Latest / The Daily Word / May 28 – Don’t Stop Trusting Him
Transcript
- Cory Barnes: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, good wee hours of the night. Whatever time you are joining us, welcome to the Daily Word podcast from Lakeshore Christian Fellowship. My name is Cory. It's my privilege to lead our Catawba campus. I'm excited to be sitting down with you for another Daily Word episode where we're going to be doing a devotion from the New Testament portion of our reading plan. Today is May the 28th. And we are looking at Romans chapter nine. Now in Romans chapter nine, Paul begins addressing what seems like a pretty difficult question. That's a fair question too. See up to this point in the letter, he's established that people are made righteous through faith. That's a consistent theme that we've seen. But through that, there's a question that arises, especially in Paul's context that If it's true that people are made righteous through faith, what does that mean for Israel? For God's covenant people? It kind of seems unfair. Paul says that people may feel that it seems unfair that Gentiles who weren't pursuing God in the same way Israel was are now being freely brought into God's family while many in Israel rejected Jesus and did not accept him. See throughout this chapter, Paul talks about God's sovereignty, his mercy and his right to show mercy on those that he chooses to. But towards the end of the chapter, Paul kind of summarizes the heart of his argument for this chapter. So let's read that summary and see what we can walk away with it. Romans 9 30 through 33 new living translation today. What does all this mean? Even though the Gentiles were not trying to follow God's standards, they were made right with God and it was by faith that this took place. But the people of Israel who tried so hard to get right with God by keeping the law never succeeded. Why not? because they were trying to get right with God by keeping the law instead of trusting in him. They stumbled over the great rock in their path. God warned them of this in his scriptures when he said, I am placing a stone in Jerusalem that makes people stumble, a rock that makes them fall, but anyone who trusts in him will never be disgraced. See, Paul explains, that the Gentiles were made right through faith while Israel pursued righteousness through trying to do all the right things by trying to dot their eyes and cross their T's and they got so caught up in what they were able to do that they just stopped trusting God to get them there and they ended up stumbling over the rock, the cornerstone that would become the cornerstone of the church. They ended up tripping over Jesus, the one sent to save them. And I think that's important. important for us because in a very real way we can actually end up falling into the same pattern that Israel fell into if we aren't careful. See, we, when we entered into relationship with Jesus, when we accepted his sacrifice, we became God's people just like Israel were God's people. When we entered into that relationship with Jesus, with the understanding that we could not save ourselves, we accepted Jesus understanding we needed his grace. We entered into relationship with him completely dependent on what Jesus did. That is what brought us to the table. But if we're not careful, what brought us to the table as we continue along our journey, we may get our eyes off of Jesus and on to ourselves. See living life on earth has taught us a lot of things and life on earth often teaches us that we have to depend on ourselves to get things done. And as we begin living life and walking in relationship with God, it's so easy. us to accidentally slip out of trusting God and into depending on our own strength, our own discipline, our own ability to do enough instead of just trusting Jesus the way we did at the beginning when we first came to him. And that was Israel's stumbling point. They tried to attain righteousness through their own efforts and through what they were doing. instead of through faith. And if we aren't careful, we are going to do the same thing. So the question that we want to ask ourselves today, the application, how do we bring that into our lives today? It's pretty simple. Are we relying on ourselves in any area of our life? Are we relying on ourselves instead of relying on Jesus? Now, certainly for salvation and right standing with God, We need to ask this question, but also in every other area of life, are we trusting him or are we carrying things in our own strength? and, when we recognize areas of our life where we have began depending on ourselves ⁓ more than trusting in him, that we need to repent. We need to ask the Lord to forgive us for doing that and turn the other way and stop trying to continue our relationship with him and our walk with him. through effort when the only way that it continues is the way it began and that is through his grace let's pray father i just thank you i thank you for the finished work of jesus that it makes us righteous that it keeps us in right standing with you and it keeps us living our lives empowered by the holy spirit to live rightly we praise you for who you are and that we can trust you not only at the beginning of our relationship, but all throughout it, you are faithful and you are good and you will see us through. You will complete the good work that you began in us and you will bring us on on and you will help us to finish the race that we are running. We praise you and we thank you that every time we come to your word, you have good things to share with us, to speak to us. to open our eyes to. We praise you and we love you, Jesus. Amen.