What Jesus Says to a Complacent Church

The Roman Empire was the all conquering force in the 1st Century AD with territories throughout Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Roman infrastructure - roads, water supplies, legal system - spread throughout the Empire.

Paul says that Jesus followers are "more than conquerors" - that they were more than the might of Rome. He reassured the Christians in Rome that despite the problems they were experiencing, nothing earthly or spiritual could separate them from the love that God has for them in Jesus. We are more than conquerors. We are not victims. Our place in the kingdom of God is not measured by our power or wealth but how we respond to whatever life throws at us.

Romans 8:26 – 31 

We are called and chosen by God and made right with Him through Jesus. We not only are made righteous, but we now have His glory.

We have nothing to fear because God is with us and even though we may go through some bumpy times in life we have the promises of God to hold onto. He is for us, and always brings us through the toughest seasons in life, so that we can shine brighter with His glory.  

The letter to the Romans is sometimes difficult to understand & appears to be more of a lecture rather than a letter.
This is reflected in this week’s message from Chapter 8 v5-17 as we continue our series in Romans.

We will look at how we should use our words, how we should think & how we should live by the Spirit to become & continue on as God’s children.

Word, thought & deed (Spirit) 

On Anzac Day 1919, the Vickery family of Waverley offered their home to the Methodist Church to establish the War Memorial Hospital. Over the past 100 years, the hospital’s purpose has remained the same – to serve the community.
 
Hospital care, and the care provided by War Memorial Hospital, is deeply embedded in Christian faith.  The work of the staff is a gift of ministry, recognised in the motto on the nurse’s graduation badges – “Not to be ministered to, but to minister."
 
Today we thank God for the hospital and the ministry of care provided by the staff.  We pray for them as they accept people unconditionally, affirm people continually and assist people eagerly. 

Writing to the church in Rome, Paul says we “… are not under the Law but under grace.”
 
Grace, God’s grace, is one of the key themes of Scripture and one of the most important for living as Christians every day of our lives.  Grace is both an attribute of God’s character and a gift from God that gives us the desire and ability to live out God’s purposes for us. We discover in Romans that the gift of God’s grace comes to us through Jesus and so it’s forever; it’s limitless and it’s free.
 
What a great way to follow up Easter Sunday!  
To live the “grace full” lives given us by the resurrected Jesus.

Passover and Good Friday are memorials of two very different and yet very similar moments in history. Passover is the story of God redeeming His chosen people from Egyptian slavery. Good Friday is 'good' because God sent His only Son to the world, and so that He would die for our sins on that special day.  Redemption is ours in Jesus, with deep harmonies with Passover. 

Bob Mendelsohn, Jews for Jesus national director, will explain many of the symbols of the Jewish Passover as he presides at a banquet at a Church in the Marketplace this Sunday.

What causes you to brag and boast and to be excited; to "rejoice" Paul would say in his letter to the church in Rome.  In Romans 5, Paul begins to explore all the tremendous benefits we have, through our relationship with Jesus ...
 
Romans 5:1 says - "Therefore since, we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom, we have gained access into this grace, in which, we now stand, and we rejoice ..."  
 
In the first 11 verses of Romans 5, Paul reminds us that -
We have peace with God and access to God ... we have hope in our lives and our problems take on a new purpose ... we're given God's loved and in that love we have security.
 
That's surely something to be excited about!

Salt of the Earth! When we use this phrase we mean that someone is a good, honest and reliable person. It is a compliment to be called salt of the Earth. Jesus tells His followers that they are salt of the earth. It seems that to be one of His followers there’s no alternative. What did He mean when He used the phrase? In His times salt was a preservative. Salt was also the name of a combination of minerals that was used as fertilizer.

Whether Jesus was talking about stopping things going rotten or helping things grow, when He said His disciples were salt of the Earth He was saying “Make a Difference!” That’s the message of the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). In Matthew’s Gospel the Beatitudes come immediately before Jesus tells the disciples they are salt of the Earth. That’s no coincidence. At Church in the Market Place we’re committed to Making a Difference. Sometimes we can do this by being part of a group. Other times it’s up to us. How salty are you?

How is it that we humans can be "accepted" by God?  It's a great question.  We ask it in a variety of ways - how do we get to heaven, or how can we be "right" with God, or how can we be "acceptable" so that we'll be included in God's family?
 
Sometimes we try to find that acceptance by earning it (if we just work hard enough and our "good" outweighs our "bad"), or by belonging to the right group (by affiliation).
 
Paul argues in Romans chapter 4, that God's acceptance of us comes through faith; through our belief and trust in Jesus Christ.  He sets up his argument in Romans 3:28 - "For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law."
 
Faith alone, Paul says, saves us.  Nothing else. There is no "faith + something".  It's just faith.  God does the rest.