The Bible Recap - Day 343 (Romans 8-10) - Year 6
Episode Date: December 9, 2024SHOW NOTES: - Head to our Start Page for all you need to begin! - Join the RECAPtains - Check out the TBR Store - Show credits FROM TODAY’S RECAP: - Sermon: The Absolute Sovereignty of God BIBLE ...READING & LISTENING: Follow along on the Bible App, or to listen to the Bible, try Dwell! SOCIALS: The Bible Recap: Instagram | Facebook | TikTok D-Group: Instagram | Facebook TLC: Instagram | Facebook D-GROUP: D-Group is brought to you by the same team that brings you The Bible Recap. TBR is where we read the Bible, and D-Group is where we study the Bible. D-Group is an international network of Bible study groups that meet weekly in homes, churches, and online. Find or start one near you today! DISCLAIMER: The Bible Recap, Tara-Leigh Cobble, and affiliates are not a church, pastor, spiritual authority, or counseling service. Listeners and viewers consume this content on a voluntary basis and assume all responsibility for the resulting consequences and impact. Links to specific resources and content: This is not an endorsement of the entire website, author, organization, etc.. Their views may not represent our own.
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Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.
Today opens with one of the most powerful, dense chapters in the whole Bible, Romans
8.
This is a crowd favorite.
It opens by saying, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ
Jesus. So of course course we love it already.
One important thing to do anytime you see a connecting word in your Bible
is to see what it's connecting you to.
Words like, so, because, since, therefore.
These words point us to cause and meaning and motive.
For instance, this verse has the word therefore right at the beginning,
which means it's connecting us back to the end of chapter 7, where Paul was talking about Jesus delivering us from
ourselves.
The way this connects is, Jesus delivers us from ourselves, therefore, there is no condemnation
for anyone who is in Christ.
Even though the individual sentences make total sense on their own, context and connection
can really help us see more of the big picture.
Paul revisits themes from yesterday, the juxtaposition of the Spirit and the flesh, and how Christ traded his life for ours. He tells us to set our minds on the things of the Spirit.
Paul encourages us to choose wisely what we think about, because our thoughts will become our actions.
He says we have the power to do this because we have the Spirit, whereas the lost are helpless to fight sin with anything other than another type of sin. For instance,
they might fight gluttony with vanity or fear with control. But either way, sin still wins.
That is not victory and it is not freedom. Whereas those who have the Spirit, which is
all believers according to verse 9, the spirit is the one empowering their lives.
That's what it looks like to be children of God.
The spirit is the sign of our adoption into God's family.
His presence in us is the whole reason
we can call God our father.
And we're not only God's children,
we're co-heirs with Jesus.
What?
That position and relationship will involve suffering,
but ultimately glory,
which means all the suffering
will be worth it.
In the meantime, we live in a broken world that longs for redemption, and even we wait
for our redemption to be complete in real time.
And as we wait, the Spirit helps us.
He prays for us.
Did you catch that?
God prays for you.
The Spirit prays to the Father on your behalf.
And He always prays for things that align with the Father's will.
So His prayers for you will always be granted.
Ultimately, everything that happens is in God's hands, and He's working all those things
together, good, bad, and ugly, like only He can, to glorify Himself and to do good to
you.
But that promise is only true for those who love God.
For those who don't love God,
all things are not being worked together for their good. That may seem harsh, but the verses that
follow tell us the process of how we became believers and how we came to inherit such great
kindness from God. He foreknew us. He predestined us to be His kids. He called us. He justified us.
And He glorified us. And because God has
done such a great work in our lives, literally nothing and no one can stand against that.
As a matter of fact, Jesus, the one who died for us, who is currently seated at the right
hand of the Father, he's praying for us too. So God the Spirit is praying for us, and God
the Son is praying for us. And you cannot beat that tag team.
In him we are more than conquerors against distress and persecution and danger.
How do you do more than conquer?
You turn your enemies into your servants.
You make what tried to kill you, serve you.
Which is exactly what God says he does for us in 828.
He works it all together for our good.
Nothing can separate God's kids from God's
love. Not even our sins, not even ourselves. In chapter 9, Paul says he really wishes that
everyone knew this kind of freedom and love. He aches for the Jews who don't believe in Jesus.
He wants this for them so much that he says he wishes he could trade places with them all.
It's hard to believe they can't see it. They have everything that points them to Jesus,
the covenants, the patriarchs, the law. But despite having all that, they can't see
it. They can't believe it. As Scripture keeps telling us, being an ethnic
Jew isn't the same thing as being a child of Abraham. This is probably a hard concept
for his Jewish readers
to grasp, so he compares it to two other stories they're familiar with. First, the story of
Abraham and Isaac. Abraham had another son first, Ishmael, but God's promise landed
on his second son, Isaac. Then Paul references Jacob and Esau, the twins. Remember them?
Esau is born first, so he should have had the inheritance. But through a series of events,
everything is handed over to Jacob, the second born.
Paul points out that God's promise hasn't failed.
It just got distributed differently than people expected.
And just like with salvation,
Paul says none of this is based on anything they did.
God declared this plan before they were even born.
He anticipates this will be hard for his readers, so he says,
look, I know this sounds like God is being mean or unfair,
but he's not. He's incapable of injustice.
We have to stay humble here.
While we may not understand God's actions, the reality is,
we're the pottery and he's the potter.
He can do whatever he wants with us. He made us.
None of us deserve anything from Him except punishment, death, and separation.
The fact that He chooses to adopt any of us into His family is astonishing.
That displays His great mercy and kindness.
And for those who aren't adopted into His family, His wrath and power are displayed.
God seems to delight in doing the unexpected.
Calling people into His family who are outcast,
calling them beloved.
I know all of this can be really tough to stomach.
This is one of the more challenging chapters in Scripture, back to back with the crowd
favorite.
If this is hard for you and you want something to help you process it a little more, there's
a sermon in the show notes that might be helpful.
Paul says it's ironic that some of the Gentiles who didn't even have the law
have been adopted into God's family,
while Jews who spent their lives
trying to live up to it perfectly have not been.
But it's because they missed the crucial factor,
the heart factor.
They were obeying the law to attain self-righteousness,
which never works.
But Paul reminds them of God's promise
through the prophet Isaiah.
He'll preserve
a remnant from among Israel who will love and follow Jesus, not the law. Paul longs
for them to know God, not just know about God. He says they're super zealous, just
like he was back in his terrorist days, but that their zeal isn't based on knowing God.
Zeal without knowledge is dangerous. He wants them to realize that salvation
is based on knowing and trusting God, fully relying on what Christ has done. And
that is available to anyone of any ethnicity. Anyone who believes and
confesses the truth of Christ will be saved. Anyone. Because of this, Paul
implores them to go spread the knowledge of God. This was my God shot for today.
Paul says to tell people the gospel of God. This was my God shot for today.
Paul says to tell people the gospel
because there are people out there
who God is going to adopt into his family,
so they have to hear the news.
They need access to the knowledge of who God is.
Paul says, go, share, tell.
And he has modeled this well for them,
going from country to country, enduring persecution,
writing letters to people who love him
and people who disagree with him, all to spread the knowledge of God and the hope of the gospel. Surely God will give some
people ears to hear it, so we must be the mouths to speak it. Spread the word that He's where the joy is.
Okay Bible readers, it's time for our weekly check-in. Look, I know Paul's letters can be
challenging. Peter even says this later in one of his own letters.
He basically says,
"'So, I hear you've been reading Paul's letters.'
Yeah, those are, those are work.
Good job.
So I'm sure if Peter were here with us today,
he'd congratulate you on your progress.
But since he's not, I'll do it on his behalf.
Way to go, you guys.
We'll see you back here again tomorrow.