Living Hope Church

Pastor Phil Steiger: If you would turn in your Bibles with me please to Romans chapter nine. Here we are. I knew we'd make it. Romans chapter nine. In just a couple of minutes we're going to start reading here in verse one. That's where we're going to pick up.

But if you've been reading along with us, and honestly I hope you do, in fact it will help you on Sunday mornings I think if through the week you're kind of reading through chunks of Romans, maybe even read a couple of chapters ahead. It just kind of helps set our hearts and minds and gets us focused for what's happening on Sunday mornings.

But you may have noticed, and we will notice this morning, that the turn from Romans chapter eight into Romans chapters nine, ten, and eleven really could not be more dramatic. We've been inside of a chapter for a long time because it is a beautiful and powerful and wonderful chapter. We've been in a chapter, chapter eight, full of the work of the Holy Spirit, God's adoption of his people, the spirit of life instead of the spirit of death, God's unchanging and unalterable love for his children.

And from there we jump into now three chapters, nine, ten, and eleven, that are going to focus on things like God's sovereignty and God's salvation. Chapters nine, ten, and eleven act as a unit. In fact, I would encourage you if you haven't, sit down this week sometime and just read these three chapters together. These three, nine, ten, and eleven, they have Israel at the very center of what the Apostle Paul has to say to us here in this part of the book of Romans.

But it isn't just Israel. As we will discover, the topic of Israel becomes a platform for Paul to talk about God's sovereign power and grace, to talk about salvation, and to even talk about our free will responsibility to respond to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, all of these kinds of things put together into three chapters means that there are going to be some difficult to understand passages as we go through these three chapters. So, I've scheduled some guest speakers so I can disappear. No, we're not going to do that, right?

But this is one of those moments in the word of God when, quite frankly, we exercise our commitment to reading and preaching the entire word of God. We believe that everything that has been given to us in the word of God has been breathed by the spirit of God, preserved by God for our good. So we're going to go through these chapters and we're going to find some really astounding and wonderful things.

Now, some of you are excited about Romans chapter nine because you want to know what I think about one very particular theological issue and how I'm going to deal with these things. Romans chapter nine, and ten and eleven, are often used to promote a theological point of view that says that God has pre-chosen or God has predestined those who will accept him and those who won't, that God has predestined those who will effectively go to heaven and God has predetermined those who would not, those who would go to hell.

We are going to see, I think in many ways even starting in verses one and two, why I do not think that is a good take on Romans 9, 10, and 11. We are going to see a combination of ideas that are going to kind of throw us off at first. And if you've read ahead, you've thought I don't get this, this sounds stark, my goodness, I don't know what to do with this. But Paul is putting together several ideas that he wants us to make sense of and recognize this.

I keep talking about the chunk of chapters nine, ten, and eleven. You go to the end of chapter eleven and Paul is so excited, he's so wound up about what he has just said in these three chapters, he finishes with a hymn, a psalm of praise to the glory and greatness of God. Amen. That's literally what he says at the end of chapter eleven. So he's excited about what he wants to tell us. But he's going to combine some ideas for us: God is sovereign, and we have free will.

God has foreknowledge of all things, and we are responsible for our reaction to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I've written this out so that you can see it. I'm going to lay a couple of my cards on the table now so that you know how I am approaching what we're doing this morning and through the rest of these chapters. And it's this: based on God's full foreknowledge of all things, he knows who will put their faith in Jesus. God does not predestine individuals who will go to heaven and go to hell.

God has predestined that everyone who puts their faith in Jesus Christ will be saved. We're going to flesh that out as these chapters continue. We remind ourselves of one of these moments that almost acted like some foreshadowing in Romans chapter eight, verse twenty-nine. Recognize this language again. Paul says, "For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son." Paul uses the vocabulary of predestination to say that those whom God foreknew would be his children, he decided long beforehand that those who accept him would be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. That's the foundation, I believe, of this doctrine.

So in our passage of scripture this morning—no, I'm kidding, we're going a little bit further than that. In our passage this morning, we recognize this, and we've said this but I want to keep this before our minds: God is sovereign, and we are responsible. God is sovereign, and we are responsible. When we talk about sovereignty, this is a common biblical understanding of the kind of power that God has as he rules over all creation. He is the sovereign over every atom and molecule. He is the sovereign over all time, human history. He's the sovereign lord over all of creation.

So when we speak of God's sovereignty, we're not talking about he rules over certain pockets of human existence. We say he's sovereign over all. So Paul is going to say that God rules over all things and that we need to make the right decision about our faith in Jesus Christ. The second thing that I'm excited to spend some time on in this passage of scripture is this: we agree with God's will. We want people to be saved. We agree with God's will, his desire, that we want people to be saved.

Paul's going to say right at the very beginning of this chapter an astonishing thing. He wants his kinsmen to know Jesus Christ. He wants the Jewish nation to know Jesus Christ, even though he has suffered persecution at their hands. He is shockingly motivated to see them saved. So let's read this passage of scripture beginning in Romans chapter nine. We're going to read the first five verses. Friends, this is the word of the Lord.

I am speaking the truth in Christ. I am not lying. My conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh. They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.

I am speaking the truth in Christ. I am not lying. I desperately want my Jewish brothers and sisters to know Jesus Christ as their savior and Lord. I want to set the stage a little bit for this passage and the couple that follow them because of some of the vocabulary that the Apostle Paul uses. I want to make sure that we kind of have a scorecard. How is Paul using the language here? How is Paul using the language here? Because again, we sort of slip through these first five, thirteen verses. We go through chapter nine and we get kind of turned around with Paul's vocabulary and what he means and how he means it.

Paul in chapter nine, and ten and eleven, but here in this section and in the sections to come, Paul is both talking about national Israel and those who belong to God's Israel because of their belief in Jesus Christ. He's going to talk about both. So when he speaks of national Israel, the promised nation, the biological children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Paul uses this language: "my fellow brothers, my kinsmen in the flesh." He means biologically, we are part of the same group of people, Israelites, the sons and daughters of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

But he's also going to say, "I desperately want them to know Jesus Christ so they can be part of God's spiritual Israel." So if we have a little bit of understanding of this vocabulary, it helps us make sense of some of the rest of what Paul has to say. Paul will eventually, through these chapters, make it abundantly clear that God still has a plan for the nation, the actual nation of Israel, and Paul cares deeply for it.

The Old Testament is full of promises to the nation of Israel that are yet to be fulfilled. So God is still unfolding his plan and part of it involves the nation of Israel. We're going to read some of those passages as we go through these chapters. God still has a plan for the nation of Israel, but Paul is saying there's so much more than that. There are those who put their faith in Jesus Christ.

So Paul is going to use language in verse eight, just a little bit later on. He's going to speak of those who are the offspring of the promise, those according to the flesh and children according to the promise. It's going to be sometimes a little confusing to our ears, but here's what he's talking about: Abraham is the father of the Jews by birth. He uses the phrase twice in the first five verses, "those who are according to the flesh," biological children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

He's also going to tell us that Abraham is the father of those who have faith in Christ. These are children of the promise. So Abraham fulfills this unique role in the Old Testament, even just Old Testament history. Abraham, who wasn't from Jewish descent, wasn't of Hebrew descent, God made him the fountainhead of biological and national Israel. So Paul traces his lineage back to this group of people, Israelites, the sons and daughters of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And on and on it goes, right? So Abraham is the father—God makes Abraham the father of the nation of Israel.

But then we also learn in the book of Genesis that Abraham believed the promises of God and it was accounted to him for righteousness. The Apostle Paul quotes that verse of scripture in chapter one of the book of Romans. That we have now the father of those biologically who belong to Israel and those who put their faith in God, put their faith in Jesus Christ. So Abraham's going to play both of those roles in this passage of scripture. So Paul wishes that his kinsmen according to the flesh were also his kinsmen as children of the promise.

Another couple of pieces of vocabulary, if you've got a study Bible, if you follow up and read on this, some of the other language that will be used is that Paul wants all of ethnic Israel to also be spiritual Israel. To also be spiritual Israel. Does that make sense? That's what he deeply desires in this passage of scripture. He wants the Jewish nation to be saved.

So much so—verses two and three—when you kind of slow down and you spend a couple of minutes with it, they're a little overwhelming. Paul says literally, "As God is my witness, that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart because there's a group of people who I want to know Jesus who don't." Here's how he puts it: "For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh."

Paul's sorrow for the lostness of his kinsmen is almost unbelievable to us. Paul, after everything he has said about the salvation and the justification that we find in Jesus Christ, the life of the spirit that's given to us that gets rid of the life of death that separates us from God, the spirit of life is given to us, we're reconciled to God through Jesus Christ—all of these incredible things that he has said, that he has experienced, that he spends every breath telling people they need to respond to—he says in this moment, "You know what? If I could give all of that away and it would mean that every Jew is saved, I would do it." That is amazing.

How many people would you do that for? Some of you flatter yourselves, you think well, Pastor Phil would do that for me. Think of it like this: think of a parent who is watching a child suffer through pain and a terminal illness. How often would that parent go to God and say, "I want to change places with my child." How often would a spouse do that for another spouse walking through something like that? And they would go to God and say, "I would do anything if you would just change our places." That's the kind of sorrow and pain he feels because there's a group of people he knows and loves who don't know Jesus.

He actually uses this really interesting word, "accursed and cut off." The word in the Greek is *anathema*. "I would wish myself anathema." The word in the Greek just literally means a person or a thing that is devoted to destruction, a doomed sacrifice. "I would put my neck on the chopping block if they would all be saved." That's a stunning thing for the Apostle Paul to say in this moment. Now, he knows that's not how it works, but he is leading us into something. He's hoping that we begin to feel and see something that he feels and sees, and he wants us in the same place.

The first thing we see is this: God is sovereign, and we need to have sorrow for the lost. The sovereignty and the rule of God is compatible with the drive of the church of Jesus Christ to preach the gospel so as many people as possible would hear the word and respond and become a part of the church of Jesus Christ. Those two things are compatible. Now, flip that coin on the other side and ask yourself these questions: if God prepicks those who go to heaven and those who go to hell, what is the point of the sorrow? What's the point of it?

Would he say that if Paul believes, well, they're going to hell anyway, so what good would this do? You see what I'm saying? Why would Paul wish this on himself for the salvation of people who are impossible to save? He wouldn't. Why? Because that's not how it works. God foreknows—we're going to talk a lot about the foreknowledge of God. God foreknows all of these things, in all decisions that people will make, especially in relationship to their faith in him. God knows all possible decisions, all possible worlds if you're into that kind of language.

God knows we have free will to accept or to reject Jesus Christ. So God knows what people are going to do with the offer of salvation. God knows what people are going to do with the light that he has given them. You go back to Romans chapter one, and some of you may already be thinking: well, what about those who have never heard? The Apostle Paul has actually already answered that question for us in chapters one and two. He said God has made it plain to them, all of his invisible qualities he's made clear to them, and many of them have simply rejected the truth and then they've walked down this path of sin and rebellion.

So Paul believes that this is a real choice, this is real work, this is real sorrow for the lost. This isn't fake, this isn't gented up, this is real because he wants them to hear the gospel and he wants them to respond. One of the ways in which we talk about this, instead of God just simply choosing who does and who does not, is we talk about God going ahead of us to prepare the way, to open doors for us, to speak to us in ways that God knows that we would listen and that we would hear and that we would know.

The language that we use for that—we've used it a couple of times, but I want to make sure we hear it again this morning—the language we use is "prevenient grace." The word "prevenient" is not a common word to anybody, but the word literally in the dictionary means to go ahead and prepare. To go ahead of something or someone and to prepare the way for it. So God's prevenient grace, which is how I see it, is that God has gone ahead of us and he prepares the conversations, he prepares hearts and minds, he prepares those moments in which we are confronted with the gospel of Jesus Christ. He goes ahead of us. That is part of the grace of God.

We notice as well—we mentioned this at the beginning—that God desires, God desires everyone to say yes to the message of a gospel, to the offer of salvation. And because that choice is free, because that choice is free, then judgment on those who reject Christ is just. Judgment on those who reject Christ is just. Listen to how the Apostle Peter puts both of these thoughts together in the same passage in 2 Peter, chapter three.

The setup to this passage, Peter is saying there are people out there who are complaining that God is slow in fulfilling his promises. And Peter says slow and fast work different for God than they do for you. And besides, don't be so ready for it to show up because you might not be ready. But here's what he says in reaction to that in chapter three, verses nine and ten: "The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done in it will be exposed."

God desires. He's not being slow the way that we think of it. He's not sluggish. He's being patient. And he's being patient so that the word of God may go as far as it possibly can so as many people can hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. But there is coming a day, a day in which will strike us like a thief that shows up in the middle of the night, and then judgment will come and all the deeds of all of the earth will be exposed. So we think in these terms and we think again about Paul's compassion, Paul's sorrow.

And this is just Paul's personality. He is—I get the feeling the more I read Paul that he would be exhausting to spend time with. He is pedal to the metal, one hundred percent, I don't know why you're slowing down kind of guy. And he says, "I would tear myself apart from Christ if it meant their salvation." Why? Because judgment is coming. Judgment is coming. So our attitude toward the world, to some degree at least, needs to contain sorrow for the lost. And as the Apostle Paul's going to tell us again in another place, even for those who want to destroy us.

So we see God is sovereign and we need to have sorrow for the lost. We also see this: compassion drives us to share the good news. Compassion drives us to share the good news. We are part of a denomination, a cooperative fellowship called the Assemblies of God. Little over a hundred years ago the Assemblies of God got started, this kind of radical move of the Holy Spirit. And from the very beginning, the Assemblies of God built itself on evangelism and mission. From this tiny little group of people in Los Angeles, it exploded into a worldwide movement literally just within a handful of years.

So the Assemblies of God, our denomination, is just over a hundred years old. And most people don't know this because of our place in American culture, the Assemblies of God is the largest Protestant denomination in the world. Did you know that? In the world. And it's because from the very beginning we've been driven by evangelism and missions. Pastor Ian sent us a couple of stats that I want you guys to see that are both really cool and really depressing all at the same time. So here's a couple of stats about the number of people who belong to the Assemblies of God and where they are.

There on the left, regional distribution of World AG adherents: in the nation of Africa, there's almost 43 million members of the Assemblies of God, 52.2% of all of the World AG is in Africa. Latin America, almost 27 million, at 30.1%. Asia and North America, we account for 9.4%. And then on down you go. On the right there you've got the nations with more than one million adherents: the nation of Brazil has over 21 million adherents in the Assemblies of God. That's 23%, one in four almost of every member of the Assemblies of God in the United States is in Brazil.

Ethiopia, 17 million. Korea, four and a half million. Nigeria, Congo, Kenya. The United States, we account for 3.3% of all of the members of the Assemblies of God in the world. Alright, so the first reaction is that to that is: praise God, look what he is doing, this is absolutely astounding. The word of God is spreading around the world—I mean, and you look at that list and you see how many African nations are on that list, how many South American nations are on that list. And then we just kind of show up almost as a footnote inside of that list.

The first reaction is, man, that is awesome. The second reaction to that is: there's a lot of work here to do in the city of Colorado Springs. There's a lot of work to do here in the United States of America. There's a lot of work to do. Compassion drives us to share the good news. Paul's life after conversion was just driven by the spread of the gospel of Jesus Christ. His desire for his kinsmen to know is incredible, his desire for the gentile nations to know was incredible.

This reminded me of a portion of the book of Acts. Paul has in this part of Acts, he's spent quite a bit of time in the city of Ephesus. He's used it as a base and he's been going on missionary journeys to inland and what today we would call Turkey, but he's spent a lot of time inside of Ephesus. He's got to know this church and these elders. When it's time for him to move on, they gather with him on the shore, he has this kind of farewell address to the Ephesian elders, and here's part of what he says to them in Acts chapter twenty.

"And when they came to him, he said to them: You yourselves know how I lived among you the whole time from the first day I set foot in Asia, serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials that happened to me through the plots of the Jews; how I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable and teaching you in public from house to house, testifying both to Jews and Greeks of repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ."

You have seen me from day one how hard I and my team have worked so that you in the Ephesians would know about Jesus, so that the Jews who live here would know about Jesus. You also know who's made this harder on me. Who did he say made this hard on him? The Jewish people plotted against me over and over. You read those things in the book of Acts, you read how he talks about those things through the rest of his epistles. The Jews opposed him everywhere they possibly could, and yet we read in verses one, two, and three of Romans chapter nine, Paul says, "I would give up my life for them to know Jesus." Even those who got me imprisoned, those who did this and this and this to me.

This group of people, the Jewish leadership, will get him imprisoned, will get him sent to Rome, and will get him eventually beheaded. "I would give everything if they would know Jesus." This is part, friends, of the power of the Christian faith that we belong to. We can entrust judgment to God, and we can entrust judgment to the systems that God puts in place on this earth, and at the same time we can pray for and we can work for the salvation for all of those around us and even those who mistreat the church of Jesus Christ.

Compassion drives us to spread the gospel. Something else he says here that is important for us in this context in verses four and five. He says this: natural advantages do not mean we are saved. Look at verses four and five again. He said, "They are Israelites. They've been given everything God had to give." They are Israelites. To them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and even according to their blood the coming of the Messiah himself.

The Jewish people had the advantages of being the chosen people of God, the adopted people of God, the ones put together under Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, brought out of the exodus and taken to the border of the promised land. They're the ones who received the first revelation of the glory of God after Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden. God shows up in the exodus, God shows up at Mount Sinai. Paul says they have this and this and this and this. They have the covenants, the legally binding relationships that God has made with his people.

They have the one that God gave Abraham, they have the one that God gave Moses, they have the one that God gave David. They still have all of those things. They have the worship of the temple at the core of their culture for generation after generation after generation. They have the stories of the Old Testament, the patriarchs, and yet if they do not put faith in Jesus Christ, they are not part of God's spiritual children. They are not saved.

Paul knows that they're not going to be with their God when they die unless they put their faith in Jesus Christ. Being ethnic Israel does not automatically make them spiritual Israel. But the Apostle Paul has actually touched on this earlier on in the book of Romans a couple of places. Here's one of those, Romans chapter three, verses twenty-nine and thirty: "Or is God the God of the Jews only? Is he not the God of gentiles also? Yes, of gentiles also, since God is one who will justify the circumcised, the Jews, by faith and the uncircumcised, the gentiles, through faith."

God being one God with one plan will justify through faith. Paul's been hitting that note over and over throughout the book of Romans so far. So he has said that about his Jewish brothers and sisters, literal biological brothers and sisters. But we need to hear this too, because your family went to church when you were a kid does not mean you're a Christian. Because you come to church from time to time or a lot does not mean that you are a Christian. Because Grandma took you to church when you were a little kid does not mean you are a Christian.

What means you are a Christian? You have chosen to put your faith in Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit has gone ahead of you, he has called you, you have responded, and you have become a child of God. That's how this happens. Every single one of us needs to accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and savior. Natural advantages do not mean that we are automatically saved.

Now, the other thing, the way that he finishes verse five here—this is the kind of thing that given a different cultural context I would probably talk about in a different way. But here's how I want to talk about it this morning: Jesus Christ, an ethnic Jew, is God over all. Jesus Christ, an ethnic Jew, is God over all. Look at verse five again. "To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh"—he basically repeats this fact—"from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, the Messiah, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen."

We are going to—just because of the nature of these three chapters—we're going to end up talking about this kind of thing a couple of times as we move along. But here's why I think it's important for us in this cultural moment to make this point: all forms of antisemitism are right out. They're just right out. Racism, which is a matter of the human heart, it's a particular form of hatred for another person because they are different than you are, is a flat-out sin against God and against your neighbor.

Antisemitism is Satan's favorite form of racism. His favorite form. And friends, if you're paying any attention at all to the world around us right now, antisemitism is all the rage. It is a big deal right now. We watch it show up on every spectrum, political spectrum right now. And friends, one of the things that just breaks my heart, it confuses me, it frustrates me, is that I watch a lot of—and you wouldn't know these names, but I watch a lot of young men who are pastors who have relatively sizable online followings who have become openly, not passively-aggressively, openly antisemitic.

If you are paying attention to any YouTuber, any influencer, anybody, whether they claim themselves as Christian or not, and they have become antisemitic, mark and avoid. Leave that stuff alone. It is Satan's favorite form of racism, and man, it keeps showing up. But guess who was a Jew? Jesus. From their people, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Paul's so excited about this point and he goes, "Amen!" And that's when the preacher goes, "I've got more to say."

Luke chapter one, and we think of these stories at Christmas time, but let's put it in this context right now: when the angel Gabriel goes to Mary and says, "You're going to give birth to a son and you're going to call his name Jesus. He's going to save his people from their sins." She's a virgin and the angel Gabriel says, "He will be called son of the Most High, and he will be given the throne of his father David so that he will sit on that throne forever." The angel Gabriel tells Mary, who is a daughter of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and David, that her son will be the son of David.

Matthew chapter one, verse one, the very first verse of the New Testament. This is—and it's the one that immediately makes people go, oh, can we skip over this one please? "This is the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." Okay. For some of you, you're thinking why are you paying so much attention to this? Some people might be listening this or thinking I'm going to go punch this guy in the face. That's how deep this weird divide is becoming in our culture right now, and you and I need to be clear about this.

There are interesting ways of making this point as well with the Old Testament and the way Jesus talks about himself. There's a passage in Isaiah chapter twenty-eight in verse sixteen that speaks of God putting his cornerstone in Jerusalem: "Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says. Look, I am placing a foundation stone in Jerusalem, a firm and tested stone. It is a precious cornerstone that is safe to build on. Whoever believes need never be shaken. I'm putting my cornerstone in Jerusalem and it is the foundation upon which your lives will be built and it will never be shaken."

Jesus Christ himself in Matthew chapter twenty-one quotes another passage from the book of Psalms, and that passage in the book of Psalms talks about the cornerstone that God lays will be rejected, and Jesus says, "Guess who that cornerstone is? The one the Old Testament's been talking about that God would put in Jerusalem? It's me. I am that cornerstone." So there's a lot going on already here in Romans chapter nine. And not all of it has to do with the theological controversies.

The vast majority of what we've really paid attention to this morning is basically this: friends, people need to know Jesus Christ. Is there something inside of me that at least from time to time drives me to that? Sorrow for the lost, compassion for the lost. The realization that people need to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. Putting some of these things together, sort of pulling it into ourselves here, friends, God is sovereign Lord over all, and we are responsible to preach the gospel because people are responsible to respond to the gospel.

He's going to say in the middle of chapter ten, in the conversation of God's sovereignty, he's going to say, "How will they hear unless someone goes and tells them?" We are responsible to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ because, friends, I don't know if you've recognized this or not lately, but the people around us in our culture need to hear the good news. When we watch the craziness around us, the disorder, the lawlessness, the chaos, the violence, by and large, this is a lot of people who are searching desperately for meaning for their life and that's what they've chosen.

But you know what they need to hear? They need to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's the only way those hearts will be settled. It's the only way. We sang it this morning: Jesus is the answer for the world today. Above him there's no other, friends, Jesus is the way. God knows who will accept, we do not. So we are driven to invite others into the life of Jesus Christ, even those who persecute the church. And Paul has shown us this in his own life.

If you'd give me a minute or two here, I'm going to go all Tuesday night on you here for a moment or two. A couple of weeks ago, a group of domestic terrorists invaded a church. And a few of them have been arrested and charged. The court documents are open, you can actually read the eyewitness accounts, you can watch the videos, you can read what these people have been charged with. And as people read through what they did in that church in Saint Paul, Minnesota a couple of weeks ago, it makes blood boil.

They filled—as they walked into beginning of service, they filled aisles to make sure that people could not get up and they felt claustrophobic and they felt captured inside of their own church. People had a hard time leaving, some of them found the side door, but they were being sort of rushed and shoved out the side door by these protestors. One particular woman fell and it caused her an injury, right? They screamed at parents with kids. You can watch those videos. They blocked access to the kids' area so that parents could not go get their kids. How does that make you feel, right?

A couple of Tuesday nights ago, we made the point that in every cultural revolution you've got this vanguard of violent people who act as pawns for the revolution. They're called the Bolsheviks, and this is what they do. They are always anti-Christ, anti-Christian, anti-church. So it would not be surprising to me if we watch these kinds of headlines show up more and more and more. But in response to that, there are at least two very clear biblical responses to that event and events like that.

The first biblical response is this: people should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. This is the lesson of Romans 13. Most people think the lesson of Romans 13 is that Christians need to do everything the government tells them to do. That's not the lesson of Romans 13. The lesson of Romans 13 is that governments should do everything God tells them to do. That's the lesson of Romans chapter 13. You are an absolute full-blown, God-loving, people-loving, neighbor-loving Christian if you think the law should be enforced. It's utterly and completely biblical. Don't let anybody try to pull you out of that with an empathy trap through guilt. Don't let them do it.

The second clear biblical response is what the Apostle Paul has given us in this passage of scripture. And friends, understand how I say this: those fools need Jesus. Now I use that word biblically. Proverbs chapter one, verse seven is the theme of the book of Proverbs, and it says this: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction." And anybody who behaves this way is a fool in the biblical sense. They are rejecting the knowledge and the wisdom of God.

They are rejecting the life that could be given to them if they accept Jesus Christ as Lord and savior. They are raging against God in ways that make sense to them, they will rage against the church and they will rage against Christians. But guess what? They need to know Jesus Christ. We see these stories in the news and for the vast majority of us, these kinds of things are distant. They're real, but they're distant for most of us.

But I am completely convinced that there are some of us, possibly even many of us, inside of this room this morning who have in our hearts and minds people who through the years have been close and dear to us, people that we've loved, people who have been part of our families, who've walked away from Christ. They have severed relationship and they're living a life of rebellion. They're living the life of the prodigal son right now. That's when this becomes real.

This is where the Apostle Paul then starts to ring in our ears: what needs to be done so that they can get to know Jesus Christ? What needs to be done? How should I pray? What should I do? My heart is broken. How do I need to weep over them? How do I need to work over them? How do I need to pray over them? How do I need to speak to them? What doors will God open? Is there something inside of us that is driven by sorrow and compassion? They're lost and they need to hear the name of Jesus Christ. Let's pray.