(# 344) Romans 10 - You Can Have Zeal for God and Not Know God
Welcome To BARAH MINISTRIES a Christian Church Rory Clark Pastor-Teacher
Good Morning!
Welcome to Barah Ministries…a Christian Church based in Mesa, AZ…my name is Pastor Rory Clark. At Barah Ministries we worship the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We call Him Lord because He is 100% God. We call Him Jesus Christ because He is 100% true humanity just like you and me.
TODAY’S BIBLE LESSON You Can Have Zeal for God and Not Know God
I did. As I was preparing this lesson I reflected back to the time when I was Roman Catholic. I was an altar boy at the 7:30 mass…a commentator at the 9:00 mass…a guitarist at the 10:30 mass…an altar boy again at the noon mass…every week. I was in the rectory, the living quarters of the priests, all day Saturday getting ready for the 10:30 music mass. My brother and I even had “masses” during the week at home. We’d drape ourselves in sheets pretending they were the cassocks the clergy would wear. I was the priest. He was the altar boy. I’d use a mayonnaise jar to cut the host out of a piece of bread. We’d use grape Kool-Aid to simulate the wine. I knew the Catechism of the Catholic Church word for word. I took six years of Latin and two years of Koine Greek. I knew the mass word for word, in Latin and in English. I’d even go to mass during the week. There were the silent retreats where you do spiritual exercises in silence from Friday dinner to Sunday lunch at a retreat house with a group of men. My mom just scratched her head. I had a zeal for God…but I definitely didn’t know God.
You do, too. If the Lord Jesus Christ were here today in the flesh, would you feel like you could hold a decent conversation with Him? Well as much as you study the Word of God, you should be able to…but it is easy to have a zeal for God, and not know Him at all.
Welcome to a place where you can really know the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ through the study of His mind…the bible.
MUSIC AND REFLECTION Be Occupied with the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ Enjoy the Singing of His Praises
HOW DEEP THE FATHER’S LOVE FOR US Phillips, Craig & Dean
Let’s begin our lesson by opening our hearts and our ears to the truth in the Word of our all-powerful Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as we listen to a song entitled, HOW DEEP THE FATHER’S LOVE FOR US, sung by Phillips, Craig & Dean.
OPENING PRAYER Let us pray...
We’re grateful, Heavenly Father, for the privilege of studying Your absolute truth...the Word of God…
Father, thank you for giving us a way to know You…thank you for letting us know that You exist, and that You love us unconditionally, and that You are working all things together for our good…and thank you for the Holy Spirit of promise of helps us get to know you in a deep intimate and personal way…
Help us to REALLY know you…make the time we spend with You in the study of Your Word fruitful…let it explode into our consciousness during the critical times…help us notice how you are changing us…let our ZEAL for you be reflected to others…
We ask this through the power of God the Holy Spirit…in Christ’s name... Amen.
We begin with few announcements…
BARAH MINISTRIES ANNOUNCEMENTS
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TODAY’S BIBLE LESSON You Can Have Zeal for God and Not Know God
Today we begin our study of Romans, Chapter 10, a chapter that extends from Verse 1 to Verse 21…let’s listen to the passage and then begin to study it verse by verse…
PASSAGE 1
ROMANS 10:1 Brethren, my heart’s desire and my prayer to God the Father for Israel and for The Jewish Race is for their salvation.
ROMANS 10:2 For I (can easily) testify about Israel and The Jewish Race that they have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge (of Scripture).
ROMANS 10:3 For not knowing about God’s righteousness and instead seeking to establish their own righteousness, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God.
ROMANS 10:4 For the Lord Jesus Christ is the end (…the termination) of the Mosaic Law for righteousness to everyone who believes (in Christ).
PASSAGE 2
ROMANS 10:5 For Moses writes that the man who practices the righteousness which is based on Mosaic Law shall live by that righteousness.
ROMANS 10:6 But the righteousness based on faith speaks as follows: “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ (that is, to bring Christ down)…”
ROMANS 10:7 “…or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).”
ROMANS 10:8 But what does the righteousness based on faith say? (It says) “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart”—that is, the word of faith (the gospel message) which we are preaching…
ROMANS 10:9 …that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God the Father raised Him from the dead, you will be saved…
ROMANS 10:10 …for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses (what he believes), resulting in salvation.
PASSAGE 3
ROMANS 10:11 For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes in the Lord Jesus Christ will not be disappointed.”
ROMANS 10:12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek…for the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for ALL who call on Him…
ROMANS 10:13 …for “Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
ROMANS 10:14 How then will they call on the Lord in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in the Lord whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?
ROMANS 10:15 How will they preach unless they are sent? Just as it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things!”
PASSAGE 4
ROMANS 10:16 However, they did not all heed the good news…for Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed our report?”
ROMANS 10:17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing comes by the Word of Christ.
ROMANS 10:18 But I (Paul) say, surely they have never heard, have they? Indeed they have heard…“Their voice has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.”
ROMANS 10:19 But I say, surely Israel did not know, did they? First Moses says, “I will make you jealous by that which is not a nation, by a nation without understanding will I anger you.”
ROMANS 10:20 And Isaiah is very bold and says, “I was found by those who did not seek Me, I became manifest to those who did not ask for Me.”
ROMANS 10:21 But as for Israel He says, “All the day long I have stretched out My hands to a disobedient and obstinate people.”
Let’s take a music break and we’ll begin the study of this chapter. On the break we’ll listen to Gloria Estefan sing about her reflections in a near death experience.
MUSIC BREAK COMING OUT OF THE DARK Gloria Estefan
THE OFFERING Deacon Denny Goodall
Let’s begin the next portion of our lesson by giving you a chance to make an offering…we need and we value your financial support to continue the work of this ministry…please welcome up Deacon Denny Goodall with the offering message.
OFFERING VERSE
GENESIS 2:7 Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
OFFERING FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE Dave McClure, Instrumental
TODAY’S BIBLE LESSON You Can Have Zeal for God and Not Know God
Welcome back!
In the study of this passage, I first think about myself. And then I think about my religious friends. In church whenever the doors are open. Tithing a tenth of their salary. They are genuine in their piousness, yet destined for the Lake of Fire. There will be many of my friends who are shocked they are in the Lake of Fire. And they’ll be surprised that I am not there with them.
We learned in Romans, Chapter 9 that Israel and The Jewish Race are lost. They have rejected their Messiah, at least those who are not part of “the remnant” have… the remnant being the Jews who believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is their Messiah…the Messianic Jews.
Paul shows his heart again at the beginning of Romans 10, the same way he showed his heart at the beginning of Romans 9, and prays that Israel’s rejection of their Messiah is not God’s final chapter for them. In fact, he knows this isn’t God’s final chapter for them…because Paul knows God… and that is why he is praying.
We learned in Romans, Chapter 9 that even thought Israel and the Jewish Race have rejected their Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ has not rejected them. And He won’t reject them. Paul is praying for the salvation of every one of his “kinsmen according to the flesh.” Let’s study the first two verses…Romans, Chapter 10, Verse 1…
PASSAGE 1
ROMANS 10:1 Brethren, my heart’s desire and my prayer to God the Father for Israel and The Jewish Race is for their salvation.
Paul is praying for the unbelieving people in The Jewish Race, those who reject the idea that the Lord Jesus Christ is the One and Only Sovereign God of the Universe. Paul kept on evangelizing to them, and kept on sharing with them the good news of the gospel message. As Church Age believers, we do well when we imitate Paul’s fervor in praying for and communicating the gospel message to The Jewish Race.
There is a lie circulating amongst The Jewish Race, a lie called The Two Covenant Theory, which says the Jews can be saved apart from a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul disagrees in Romans, Chapter 9, saying, “All Israel is not Israel.” In other words, not all racial Jews are spiritual Jews. Not all racial Jews are of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob’s seed…the spiritual seed…the remnant…the group of Jews who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ for their salvation. Some Jews are from the line of Ishmael and Esau. Remember the Lord said, “Jacob I loved but Esau I hated.” Why are Israel and the Jews lost? Paul tells us in Romans, Chapter 10, Verse 2…
ROMANS 10:2 For I (can easily) testify about Israel and The Jewish Race that they have a ZEAL for God, but not a zeal in accordance with knowledge (of Scripture).
Why is it so easy for Paul to testify about Israel and The Jewish Race? Because Paul is a man of ZEAL! Perhaps Paul knows the Jews better than anyone except Christ! Before believing in the Lord Jesus Christ through faith alone in Christ alone, Paul was a Pharisee of Pharisees, of the strictest sect of Pharisees…he knows the Jews well…in Philippians, Chapter 3, Verses 1 to 7, Paul offers his resume…
PHILIPPIANS 3:1 Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things again is no trouble to me, and it is a safeguard for you.
The only way to make sense of this life in Satan’s kingdom is to rivet our attention on the Lord…to fix our eyes on Jesus. When we do, we can rejoice. Paul is in prison at the time of this writing, yet he is feeling great joy. Paul mentions repetition in this verse…he is happy to write and to preach the same things over and over again to his flock because repetition inculcates…it impregnates you with a message so often you can’t forget it.
PHILIPPIANS 3:2 Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of the false circumcision…
Paul is criticizing the Judaizers here…those zeal filled religious fanatics who insisted that believing in Christ was “important,” but that it must be coupled with other things, like circumcision. They added the law to faith, and anything we add to faith nullifies it. The Judaizers had a ZEAL for God but they did not know God.
PHILIPPIANS 3:3 …for we (believers in Christ) are the true circumcision (the spiritual circumcision…not physical circumcision), who worship indwelled with the Holy Spirit of God and who glory in union with Christ Jesus and who put NO confidence in the flesh (of circumcision)…
PHILIPPIANS 3:4 …although I (Paul) myself, (if anyone human is to have confidence in the flesh…I) might have confidence even in the flesh. If anyone else, (in fact) has a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I (should have) far more (confidence than they, because I was)…
PHILIPPIANS 3:5 …circumcised the eighth day (as is Jewish custom…in other words, I am a REAL Jew from birth), (I am) of the nation of Israel, (I am) of the tribe of Benjamin, (I am) a Hebrew of Hebrews (I have two Jewish parents)…and as to the Mosaic Law, I am a Pharisee…
PHILIPPIANS 3:6 …as to ZEAL, a persecutor of the church…as to the righteousness which is in the Mosaic Law, found blameless.
Paul gives us his human accomplishments so that we know how deeply steeped he was in the Jewish culture. He was of Israel and he was of the Jewish Race with ZEAL. His credentials were impeccable. Those with the ZEAL Paul had, at that time, followed the Letter of the Mosaic Law. They were plagued with a spiritual blindness and a religious fanaticism that directed all of their attention to self and none to the Lord Jesus Christ. What does it mean to have ZEAL? Literally, it means…
ZEAL To boil over with heat…radical…fervent…fanatical…extreme… enthusiastic…devoted to a cause
People with ZEAL want to do the right thing by God, but rather than taking direction from God, they make up a convenient human idea of what God wants, and then do all those things to impress God. It’s not impressive.
God’s enemy, Satan has ZEAL. Since Satan started competing with God (to make himself like the Most High), he has had a fundamental misunderstanding of who God is and what God stands for.
God likes ZEAL, and He is said to hate those who are “lukewarm.” In Revelation, Chapter 3, Verses 15 and 16, the Lord says to the church at Laodicea…
REVELATION 3:15 “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot…I wish that you were cold or hot.”
REVELATION 3:16 “So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will vomit you out of My mouth…”
Someone who is lukewarm has lost his zeal.
I am much like Paul…my zeal for Systematic Theology and for Roman Catholicism spanned a half a century. I had a ZEAL for God…yet not the kind that was based on the whole spiritual truth. It was based simply on a partial truth…a staunch over focus on sin…a religious over focus on the law. God transformed me into a person with a ZEAL for the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ and His grace.
Those who lose their ZEAL are described in Galatians, Chapter 4, Verses 8 to 11…
GALATIANS 4:8 However at that time, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those which by nature are no gods.
GALATIANS 4:9 But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things, to which you desire to be enslaved all over again?
GALATIANS 4:10 You observe days (Sabbath) and months (new moons) and seasons (festivals like Passover) and years (sabbatical and jubilee years).
GALATIANS 4:11 I fear for you, that perhaps I (Paul) have labored over you in vain.
That’s how Pastors feel sometimes. We feel like we labor in vain when you miss the message of Christ and the message of grace. Paul summarizes the value of the staunch, religious, ZEAL based, self-righteous life… Philippians, Chapter 3, Verses 7 to 11…
PHILIPPIANS 3:7 But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ.
PHILIPPIANS 3:8 More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish (skubala…human excrement) so that I may gain (a knowledge of) Christ…
PHILIPPIANS 3:9 …and may be found in union with Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Mosaic Law, but that righteousness which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God the Father on the basis of faith…
PHILIPPIANS 3:10 …that I may know Him and that I may know the power of His resurrection and that I may know the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death…
PHILIPPIANS 3:11 …in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Paul had a zeal for God for a long time…but not the ZEAL that comes from Scripture…I had a zeal for God for a long time…but not the kind that comes from Scripture. How about you? Do you really know God, or are you so preoccupied with yourself and the trappings of the world, that you don’t really know the Lord? Are you just going through the spiritual motions? Crisis will tell. You’ll have one. And then you’ll know. You’ll faint in your soul. Then you’ll know.
GOD WANTS YOU! Make the Most Important Decision of Your Life
ACTS 16:30 “…the jailer asked (Paul and Silas), “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”
ACTS 16:31 “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and everyone in your household who also believes.”
ROMANS 10:10 …for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.
SECOND PETER 3:9 The Lord is not slow about His promise of salvation, as some accuse Him of, but instead He is patient toward you unbelievers, not wishing for any to perish (in the Lake of Fire) but for all to come to repentance (a change of mind about having a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ).
LUKE 19:10 “For the Son of Man (the Lord Jesus Christ) has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”
CLOSING SONG WALK IN THE LIGHT June Murphy
CLOSING PRAYER Let us pray...
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