The Partnership in the Gospel

Our theme for 2020 has been “Seeing Spiritually.”

About two months ago we began a study in Romans 1-8 entitled “What does it mean to believe?”

The point of this five-week series was to have a supernatural encounter with the living Christ.

That encounter changes you so that you begin to become like Christ.

You no longer belong to yourself; you belong to Christ!

So the question changes from--What does it mean to believe? to-- What does it mean to belong?

Who am I? And what am I now part of?

Where do I fit in this great plan that is so much bigger than me?

What is God doing? And what is He wanting to do through me?

Last week we talked about the “People of God.”

God chose a people through whom He would reveal Himself to the world.

God chose Israel to be the line through which He would fulfill His promise - the Messiah.

And through Jesus the Messiah, even the Gentiles are coming to faith in Christ.

That caused some problems in Rome when the Jews were taken out for a while and the balance of power in the church went from a majority of Jewish believers to Gentile.

We are going to find Paul going back and forth a bit, explaining why each type of believer, Jew and Gentile, is important and has a role in God’s plan.

What Paul is suggesting is a partnership for the sake of the gospel.

Why should the church be divided? We have this “good news” that the world needs to hear and experience. Instead of focusing on our differences, why not focus instead on what is our part in communicating God’s message to the world?!

The Mission

The message of salvation is for everyone.

Romans 10:10–13 ESV

10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. 11 For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” 12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. 13 For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

This Scripture is where we ended last week:

Belonging means it’s not about you anymore.

You are part of the People of God.

You have a purpose to reveal God to a world who doesn’t know Him.

You can’t do this in yourself, but just let God do it in you and through you.

God loves you and He wants to love the world through you.

You’ll know what it means to belong when people see God through you.

God is looking for a people through whom He can reveal Himself to the world.

It started with Israel as God’s people.

But it has always been God’s intention to reach all of His creation - all of the people of the earth.

“All means all”

Paul quotes several passages from the Old Testament prophets which say “all who call on the Lord will be saved.”

The Jews are monotheists, meaning there is only one God.

If there is only one God who is Lord of all then there must be a means by which all can come to Him.

So the idea that ‘God is only for the Jews’ doesn’t work.

Our response to God is much deeper than tradition, it’s the response of our very being.

You have a mouth and you have a heart, Paul would say, When you use your mouth and you use your heart to glorify the one who created you, you have made the connection and completed the purpose for which you are created.

Everyone who receives the message becomes a messenger.

Romans 10:14–15 ESV

14 How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? 15 And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”

There is a disconnect between Creator and creation.

God loves the world, but the world does not love God.

God made the world good, but the world does not believe that God is good.

God is good and wants only the best for us, but the world is more into understanding and promoting self than seeking God.

Because of this disconnect, God has been sending messengers ever since the fall.

Abraham was sent - He was the original missionary.

The prophets were sent with messages for the people, but they were mocked and mistreated.

God sent His son, Jesus into the world.

And Jesus sent the Spirit into the world to indwell believers.

Something remarkable happened with the sending of the Holy Spirit: Now everyone who receives the message becomes a messenger.

It is no longer just “special people” who are chosen, anointed and empowered to act as God’s representatives.

it is every believer, to the degree that you have the Holy Spirit living in and working through you.

That is why you need to have a God encounter, because you are special; you are chosen to bear witness to who God is.

How can you bear witness unless you have experienced Him?

You are created to reflect God to a world that doesn’t see Him.

You have a heart that can know God.

God created you with a spirit and the ability to commune with Him and to hear His voice.

He created you with a mouth to articulate what you sense and hear.

Do you know what else he gave you? Feet!

You may not like your feet,but he gave them to you because he wants to send you to go beyond your own doorstep, beyond your community and beyond your comfort zone to tell others about what God has done for you.

You might not think your feet are beautiful, but they are beautiful when they are doing what God created them to do.

Not everyone who hears the message is going to receive it.

Romans 10:16–17 ESV

16 But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” 17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

Your mission (should you choose to accept it) is to communicate what you have seen, heard, understood and know about God to a world with varying degrees of disinterest.

Communication is not complete until the message is received.

When a message is communicated, we do our best to describe what we think.

However the person who hears it will perceive the message in light of their own preconceived ideas.

Good communication takes this into consideration and asks for feedback (what did you hear?)

A message is fully received when the recipient is able to apply the information (through action) in the way that was intended.

Someone might see this passage as a bit of consolation, “Not everyone is going to get the message so cheer up and know you did your best.”

Or perhaps it is an exhortation to do everything within our power to be sure that the communication process is complete?

Faith comes by hearing - we communicate with words, but words are sometimes inadequate to describe what the listener has no framework to understand.

That is where our very lives become a demonstration of the things that we are trying to say.

They need to see God in you.

Hearing comes by the rhema (revelation knowledge) of Jesus Christ.

They are not going to get it until they have their own encounter with Jesus Christ.

May they see Jesus in me and you.

The Messengers

When God gives a message, He does not take it back.

Romans 11:1–5 ESV

1 I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! For I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. 2 God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he appeals to God against Israel? 3 “Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life.” 4 But what is God’s reply to him? “I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” 5 So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace.

Remember that this letter was written in the first century when most of the Apostles were still alive and Christianity was a small but growing sect of Judaism.

Rome was the center of the world and it is no surprise that it also came out in opposition to the message of Christ.

So they kicked all the Jews out, presumably to get rid of the Christians, but it backfired because Christianity was also growing among the Gentiles.

When Paul wrote this He was writing to such an odd situation that nobody in his day would have predicted that in a few hundred years, the Gentile believers would outnumber the Jews.

Apparently many Jews were trying to distance themselves from the new Christian sect.

How could Paul have known that in a little more than a century, Judaism and Christianity would permanently separate and by the fourth century, Christians would vastly outnumber the Jews?

Today people wonder out loud whether God is finished with Israel.

Some Christian teachers will tel you that we are the new Israel because God’s promises are meant for us.

Not so fast! Israel rejected God in the numerous times in the Old Testament, but He never abandoned them.

If God knows the end from the beginning, would He have known about their rejection and taken that into consideration when He gave them the message?

Paul takes us back to the story of Elijah where it looked like God’s People had failed.

Elijah thought he was the last of the messengers and he was running for his life.

God assured Elijah that he was not alone - God always has a remnant.

Sometimes it is easy to give up when there is opposition to God’s message.

Some people get caught up in the pride of being God’ messenger and forget that its all about the message.

Or you might think that because the message is for everyone that it ought to be popular or widely accepted. It’s no fun being a messenger of an unpopular message!

Or perhaps knowing that God wants all to come to repentance, we take it personally when people reject the message. It’s easy to think that we are the ones being rejected.

We miss the fact that the message we carry is truth.

Truth has it’s own power. We are just the vessel.

The fact that there is opposition bears witness to the truth.

When you defend the truth you are just yielding to the truth.

The truth will always survive; it just needs a remnant willing to bear witness to the truth.

If you fail to communicate the message, the message is still true.

The message may eventually be delivered by other messengers.

Romans 11:11–12 ESV

11 So I ask, did they stumble in order that they might fall? By no means! Rather, through their trespass salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous. 12 Now if their trespass means riches for the world, and if their failure means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean!

Like any great movie plot, the story of the Bible features characters who appear to have failed, only to find out that they somehow succeeded in a way that no one would have predicted.

In the case of Israel, the Jews handed Jesus over to the Romans to be crucified only to find out that He really was the Son of God.

Note: It wasn’t just the Jews that killed Jesus, but it was Jews and Gentiles working together - more on this later.

Wow! That would seem to be the biggest of all mistakes, except that it was God’s plan all along.

Isn’t it good to know that God will even use your mistakes for His glory!

What they didn’t know was that by dying on the cross, Jesus was making the sacrifice for sin that would open the way for even non-Jews who didn’t have the law or the temple to come to repentance.

What seemed like a fatal failure actually took God’s plan to the next level.

We have a new group of messengers - the Gentiles.

The remnant has now exploded into a thousand tiny fragments, each of which bears witness to the truth and becomes a seed which will multiply in the place where it is scattered.

Each one who conveys the message has a part in the process.

Romans 11:17–18 ESV

17 But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, 18 do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you.

In case you haven’t noticed, Paul is dealing with a sort of rivalry between the Jews and the Gentiles.

Each of them are messengers who have experienced God and are entrusted with God’s message.

The Jews have a long history and traditions which have taught them the ways of God.

The Gentiles are passionate about their faith. Each one of them is a walking miracle of God’s intervention in their lives.

Why does this have to be a competition?

Each one has a part to play in God’s plan.

Jews and Gentiles worked together to crucify Christ.

Could it be that Jews and Gentiles could work together to spread the good news about God?

Philippians 1:3–6 ESV

3 I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, 4 always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. 6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

Phillipi was another church of both Jews and Gentiles.

Paul called it a “partnership in the gospel.”

Note why Paul is so confident that this partnership will work.

Because God always finishes what He starts.

Communication is a process, but we can’t always see the process all the way through from start to finish.

That is where it is good to recognize that God is the one doing the communicating and He is using us to do it.

Sometimes he uses another to pick up the process where someone has left off.

Whether you are the person who feels ass if you have failed because you never saw a response or the person who reaps an unexpected harvest, the important thing is that each one does their part.

Has your life conveyed the truth? Did you bear witness to the goodness of God who created you?

The Mystery

God sees the end from the beginning.

Romans 11:25–26 ESV

25 Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. 26 And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written, “The Deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish ungodliness from Jacob”;

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (Eleventh Edition) Mystery

1mys•tery \ˈmis-t(ə-)rē\ noun

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (Eleventh Edition) Mystery

1 a: a religious truth that one can know only by revelation and cannot fully understand

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (Eleventh Edition) Mystery

profound, inexplicable, or secretive quality or character

If God is revealing Himself to the world through us, perhaps the reason why we would partner to convey His message is that none of us can grasp all of who God is let alone communicate it.

Why would God take thousands of years, a worldwide flood, build a nation, allow them to go in to slavery, rescue them out of slavery and bring them into a promised land just to have them turn away from Him again, but He establishes and everlasting dynasty only to have them go into exile and come out again… and that’s just the Old Testament.

It seems like a lot of effort and it’s all backdrop for the Messiah, Jesus who is God become flesh.

But it’s necessary backdrop because everything that Jesus did and taught makes sense in light of everything that happened before.

When Jesus arrived there was so much that we could know about God that we would not have known without the back story.

Jesus has been studied more than any other person in history. Volumes of books have been written, not only about him but about the people who wrote about him.

And God is still communicating...

If there were a shorter way, I’m sure God would have done it but God knows the end from the beginning.

Now we have this book that details all of these accounts, stories and characters.

I hope you all have read it at least once.

I have read it a couple dozen times and I still see things I never saw before.

The people whom God used to write the scriptures could have never known the profound implications of all that they were writing for those who would read it thousands of years later.

But God knew.

Paul sees a reference in Isaiah that tells him that Israel is still standing during Messiah’s reign and that they have repented of their sin.

He boldly declares under inspiration of the Holy Spirit that all Israel will be saved.

Why does he say this? Because he knows the power of the message with which he has been entrusted.

The truth will prevail in the end!

Always keep God’s perspective in mind.

Romans 11:28–32 ESV

28 As regards the gospel, they are enemies for your sake. But as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. 29 For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. 30 For just as you were at one time disobedient to God but now have received mercy because of their disobedience, 31 so they too have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you they also may now receive mercy. 32 For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all.

If you know that God is all knowing an you are not, then we should ask ourselves, “What does God see that we don’t see?”

From a human perspective, it may seem that for followers of Christ, the Jews had become their enemies by insisting that faith in Christ should be dependent on keeping Jewish traditions.

From God’s perspective all those traditions paint a picture for which Christ is the reality.

When God gives you His message, he doesn’t take it back, even though we might not get the whole message or we might fail to fully communicate.

Remember last week we talked about God’s mercy?

Here it is again. We all fall short, but God is merciful.

We can’t be too hard on Israel, if it were not for the Jews, we wouldn’t know what sin was and we certainly wouldn’t know what it means to be holy.

Look around the room. Do you see anybody here who has done everything right?

I didn’t thinks so. But we have all done some things right.

We have all received mercy.

We tend to think that unless we are perfect, we can’t show the world who God is.

But God knows we’re not perfect and still He entrusts us with His message.

If we are willing to work together, we can show the world who God is.

You can’t understand God and you certainly can’t explain Him. But you can tell of what you know and have experienced.

If we each do our part, God will accomplish His plan through us.

If you want to win in life, partner with God.

Romans 11:36 AMP

36 For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. [For all things originate with Him and come from Him; all things live through Him, and all things center in and tend to consummate and to end in Him.] To Him be glory forever! Amen (so be it).

None of us knows everything, but together we can do a lot more.

Even better, is to let God work through each of us to communicate his message to the world.

You belong to God.

He didn’t save you just for your own sake.

He saved you to be part of something much bigger than yourself.

Why should the church be divided? We have this “good news” that the world needs to hear and experience. Instead of focusing on our differences, why not focus instead on what is our part in communicating God’s message to the world?!

Questions for Reflection:

Are you living for a purpose greater than yourself? Do you see yourself as a messenger or is that just for “special people?” Aren’t you “special” too?

How do you handle things about God that you don’t know or understand? Do you just focus on what you know or are you curious about what others may know? Are willing to learn something new?

How important is your background, your family or your religious identity? How willing are you to partner with people from different backgrounds and perspectives? Do you think God might also want to use someone like you?