Claiming My New Life: “How ‘Hot Wheels’ taught me about life” – Romans 15

The absolutely most fantastic toy of my youth had to be the “Hot wheels” cars and tracks. Eventually they came out with the incredible loop, where your car could mysteriously hug the track and even go upside down! The problem was, if we weren’t careful, they would fly off the track. About that time in my life, we got the little electric car set. This was a wonder of engineering. The little cars had something akin to a record player needle that would drop into a slot on the track and you could control the electrical flow and cause the car to speed up or slow down. The problem came up again – keeping the cars on the track was not easy. I learned a lesson, the faster I tried to move around the track, the more easily I could be thrown off track. That is an effective spiritual principle as well. The more intent I am at making my way through the Christian life on my own and at my own pace, the more likely I am to be easily thrown off track.

Key Principle: The Christian life is a TEAM sport, not an individual one. If I take the steps to carefully navigate, I will stay on track – and God’s work through me will be evident. If I don’t, I will place myself in an unusable position and be off track.

Here’s how to stay “on track” serving Jesus in the body of Messiah (church) and in the community (home):

Step One: I need to see the weaknesses of other believers and make sure what I do will build, not tear down.

Romans 15:1 Now we who are strong ought to bear the weaknesses of those without strength and not just please ourselves.

Once I understand God’s Word well enough to get the foundation of surrender built into my life, and I recognize the key principles of growth and development – I am on my way to being “strong” in my faith. It is easy for me, particularly at that time, to see the thing that would please me as most important, but it will throw me off track. I need to walk into church with a different attitude – I am there to be used of God in other’s lives, not just tank up and take off. My church is less a spiritual drive through and more a platform to develop a caring attitude toward others. The same truth extends outside of Sunday meetings, into the daily walk in life. Things I decide to allow in my life must be tempered by an understanding that some around me are much weaker in their Biblical world view (i.e. “faith”) and will be pulled off track by following my example. They may try to make a turn in life without the skill set God has allowed me to develop, or without the equipment he has furnished in my life.

To accomplish this, I need to add in to my life several practices. First, I must have a deliberate mechanism for developing a caring heart. In other words, some time in my schedule needs to be set aside to deliberately seek people who may be weakened by life’s circumstances and attempt to help them by using my spiritual gifts. I will need to take the time to identify the people in need, and think through how my gifts can be used to advance them in their walk. When I help them, I am bearing their weakness and growing new strengths and sensitivities in my own heart – all in obedience to the Lord. Life lived for self is not Christian. Second, I need to look at choices in my life in areas of Christian liberty and check to be sure that what I am displaying of God’s work in me is a reflection of the values of Jesus. What did I post on my Facebook page? Did it include me taking liberties that will be misunderstood by those who will view it? Is my favorite movie something Jesus would squirm at, but I posted it for all to see? This isn’t a call to legalism – it is a call to a mature, circumspect walk. Don’t show it if it could be misunderstood, or worse – it could pull another person off track by licensing a practice without maturity to deal with the outcomes.

Step Two: I should do what will build him up, not simply please him.

15:2 Each of us is to please his neighbor for his good, to his edification. 15:3 For even Christ did not please Himself; but as it is written, “THE REPROACHES OF THOSE WHO REPROACHED YOU FELL ON ME.”

The text explains that I am to “please my neighbor for his good, or edification.” At the same time, I dare not misread this. In my desire to care for others, I must not be driven to measure myself by their happiness. What drives me forward in life is my Heavenly Father’s expectations of me, not those about me. The boundaries principles are important here. The text is clear: do what will help them GROW in faith, not simply what will make them happy. Sometimes they are one in the same. Often, they are not. If what they need is a bowl of soup; that is simple enough. If what they need is help paying the rent, they probably also need help on how to spend money properly and how to order financial priorities. That may be less comfortable. If we provide the rent and don’t provide the instruction, we enable them to be irresponsible – and that isn’t edifying to them even if it makes them happy! Remember, there are only two reasons someone is doing the wrong thing:

• They don’t know how to do the right one: they need education to help them make the right choices in the future.

• They don’t want to do the right thing: they need discipline in their life.

Educating the lazy will frustrate the educator and probably only make the listener a more intelligent lazy person. Disciplining the one who doesn’t know how to do the job will on exasperate the listener, because they have insufficient instruction to complete the task.

One of the expected costs of being one body is that some will cause troubles that others must pay for. The giving for others gives us a chance to follow the Savior’s example! At the same time, note that Jesus did what was NECESSARY for me even before I had any idea why that would be important. Romans 5:8 reminded us: “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Jesus didn’t simply give us back the benefits of a relationship with God lost in Eden’s Fall – He gave us the means to regain the relationship. His example is this: do what will long term help fix the underlying problems with people, not just the fashionable and easily seen “flashy” thing.

Step Three: I must take my direction and encouragement to keep going from the Word. I will find hope in its pages.

15:4 For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.

Sheer will to perform will run out. Strong desires don’t often translate into success, or people would keep their New Year’s resolutions. We have many desires. Some are quite strong, but they are not matched by consistent exertion. In the end, we run out of will power and run off track. Psychologists have claimed that one of the greatest areas we dissipate our drive if by seeing unfinished projects in our lives. It is what make parenting so exhausting – just when you think you are making headway you realize that they haven’t really been listening!

Knowing God’s Word is VITAL to the success of your mission to live a life in close intimacy with God. We need more than instruction – and the Word provides more than that. We need more than RULES – and the Word offer much more than that. We need to be INSPIRED and LIFTED by dramas of others, we need to be touched by the depth of their poetry. We need to be brought to tears with their pains and hear the cries of their lamentations – all so that we can understand that we are NOT ALONE in the struggles of the walk.

I need to say this, and it will not be understood by some: We are doing a disservice to many by “counseling” them and helping them feel better rather than directing them back to a deep and meaningful encounter with God in timely portions of His Word. People will come with a problem that prayer and the Word could help them resolve. We are quick to relieve the pressure on their heart, but God may well have put it there to draw them back to an intimacy with Him that He deeply desires. We become the doctor that gives the a vitamin supplement, but does not insist on a healthy diet. More than that, we pressure them toward a pattern that does not develop right habits, but brings them to US for encouragement. The Scriptures will do that. We are to equip people to understand them and to use them – not replace that with a counseling function. While there is a place for such counseling in the body, we need to be careful that we are not relieving God pressures that were placed in the believer’s path to help them develop appropriate growth mechanisms – like intense prayer and hungry searching in the Word.

The Biblical record has as one of its God assigned priorities the encouragement of the believer. Next time you really need to be encouraged, ask God to direct your steps back to a positive view and open His Word. He made a promise to help us to “persevere” (hupomeno) -  to help us “remain under” the pressure as well as to “encourage” (paraklaseos) – to “buttress” or “to place beside something of strength to hold up” the flagging heart. Don’t forget, God has also promised that His Word will always do its assigned work! (Isaiah 55):

55:9 “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts. 10 “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, And do not return there without watering the earth, And making it bear and sprout, And furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; 11 So will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; It will not return to Me empty, Without accomplishing what I desire, And without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.”

Step Four: I must understand that real unity comes from prayer for one another (inviting God’s work in us), and a choice to work together (choosing God’s work through us) for God’s glory. It isn’t a mystery – there is a process to staying together and on track.

15:5 Now may the God who gives perseverance and encouragement grant you to be of the same mind with one another according to Christ Jesus, 6 so that with one accord you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 7 Therefore, accept one another, just as Christ also accepted us to the glory of God.

I learned early on that if I didn’t put the beginning of the Hot wheels track high enough, the car would not get the velocity it needed to do the loop without falling to the floor. Speed was critical to holding the car on the track. In the same way, we have to learn that the way we stay together as a body is not some mysterious and spooky force – it is the application of a process God instructed.

The text says that God give the ability to remain under the load. God also gives the buttressing to strengthen. Paul asked God to do this work in their lives…he PRAYED for them. This kind of prayer is called INTERCESSION. It is that act of standing in the gap between God and another person as asking Him to do in them what He knows needs to be done. God made man to be the superintendent of the garden called Earth, but God is the owner and ultimate supplier of resources. I need to ask Him to supply what is essential.

I mention this basic and fundamental need for prayer, because I am alarmed at how little this appears to be in many believer’s lives. They seem to think that the Bible is a training manual, and if we do the “big things” in it, we can pull off the Christian life. The truth is – we can’t! We don’t have the strength to stay on track. We face an enemy that keeps shifting the track around us, and we will not stay where we belong without God’s constant connection in prayer. We live in a time when even the church thinks the world can be changed by protest and complaint. More things are changed from the knees of the surrendered than from the placards of the convinced! The starting place for UNITY in the body, according to the text, is prayer.

We dare not skip the other elements of the passage. Paul wrote that in addition to praying for them, they were going to need to respond by choices. They needed to CHOOSE to walk together. They were going to need to CHOOSE to worship and glorify God with voices tuned to one another. They were going to need to CHOOSE to accept one another, just as Jesus accepted us. Prayer will bring us to the right corner, but we must choose to turn and the right place. The spiritual life is not simply an overwhelming force where we are borne along without willful decision. We must make right choices.

Step Five: We can never forget that God keeps His promises – every one – no matter what the cost to Him. This is our greatest encouragement – an possibly the greatest challenge of our day!

15:8 For I say that Christ has become a servant to the circumcision on behalf of the truth of God to confirm the promises given to the fathers,

People do not understand why we are ardent in the support of the literal truth of the Word. The issues have been brewing for years, but right now the key debate is with SCIENCE that is set on trying to sweep the Bible aside by simply saying it is irrelevant historically if science doesn’t agree with its representation. One such group is the BioLogos, a group of “Christians who are scientists”. Listen to their purpose statement:

The BioLogos Foundation is a group of Christians, many of whom are professional scientists, biblical scholars, philosophers, theologians, pastors, and educators, who are concerned about the long history of disharmony between the findings of science and large sectors of the Christian faith. We believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. We also believe that evolution, properly understood, best describes God’s work of creation. Founded by Dr. Francis Collins, BioLogos addresses the escalating culture war between science and faith, promoting dialog and exploring the harmony between the two. We are committed to helping the church – and students, in particular – develop worldviews that embrace both of these complex belief structures, and that allow science and faith to co-exist peacefully.

Now listen to Dr. Falk, who writes for BioLogos. Listen carefully to his words:

“Will we ever be able to show the followers of Albert Mohler, John MacArthur and others that Christian theology doesn’t stand or fall on how we understand Genesis 1 or the question of whether Adam and Eve were the sole genetic progenitors of the human race? These are extremely critical issues to many and the task of showing in a convincing manner that evangelical theology doesn’t depend on the age of the earth, and it doesn’t depend upon whether Adam was made directly from dust will likely take decades before it will be convincing to all.”

Dr. Falk doesn’t believe that our faith in any way should depend upon declarations of the actual historicity of Adam, nor the record of his creation from the ground. Albert Mohler’s recent commentary on the group shares a closer look at BioLogos when he says they argue: “the Apostle Paul was simply wrong to believe that Adam was an historical person. A recent BioLogos essay argues that Adam and Eve were likely “a couple of Neolithic farmers in the Near East” to whom God revealed himself “in a special way.” There is a consistent denial of any possibility that Adam and Eve are the genetic parents of the entire human race. The BioLogos approach also denies the historical nature of the Fall, with all of its cosmic consequences. BioLogos has published explicit calls to deny the inerrancy of the Bible.”

Why do I mention this group? If you look at their website quickly, you will assume they offer mainstream Christian resources. You will see popular speakers you know pop up – some on platforms from youth conferences. Now they are showing up in Christian books, Christian campuses and Christian literature as a way to “bring together” the two world views. They bring together science at the expense of God’s Word being literally true. That may comfort some, but it should send a chill up our spine. We are about to be flanked in the next generation’s educational process. Once again the Bible will suffer at the hands of its friends in academia. We get to hand off two thousand years of defending the truth of the Word to those who know better because they have discovered the truth is found in science. Roll over Gospel, the story of the “Fall” is just a myth. We used to call that liberalism, soon it will be called mainstream. I agree with Dr. Mohler’s assessment: “I am willing to accept the authority of science on any number of issues. I am fundamentally agnostic about a host of other scientific concerns — but not where the fundamental truth of the Gospel and the clear teachings of the Bible are at stake.”

Dr. Falk ends his essay with a paragraph that includes this key sentence: “If God really has created through an evolutionary mechanism and if God chooses to use BioLogos and other groups to help the Church come to grips with this issue, then these three huge challenges will begin to melt away as God’s Spirit enables us to look to him and not to ourselves.” I will simply let that sentence speak for itself.” Great God language, but not based on belief that what He says is really facually true.

Men and women, we need to be clear. What God says, He means. He isn’t playing cat and mouse games with people’s eternal salvation hopes. The Bible claims Adam was an historical human being, the Fall was an actual event. Jesus believed and taught that God’s Word was true – not just spiritually, but historically. He spoke of Noah and Jonah as real people, not cleverly devised mythology to tell the Divine story.

Today’s evolutionary view is based on naturalistic presuppositions. The Bible unapologetically offers a different understanding of origins – as well as purposes and destinies – all that should be compelling to believers because they are the heart of the message of the Bible. Toss the origin and the rest unravels – we can’t really know when to take the narrative seriously. In much of Europe they went this course. Now their churches are empty and their people searching for an answer that science will not and cannot provide. It is our future if the church folds here on this point. Mark the point. We aren’t moving. We can’t. Truth is often the first casualty of popularity. God kept His literal and clear promises to Israel in bringing Messiah. Jesus came to serve His Father by walking in the truth of those promises.

Step Six: We must note carefully that Jesus delighted to sacrifice so that the clear picture of Who His Father is would be seen.

15:9 and for the Gentiles to glorify God for His mercy; as it is written, “THEREFORE I WILL GIVE PRAISE TO YOU AMONG THE GENTILES, AND I WILL SING TO YOUR NAME.” 10 Again he says, “REJOICE, O GENTILES, WITH HIS PEOPLE.” 11 And again, “PRAISE THE LORD ALL YOU GENTILES, AND LET ALL THE PEOPLES PRAISE HIM.” 12 Again Isaiah says, “THERE SHALL COME THE ROOT OF JESSE, AND HE WHO ARISES TO RULE OVER THE GENTILES, IN HIM SHALL THE GENTILES HOPE.”

The goal of a servant (and a son), to show His Master (or in this case His Father) in the best possible light. That should be the goal of every believer. We want to tell His story of the ages to his drifting Creation. Jesus did that for the nations that had drifted from the truth at the base of the Ark of Noah, to their pagan superstitions and false hopes. They made up the nations called “Gentiles” and God didn’t forget them. Our churches are filled with those, once estranged from God – now vibrant in faith. Jesus’ example was that He became a servant, in part, to get that message out to Gentiles.

Step Seven: I need to recognize that what robs my peace is ignorance of God’s promises, and mistrust in His Word.

15:13 Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

My expectations should come from my understanding of His promises, and my surrender to a God Who does not lie! Look carefully at verse 13. First, we see that God is a God of hope (elpís from Greek word elpō: “to anticipate, welcome”) – properly, expectation of what is sure (certain); hope). God fills us with an expectation that is the source of our joy (chara: gladness). This word for JOY is not the one we have defined as “the resolute assurance that God has neither lost interest in me, nor the power to deal with my problems.” Though it fits here, the word actually should be translated as “gladness”. Paul is simply saying that God offers us the expectations that will fill us with gladness and settle us with peace. There is a catch, however. He wrote that such gladness and such peace are available from God, but not automatic. They are accessed by BELIEF. God’s power makes my peace POSSIBLE, but my BELIEF makes it happen.

I own a number of computers. They have been given great potential. They all need power to make them work. Failure to power them up will leave me with a pile of plastic, metal and computer chips. I cannot eat them and they cannot shelter me – so without power they are of little use to me. The hook up that brings life to the believer is TRUSTING GOD.

“Believing” in the context of verse 13 is from the word pisteúō (a form derived from two sources – pístis, “faith,” and further back in etymology the word peíthō, “persuade, be persuaded”). The idea of BELIEF in Scripture is tmore the idea of “active assumption or conviction”. It is the foundation of actions. It is not mere mental ascent. The point of the verse is simple: God has offered sumptuous expectations that thrill my heart and settle my soul if I make them the foundation of my life’s choices. Doing so will grow the hopes more richly within as God empowers my view of life and the future.

Look at the steps: See the other believers and work to build them. Let the Word keep me encouraged. Pray together and choose to put time in at work with the family of believers. Take God’s promises seriously. Serve God by showing Who He is to a lost world. Let my excitement for the future be deliberately shaped by His promises. These things will keep us on track. They will keep us together. The Christian life is a TEAM sport, not an individual one. If I take the steps to carefully navigate, I will stay on track – and God’s work through me will be evident. If I don’t, I will place myself in an unusable position and be off track.