Romans 9:1–5Scripture
Turn your Bibles with me this morning to Romans chapter 9, as we continue. And we just came off a wonderful chapter, a challenging chapter for many of us. We've had lots of wonderful conversation about God's sovereign work in the lives of those who are his children, and we are very excited about that. He continues on in chapter 9, and he begins to deal with maybe possible questions that are out there, or circling arguments, about predestination, about God's work in justification, sanctification, and glorification. He speaks specifically here in Romans 9 about his concern for his people.
Point 1Paul is burdened for his privileged people
He's burdened, with his heart beyond measure, for his people. To some degree I can relate to this, because he sees his people, who have been blessed with many privileges, stumble over the gift that was sent by God, their hope settled in Christ. And yet although he comes, although God sends him, although God is, although Christ is God, he comes in the form of man, he dies to make atonement for the sins of the people, he is the Messiah, and they miss him. They stumble over the very thing that God sent.
And ironically so, this is a lot like the people, I would say my people in America, the nation of America. And so as he looks at his people, as he looks at Israel, as he looks at the nation, as he sees a people stumbling over in spite of all their privileges, it really rings in my heart, for I am burdened beyond measure for people here as well. You see, privileges, all those wonderful things, although a gift, can be the very thing that causes you to miss a Savior. So then we move into verse 4 and 5. He expresses in verses 1 through 3 in chapter 9 he expresses his burden beyond measure in his heart for his people, and then he speaks to the privileges, which, in my opinion, then in many ways become the very thing they stumble over and miss a Savior. It is crazy. And he's expressing his concern, and I'm concerned as well, for we have people every day that are in our fellowships, in churches, professing believers, Christians if you will, who declare God, who declare Christ as their Lord, when really they worship themselves. And so then verse 4 says, "They are israelites." Now, I don't have time to talk about this, nor do I want to talk about this, but this might be a good sermon, because we learn from the Apostle Paul specifically, and then we can gather, thank you, from other scriptures in the Old Testament and the New Testament alike, that there are three ways that this nation, or the people of this nation, are referred to. One is Jews, and these terms that are used symbolize a specific meaning. There's a meaning attached to it, and when that term is used, the writer is saying something specific. So Jews, or Hebrew typically, because that's what they speak, and then here in this portion, Israelites.
I don't have time to go into that, but you could do some study on that this week, and maybe you would find that beneficial, profitable if you will, and it will help you make sense of what he means, because it begins to use a term later in this chapter that he used in chapter 8, but the term, although it is the same term, the same word, the same vocabulary word in English, it has a completely different meaning. In chapter 8 we hear "adoption," and that means that we are children of God. Here we hear "adoption," and it's referring to and connected to the nation of Israel. But how many of you know that everyone, just because you're an Israelite, is not necessarily saved? And so this adoption is different, much like that word "adoption" has a different application in chapter 8 versus chapter 9, so does using the term Israelite or Jew or Hebrew. All right, and so do some research on that would be cool to talk about, but I'm not talking about that, anywho. Here we go, verse 4: "They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants," these are the privileges, these are the wonderful things, "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."
That's good news. Let's pause here. Let's pray, and then I have something that Brook will be so tickled that I'm doing, because she loves this teachery kind of stuff, but I think it's beneficial for us as we move forward today. So let's pray. Lord, love you. We know that the truth, the mystery, the truth of your word is only revealed by the Spirit, so we trust you this morning that you would enlighten ears and hearts and minds.
We know that repentance is a gift of God, specifically the Holy Spirit, you give the gift of repentance, so we pray and we trust you now that you will build your church, and even as we speak of these things in your word, you're working in the hearts of men, things that only you can understand, and we praise you and we thank you and we trust you with this work. For if we try to take it in our own hands and manipulate and stir and convert hearts, we merely convert empty vessels to more polished vessels that are still empty. So we confidently trust you to do what only you can do in the hearts of men, and in your precious and holy name we pray. Amen. Now, I love this section. This actually made me think of one of my favorite, I would say it's not my favorite verse in the Bible, but it's way up there, folks, and I'm going to read it. I've read it several times before,
Point 2Privilege can starve our hearing of God's word
But I'm going to read it again. Amos 8:11. This is really the verse that's been echoing in my heart and my mind when I hear the Apostle Paul concerned for the hearts of men, his nation, his people. It says this, and by the way, Amos is a minor prophet. He goes and he speaks to the Northern Kingdom of Israel, so we're speaking about the same people here, the Northern Kingdom of Israel, just FYI.
From a historical standpoint, you need to understand what's going on. This prophet was sent to the Northern Kingdom of Israel because they had become wealthy beyond measure, and their wealth was acquired through military exploits. They had won a lot of battles, and in their winning of these battles they had gained wealth, and honestly, they were very successful. They were very wealthy, very successful, and all of this success, and honestly privileges, had affected their ability to hear God's word. Now notice, I think what is interesting, we see here in Romans we see privileges, we know those privileges are given by God, they're not earned by men. Now we live in a world, particularly in our context, we think if we're privileged, it's because we earned it.
So for instance, and I'm not saying our effort is not involved, but for instance, if I'm wealthy, it's not because God decided for me to be wealthy, it's because I earned wealth. And we need to understand that God is more intimately involved in the day-to-day aspect of our life. We're not open theists, we don't believe that God's just moving through life figuring it out and understanding things as we understand things. He is not removed completely, like many Christian deists believe, and he's just letting things play out like they will, never involved in the affairs of men. He is actively, and we are learning in Romans, actively involved in the smallest, most smallest details of our life. That's important today, because deism comes from this idea that God's removed, he set certain laws and things in motion, and things then depend on us, they don't depend on him. And the nation of Israel, the Northern Kingdom of Israel, had fallen much into some of the similar ideas, mindset, and thinking that the American church today has fallen into. And here's what Amos said to them, and although this was to the Northern Kingdom of Israel, I think that it echoes and reverberates right into our current context today as Americans, and we can learn from it, and it is a sobering prophecy. And he says this: "Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord."
The more privileged you become, the more self-centric you think,
Pastor Shawn Gray · 10:49
and that begins to affect everything: the way you hear God speak, the way you understand God, the way you think about life. And we live in a world where you can get all the word you want, but all the word you want is not the word you need, and you are deaf to hear the true mysteries behind what is being preached, and your privilege is the stumbling block to the mystery, or the truth behind the mystery. I have been privileged, I've been privileged lately to be able to travel many different places around the earth, and I'll tell you this: America is wealthy. Oh my goodness, if you just knew how wealthy we are. The poverty in the third world is absolutely astounding. Like, I just can't even, I could, it's amazing. Brothers and sisters in Christ suffer daily in poverty, not just in poverty, but believers in Christ suffer in poverty, and then for the sake of Christ they suffer. When was the last time you suffered for the sake of Christ? I'm not talking about you got in a little tiff with somebody. I'm not talking about you had a hard day. I'm talking about persecution because Christ is your Lord. And then I fly back to America, and I see something. We're wealthy and we're privileged and we're some of the wealthiest, and I don't say this for everything, but Christians on the face of the earth, and I throw the quotation marks on "Christians," because just because you profess a thing with your mouth does not make it so. The Bible says that we will know a Christian by their fruit.
And if I were to take a poll today, and I've read a poll actually from Barna, the statistics are staggering on how many pastors leading churches in America actually have a biblical worldview. It's crazy, it's like 38 percent of pastors have a biblical worldview in America.
What does that say about the people in the church? Thirty-eight percent, Barna, really. I would say that most pastors don't even have a worldview at all, because they've never left America. And that's important and it's pertinent, but we are privileged, and I'm not saying, well, you should forsake all your privileges, you have money, just give it all away. That's not what I'm saying. We're to be responsible with our finances. But I'm saying that our privileges and our wealth affect our walk.
We are the most protected Christians on the face of the earth, yet we are cowards when it comes to saying his name to our friends and professing him as our Lord.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 14:21
Isn't it amazing that those who are killed for their faith proclaim and profess him in the face of death, yet in our privilege we are quiet all the day long? What is the problem? What is the problem? I would propose to you today that it might possibly be our privilege. And just like the nation of Israel, in the list of all their privileges, they have missed the Messiah, and yet we're the emptiest Christians here in America who ever walked the face of the earth. Well, Shawn, how do you know that? Well, if you go into the Christian bookstore today, 75 percent of the books there deal with how empty we are, and people are searching for purpose and value and fulfillment, and I would propose in all the wrong places, because your Christian bookstore, and the words that leap off the pages of the books you purchase there, will not save. They will only burden you greater still, and while you make some man who's a believer rich because you read his book, you in the process will become spiritually bankrupt because you forsook his book for a man's.
This is good stuff. We got problems. We're empty. We're empty for the rare reason that Jesus was never empty.
Listen to this verse, John 4:32–34: "But he said to them, 'I have food to eat that you do not know about.' So the disciples said to one another, 'Has anyone brought him something to eat?' Jesus said to them, 'My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.'"
We're privileged, and all we care about is our works, and although we were created in Christ Jesus for good works, it's still his work. He determines it, he designs it, he orchestrates it, he empowers us to do it. It is his work. The evangelical church is becoming more and more, here's the term, do some research on it this week, along with Christian deism and open theism. I said it again so you could write it down, because you missed it the first time, and you were thinking, and I, for I won't remember to post it like I did last week, Curtis, even, I said I was going to post scriptures last week, Curtis messaged me on Wednesday because he knew i'd forget, and I still forgot, and I still need to do it, so maybe in three months I will have that thing posted and then you won't even care about it anymore. But I think it's still important. Here's a word: the evangelical church in America is humanistic. I will say this, until recent times I realized a thought I was rallying people around, I was talking to Dan this morning in the office, rallying people around the cause that was Christ, but realized I was rallying people around man and man's cause. And there's nothing more sobering than to realize that you're pursuing God, and realize you're really pursuing man, you're pursuing God's interest and realize you're really pursuing yours. And it's sobering and it's humbling and it's convicting and it's worthy of immediate changes. But
Everything in life is not about you. Everything in life is about him, for all life stems and flows from him.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 18:17
We pronounce a few Christian words over it to make things look Christian, but everything is not about you.
Marriages would leave controversy and trouble when they realized it's not about you. Your marriage isn't about you.
Your kids are not there to serve you. Some of you like, well, I don't think my kids are there to serve me. Yet when they leave the house, you can't let them go, mothers, because you realize that your children have become a substitute for what you lack in your marriage, and you have grown an unhealthy attachment to your child, and you've used them as a substitute for God and for the man you're united to. That's good stuff. And it's unhealthy, and you burden your kids beyond measure because you would rather everybody in your life serve you than ever serve God yourself. We are humanistic, and it's a problem.
And we write sermons to serve people. We read books and pick them out to serve us. We want people to serve us, and don't preach the word, preach the version of the word that makes me feel good enough to survive another 24 hours and then be desperate until I hit Sunday again. I want something that flatters me and entertains me and celebrates me. And when we lift up Christ, when that should draw all men run and flee and find places that serve them and not God. We say we want to worship him, but where God is celebrated, we forsake it. It's a problem in America, and I'm deeply burdened for our people, just as Paul was burdened for his. And it is my proposition today that it is your privilege that has caused you to stumble into selfishness.
Everything is not about your felt needs. This is trigger-inducing for me, I'm preaching to me, I'm not necessarily preaching to you, this one specifically to me.
It's about your self-esteem? No, that is an endless pit that will suck every inch of life out of you. That pursuit will leave you empty, dried up, and completely destitute on the side of the road, longing for true life. It never satisfies. You don't satisfy.
You're not enough.
You don't need self-esteem, you need the knowledge of God.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 21:33
Quite honestly, apart from Christ you should have no self-esteem.
You should have seen yourself little. You are a sinner. You have spit in the face of your Savior with your very life. You are worthy of eternal damnation. God should kill you on the spot. If not for Christ, he would.
God was coming to kill you, but Christ stepped in. P.S., he's God. So in case you want to compartmentalize the triune Godhead and say God's the mean one and Jesus is the sweetie, I came here today to tell you it's all God, and when he snuffed out Sodom and gomorrah with hellfire from the sky, Jesus was in agreement because he's God, and the Holy Spirit was in agreement because he's God.
You aren't all that in a bag of chips. You're a bag empty with a few broken chips that you throw away because you don't want to eat the broken pieces. That's who you are. Welcome to Echo Church, where they call you filthy rats, prostitutes, and broken chips. No, I didn't call you that's what the Bible called you. The problem is we lift the word high, we don't like that, so we then go to the Christian bookstore, make men rich with words who never say that, never save, because we would rather celebrate ourself than worship a God. We don't need self-esteem.
You cannot esteem Christ and yourself greatly.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 23:37
Just pause on that for a second. You can't do it. It's not possible, for it is only him who is great.
Listen, men and, women, people in America, when I say "man," I mean everyone, need God.
We need God. We don't need to become fuller versions of ourself. That's how you become full of yourself, and notice there's a negative connotation to that, right? When someone says they're just full of themself, that's not a positive thing. So why in the church are we trying to become more full of ourselves? Why in the Christian realm are we concerned about ourself? Privilege does that. Now listen, it seems like I'm going on a tangent, but I'm building something here, because in America we are privileged.
Let's pause here for a second. Let's just do this. Some of you have notes on your iPhone, some of you have a pen, some of you are old school and you have a pen, some of you are really old school, and you have a pencil, right, and some paper, and you have a notepad, and I want to just take three minutes, and I think this is an important exercise. This is weird, this may be weird for a sermon. Let's take three or four minutes, and let's write what ways are we privileged today. Just write those down, and it may take you a while, because we're not used to being thankful for anything. Well, just take a few minutes, I'm going to be quiet, take a few minutes and write some things down. I'll hit pause for a second.
Point 3The nature of privilege is living for it
Can I tell you
The nature of privilege? The nature of privilege is that you begin to live for that which you are privileged by.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 25:36
The very privilege you have becomes the thing you pursue. Say wealth. It is amazing, if you're privileged with wealth, how it becomes the thing you set the course of your life by. And so in the midst of receiving privilege from God, we forsake the God that the privilege comes from, and we pursue that which comes from God, forsaking him in the process. And just so you know, it's God who gives it. And listen,
The same sun that shines in the sky melts wax and hardens clay.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 26:32
Why? The same privilege given to one, all right, softens their heart, and hardens their heart. Why? Well, it's because I'm not focusing on this thing, and I'm not trying hard enough, and I've not let go enough, and I've not done this. No. God determines it. The sun is not applied differently. The sun is applied the same, but those who are chosen by him want in one way, they're sensitive and softened to the message of the gospel, and the very privilege they've been given does not harden them to the gospel but softens them to it. And so in very much the same sense today, even in America, like the nation of Israel, we have some that are softened by privilege and some that are hardened, and the privilege that they've been given becomes the thing they pursue, and for one, privilege turns their heart to God, for another it hardens their heart against God. Same privilege. One wealthy man, his heart can be turned to God. One wealthy man, the wealth can rob him from a relationship with God. Why? Because God chooses whom he will soften and whom he will not. And when does he do it? When he shines the sun? No, he does it before the foundations of the earth. Now, that's the way it is. That's what he's talking about, and he's troubled because he sees God hardening some and softening others. The real reality is, not every Jew in Israel has forsaken the Messiah. Many have turned and been softened towards the Messiah.
There's one Jew, one person, one Israelite, one Jew who does not see Jesus as Christ and one who does, and they were both benefactors of the same privilege of seeing him. Same situation, same encounter, different results. And Paul goes through painstaking measures to help you understand this is God's design. That's what he does, and it's all about him and his purposes.
Your heart beats for him, you were given breath for him, you are given strength for him, you are given a mind for him,
Pastor Shawn Gray · 28:57
you were given everything you were given for him, and it is only by living for him that you're ever going to find the purpose and meaning you long for. And even in that, you will not find purpose and meaning if your goal is to find purpose and meaning. It is when you find God that he puts to death your purpose and your meaning, and you begin to only care about his.
In the process of finding what can only be found in him, we often forsake him, and we lose that which we truly long for.
Your goal should be his glory.
God's glory destroys every bit of purpose in your life and helps you understand this: all is not about you at all.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 29:58
Point 4The fundamental problem is that it's all about us
The fundamental problem with American Christianity is it's all about us.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 30:08
There's a pastor quoted in an interview, really large church, and he said, and they interviewed him and asked, "How did you grow this church to the size it is?" And in misunderstanding arrogance, his response was this: "I just give the people what they want." End quote. "It is my job to meet their needs."
Oh man, I could so relate to this response, for it is how we started Echo Church. Here's a quote for me. This is weird, it's weird on a Sunday morning, me quoting myself, but I think it's important, because this, although it sounds glorious, although it sounds spiritual, is empty of purpose and God's destiny for any of our lives, and it is this. If you were to eat breakfast, share, break bread, hang out with me any amount of time, any amount of time over seven years ago, you would hear this: "It is our duty to meet the felt needs of people, and it is God's job to meet their spiritual needs." Sounds good, doesn't it? Sounds fantastic. But then who determines what a need is?
Is it you? Is it me? Shawn, are you saying we don't feed the hungry? It's not what I'm saying. It's not what I'm saying, but that this whole "do what it takes to grow a church," that's not church. Because then what happens when COVID hits?
Were you here? Did you see what happened? Look around you today. Do you see people around you? When our number one goal becomes humanistic, becomes your wants, your desires, your needs, preach to me, what happens when we don't meet them? We forsake one another, we forsake our faith. Our faith, now a faith that doesn't last is not a faith that is spoken of in the Bible.
There are many people who walked away from the faith. I propose to you it was not a faith that was a gift from God, it was a man-contrived, humanistic faith that served its own purposes. What happens when soldiers knock on your door, when all of church is about you being served, for you?
What happens when they're taking lives of people who profess Christ? Do you deny him, or do you die?
If you build a church like this, give the people what they want, you will not have Christianity. You will have a humanistic religion full of people going to hell.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 33:20
Paul is concerned for his people because he peers out and sees a humanistic religion where people are going to hell, and he begins to speak about their privilege, and I believe there is a connection to it, to their stumbling. I believe that in America we have an exalted humanism and a Jesus that has been made a servant to men rather than a man a servant to Christ. The old preachers would say this, and this is not exactly theologically astute, but it is wandering, meanderings, of that's both the same thing, it's meanderings of a preacher sharing his heart, and I will bring correction. They go on, if you just take the quote out, it's going to misappropriate faith and justification and God's work of salvation, but hear the heart behind what he says, without me giving you the greater context where there is correction made. Here's the quote: "You should believe in Jesus and you should repent," although repentance is a gift of the Holy Spirit. He's saying this, it's a crying out of the heart: "You should repent even if he sends you to hell, because he's worthy of repentance regardless of your destination.
He is worthy of faith, and he is worthy of service, though you get nothing from it." Now, for an American who's acquisitionally minded, this is crazy to us. This is just crazy talk. This is crazy, dog. You mean to tell me there's something that we engage in to no benefit of our own? You mean there are decisions that we make, there are paths that we walk that is not about what we get? What in the world is this all about? We don't understand. It's lost on us completely. Why? Because God has sent a famine in the land, not a famine of word, but a famine of hearing the word, because we would rather hear a good Christian writer tell us what they've dug out than dig it out ourself.
We are lazy. We only engage what we can benefit from,
Pastor Shawn Gray · 36:16
and the reality is that the gospel calls us to a cost too great for us to pay. Do you understand this type of Christianity? This is crazy to an American, and it was crazy to an israelite as well, and it very possibly might have been their privilege that robbed them from the glory of the gospel. And Romans 9:1–5, Paul expresses finally there, that was the introduction, and I'm almost done, three minutes to finish this up, leave you some thoughts, then we'll go out. Paul expresses deep anguish over a single truth: most of his Jewish friends and family are living and dying cut off from God, and much like he's burdened, I'm burdened for the church in America.
But this truth is not just a lament, it's problematic. The Jews were given all the privileges of God, including the covenants and the promises, yet they stumbled.
They were given the Messiah in the flesh, and the very Messiah they were given becomes the stumbling block to the nation who God adopted.
It's crazy. It's crazy, by the way, that's in chapter 9, I'm not just making that up. So let's just, let's stop and talk about the privileges, where we see the privileges in here, and how is this beneficial for us. Number one, verse 4, here's one of the privileges. You should write them down, you can read them and write them down, i'm going to help break them and pull them out for you: adoption. Let me just go ahead and say this to you, this is not the same adoption as in chapter 8. This adoption does not mean that the Lord adopted every physical descendant of Abraham for all time into the blessing of eternal salvation. It is a different adoption than we have, it's talked extensively about what this is. Moving on, number two, the glory that's in verse 4. The Apostle refers here to the Lord's special presence with Israel. Let me just pause here for a second. Literally what they would refer to in the Bible as the Shekinah glory of the Lord, whether in whatever form, would actually fall and land in the tent of meeting, the holiest of holies, where the whole nation would begin to see that what God would move by a pillar of fire at night and a cloud by day, and that cloud, whenever it was time to stop, would descend from the heavens and would enter the holiest of holies, and the very presence of God would be able to be seen, kind of like setting and resting in the nation, right in the middle of the nation of Israel, in the tent of meeting, in the holy of holies, and every person out of the million or so that were there, they would look to the middle of the encampment and they would see the very presence of the Lord.
Isn't it amazing that what you see daily becomes common to you?
Pastor Shawn Gray · 39:23
And yet, though they had the privilege of God's very presence with them all the time, it became so common that the very privilege they had caused them to stumble into apathy about it. The covenants.
Romans 9:4, since the Apostle is speaking of the Jewish people, he means the specific covenant given only to the Israelites. The covenants, there were three specific ones: Abrahamic covenant, Mosaic covenant, and the Davidic covenant. Boy, I want to go into that, but that's another whole sermon. All right, you can do some research on that.
But that was a privilege. Another thing in verse 4, the giving of the law. We know what that is, amen. It's the law that was chiseled once by God, the second time by Moses because he broke them. Can you imagine him chiseling, dink, "God, can you hook a brother up? This is taking forever." Don't be an idiot, right? The next one, the worship. The worship.
I want to talk about that, but I don't have time. And the promises, verse 4. Here's a couple more in verse 5. We see the patriarchs, and then the eighth and last blessing is Jesus, who is from Israel according to the flesh. Now, the first seven, number of perfection, and possibly not a coincidence, the first seven point to the eighth. But notice that the first seven privileges caused them to stumble over the eighth. It is crazy. And I understand, and I'm not trying to say we need to inject the American culture and then compare ourselves with the Israelites. I'm not saying that. But there is certainly something that we can learn today, because we are privileged, and this morning,
Let not your privilege become the very thing that causes you to stumble over the Messiah,
Pastor Shawn Gray · 41:47
like the nation of Israel. This morning, because he is your only hope. He's your only hope.
Point 5Privilege pollutes engagement and breeds expectation
And then I'll give you this and I'll close, and they're quick, and it is this: there are three things that I think privileges do. They do way more. Here's three that I feel like I could summarize really quickly for you. Privileges pollute personal engagement. Privileges cause us to translate Scripture wrong, put a humanistic approach to it. For instance, here's the way that many of us interpret the Scripture, Luke 12:48. Things like Luke 12:48, we pollute Scriptures like this. And instead of, here's what Luke 12:48 says: "Everyone to whom much is given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrust much, they will demand more." That's what it says. Here's a humanistic interpretation and the way we function in church as Christians: "Everyone to whom much is given, of him little will be required, and from him to whom they entrust much, they will demand even less." That's the way we live as American Christians, because I've been given much, I won't be held accountable for much. Because privileges pollute personal engagement. The more privileged we are, the less we feel like we have to do. I gave an example to the students because I had the privilege of speaking to them this week. And when your mom comes into your house, very seldom, in your room, very seldom do they ask you to do anything. But what is your response when your mom pops her head into your room and says, "Will you take out the trash?" Does it look something like this? Oh, if it does, what? What?
Oh, I did it. You missed it. But I, oh, right. And then the eyes roll back so far in their head you think they're possessed. Why? Why do they do that? Because when you're privileged to not have to carry weight at home, your privilege pollutes personal engagement in the home you live in, and you don't think you should have to do anything. You can apply that to your life how you please.
Privilege breeds expectation,
Pastor Shawn Gray · 44:34
and it's a problem. And I think you could apply this to the nation of Israel, I'm not just speaking out here in space, throwing spaghetti against the wall. When his presence was there with them, they became so common with God's presence they missed his presence when he came as Christ, and they expected him to do what they wanted him to do. So when he showed up not doing what they expected, they denied him as the god they had contrived in their own mind. "You will deliver our people." He came to deliver the people, but he did not come the way they were intending. Why? Because their privilege had gained some expectation, that they expected him to function a certain way, and when he didn't, they missed him. Is this like America?
Because many of us come to church and we expect God to move a certain way, and when he doesn't, we miss him. I propose to you that every day of our life we are missing him, possibly because of our privilege, and our privilege has caused us to expect him to do something he never intends to do in the first place.
Don't let your privilege be your stumbling block. May our privilege soften us, where we see the Messiah rather than harden us and we miss him. Privilege causes amnesia. Nothing more annoying to me than when someone has convenient amnesia. That's what I call it's convenient amnesia. When they do something wrong, you call them on it, and they forget that they did it. Why do they do that? Because their perspective of them is so glorified and high they can't even see that they're a sinner in need of a Savior. It causes us, privilege oftentimes can cause us to forget the God who sent it.
We get amnesia of the one who sent life, and we miss him in the process. Listen, today I pray that this nation, what is a nation but a group of individual people, that we would turn our hearts to Christ. Oh, and it is not done by human will or effort. We have learned extensively that this is a gift of God, that no man would boast. But God, please open the eyes of your children, that all men might be saved. So what do we do here, Shawn? What is the course of action for us? How do we get to a place where we don't allow our privilege to become a stumbling block? Well, I would start every day with a phrase similar to this: this is not about me. And I would not substitute anything for God's word. Some of you today have not been changed. You are lukewarm because you have not been affected by the sun. Some of you have not sat under the word of God long enough for it to even affect you, either by softening you or hardening you. Rather, you have substituted the word of God for the words of men, and you have made a mockery of the cross in your pursuit of you.
And although we have much to be ashamed of, and although we have created idols of ourself to worship, God is merciful.
He's merciful in spite of you. He's never merciful because of you. He's always merciful in spite of you.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 49:24
Don't get amnesia because of your privilege of who God is and what he's done. Now, I'm going to do this, and I didn't ask Dan to do this, but I thought it would be great. I like this song. I thought it'd be a good way for us to end it. And so where we're going to do this, if you said okay, come on up here, we're going to sing that third song. You sang something about mercy and us being terrible, yeah, so something like that, right? But I love it, because less of us, more of him. It's beautiful. It's beautiful, and I think it's a perfect way to close it. So what we'll do, I'm going to get off here, he's going to sing this song, we're going to worship, we're going to contemplate how has privilege either softened us or hardened us to Christ, and we're going to let God deal with our hearts, and at the conclusion of this song you are dismissed. You are dismissed.
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