series of established and irrevocable facts that we refuse to believe because we don’t see them in our feelings or in our experience.
POINTS TO PONDER
Grace does not increase just because we sin
We died to sin
Sin is no longer our master
We have been baptized into union with Christ
POINTS TO PONDER
We have been baptized into Christ’s death
We have been buried with Christ
We have a new life in union with Christ
We are in the likeness of Christ’s death
POINTS TO PONDER
We are in the likeness of Christ’s resurrection
Our Old Man was crucified
Our body of sin has been done away
We are no longer slaves to sin
POINTS TO PONDER
We are freed from sin
We are alive to God the Father
We will live with God
Will you believe these things when you see them? Your feelings and your experience are definitely different than these things. God the Holy Spirit says you will see these things when you believe them.
Let’s face it…as Christians…we believe our feelings…we believe our experiences…we believe our past…much more than we believe God’s word. I see the young people in this congregation much differently than they see themselves. I believe in them, even without seeing. They don’t believe in themselves without seeing. And if they see, they still don’t believe. The same is true for the adults in this congregation. I see things in you because I believe in you that you refuse to see in yourself. That is the message of the first passage in Romans, Chapter 6. Hebrews, Chapter 11, Verse 1…
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Faith is being sure when you don’t see things, just because God said it to you. Hebrews, Chapter 11, Verse 6…
And without faith it is impossible to please God the Father, for he who comes to God the Father must believe that He exists and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.
Do you believe without seeing? Well you won’t see it until you believe it.
POINT TO PONDER
Faith is required when what you see is different than what God says.
In bad weather situations, pilots believe their instruments. It’s called IFR (INSTRUMENT FLIGHT REGULATIONS)…
INSTRUMENT FLIGHT REGULATIONS
Rules and regulations established by the Federal Aviation Administration to govern flight under conditions in which flight by outside visual reference is not safe…in situations where flight depends upon flying by reference to instruments in the flight deck.
Your life as a Christian means living by IFR. What you see is more deceptive than faith.
The apostle Peter describes faith as “more sure” than sight…Second Peter, Chapter 1, Verse 16 and following…
For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty.
For when Jesus received honor and glory from God the Father, such an utterance as this was made to Him by the Majestic Glory, “This is My beloved Son with whom I am well-pleased”—
…and we ourselves heard this utterance made from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain.
So we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts.
But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation…
…for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by God the Holy Spirit spoke directly from the exact thinking of THE God, the Lord Jesus Christ.
When you believe it, you’ll see it. Faith moves mountains. Do you believe it?
The Promises of the Lord Jesus Christ
are Guarantees!
Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren (other believers) who are in the world.
After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you.
Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.
CLOSING SONG
I Stand Amazed at Grace
CLOSING PRAYER
Let us pray...
THANKS- INTERCESSION- PETITION
And we pray that You continue to shape the messages from this pulpit that are an accurate reflection of Your unconditional love, Your glorious Person, Your lucid thinking, Your impeccable work, and Your magnificent essence...we ask this through the power of God the Holy Spirit, in Christ’s name, Amen.
Thanks for coming!
Thanks for watching!
Thanks for listening!
www.barahministries.com
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