Romans 1:16: Thankfully, I am not ashamed of the Gospel.

Presented to TSA Alberni Valley Ministries on Thanksgiving Sunday, 12 October 2024, by Major Michael Ramsay

Click here to view the original, presented to the Swift Current Corps of The Salvation Army, 05 July 2009, by Captain Michael Ramsay: https://sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2009/07/romans-116-i-am-not-ashamed-of-gospel.html 

Click here to read a 11 May 2014 version presented to Swift Current TSA that was based on 1 Corinthians: http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.ca/2014/05/1-corinthians-117-25-romans-1-and.html 

Click here to read an abridged version presented to Warehouse 614 at River St in Toronto, 14 January 2017: https://sheepspeaks.blogspot.ca/2018/01/romans-112-17-i-am-not-ashamed-of-gospel.html

Click here to read (and/or order) a copy of "Salvogesis' Guidebook to Romans Road" by Major Michael Ramsay: https://www.facebook.com/RomansGuideBook or http://www.sheepspeak.com/ebooks.htm 

We are continuing our look at Romans this week. Has anyone had a chance to read any of Romans? Don’t worry if you haven’t. You have lots of time (I think): we are still on Chapter 1.

 

Romans 1:16 states, in part: For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes.

 

Today is Thanksgiving Sunday. Tomorrow, on Thanksgiving Monday, we will have a community meal at the Bread of Life. I love the community celebrations across this country on special days.

 

I remember one community celebration, one Canada Day, when Rebecca was just 2 years old, we went to an event at Fort Rodd Hill in Victoria. They had a lot of things to see and do. We saw people dressed in historic costumes. There were mascots dressed like animals walking around: great for kids, right? There was even one person who was dressed as a tree, giving balloons to children while telling them about the environment. The tree came up to us to say hi and as he leaned over my daughter offering a balloon, he asked her, “Do you like trees?” to which she replied as sweet as can be, “Not trees that talk and walk.”

 

Young children are great for speaking their minds. They are not ashamed to say what they mean. Paul is referring to this in the passage we are looking at here, Romans 1:16: “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes…”

 

The word gospel is a translation of the Greek word euangelion, which literally means “good news” or “good message.” The word ‘evangelism’ comes from this word ‘euangelion’. In its most basic form, gospel is good news. And what is this good news? This good news is that we can be saved from death. Body and Soul, we  can be raised from the dead to eternal life and even more than that: the gospel is the totality of the Christian message. By the power of God we can begin a new life today! This is good news and we should definitely not be ashamed of this good news! But sometimes, sadly, some of us are.

 

Friends of mine have gone down to Florida this week with The Salvation Army to help with the Hurricane Milton relief. I had the opportunity back in September 2008 to be deployed to Galveston Island in Texas as part of The Salvation Army team after Hurricane Ike stuck: assisting survivors and emergency personnel with emotional and spiritual care. Thankfully, more than 1 million people were saved from that hurricane and flood that followed as they obeyed the evacuation order. But some refused to evacuate. No one needed to die but some refused the chance of salvation. Sadly, around 100 people were found dead as a direct result of the hurricane. Bodies were still being found while I was there. I spoke with people whose family members had refused the offered salvation from the storm and suffered the consequences.

 

Homes were destroyed. Businesses were destroyed. The sewers, the water, and the phones were still not working when we arrived. People were housed in shelters both on and away from Galveston Island. Many still had no place to go. Power was still out in some areas. So even families who did not lose their stoves and refrigerators in the hurricane and the subsequent flood – and most did – were unable to keep or cook any food. On top of this, most didn’t have food and they didn’t have water. Many refrigerators were destroyed and lying on the side of the road to be picked up later as junk.

 

Food and water are a big part of the temporal salvation the Lord provided through The Salvation Army then and there. Here and now, today at the Bread of Life Centre we serve around 700 meals a day to people in need. There, then, we had about 30 food trucks from which we helped to serve approximately 75 000 hot meals every day and gave people water and ice. Ice is very important. The temperature was around 90 degrees Fahrenheit. And the food: many people told me that without The Salvation Army they would not have eaten at all. They would not have survived. We thank the Lord for the service He provided to the community through many people. We prayed for them. We prayed with them. Our work there was very much His work through us. We were able to be a part of people’s salvation from the storm and its effects and more.

 

And that was not the end of our efforts. We were also able to celebrate with people as they committed their lives to the Lord so that they could experience His Salvation forever as well as for now. We were not ashamed of the gospel: we shared the good news and some people grabbed hold of it.

 

In our own daily lives, do we point people to that eternal Salvation or are we ashamed of the gospel? Jesus tells us that if we deny Him before others, He will deny us before God (Matthew 10:33). That sounds fair. Are we bold for the gospel (Philippians 1)? As our friends or colleagues speak about life, do we tell them what we have heard from God and what we have read in the Bible? When someone shares their struggles with us, do we share with them the strength to persevere that Jesus Christ offers? If we feel that God is prompting us to “lead someone to Christ,” do we?

 

There is even more than this: Salvation is about the future and the future begins in the present. The Salvation Army here: we run the soup kitchen and the Shelter at the Bread of Life Centre. Salvation is this: imagine you have a friend living on the street. He is very poor and suffering from various illnesses, struggles, and the most painful of lives, thinking he is alone. Now imagine that you know his father. Imagine you know that his father wants your friend to come home and live with him because his father is very well off and in his father’s house there are many rooms (John 14:2). Imagine you also know his father’s first-born son. Imagine that, knowing his homeless brother is sick and dying, he told you to invite his brother home. Imagine you don’t share this information because you are ashamed. Imagine that every time you see your friend it becomes more and more difficult to share the good news of his father who loves him because you are too embarrassed to admit you have not told him sooner. Imagine he suffers and dies and you didn’t tell him at every opportunity that he could turn to his father and live out the rest of his days in peace and comfort.

 

If that happens, what kind of friend are you? What kind of a friend am I?

 

Please understand me. I am not saying that as you come to know your Heavenly Father you will never suffer loss, tragedy, sadness, or the consequences of your own or someone else’s actions. I am not saying that God offers you a magic potion that makes all the challenges of life disappear. He doesn’t. What He offers you is the opportunity to shelter with Him in the midst of life’s challenges. He will provide for you in your time of need. He offers to be with you in the midst of the reality of life. He offers you the opportunity to be a part of His love forever, to be a part of His future kingdom too where there will be no more tears, no more suffering. This is really something for us to be thankful for on Thanksgiving Sunday here.

 

This is reality: when Christ returns His coming will be like a thief in the night (Matthew 24:42−44). The time and the hour are unknown (Matthew 25:1−13) but we know it is coming and He is coming to judge the living and the dead (Acts 10:42, 2 Timothy 4:1, 1 Peter 4:5). And we have the opportunity to flee the storm forever and go off to eternal peace instead (Matthew 8:12, 13:42, 13:50, 22:13, 24:51, 25:30; Luke 13:28). To know this is good news. As when the hurricane struck Galveston Island, even though 100 people chose to stay behind and perished; even though we met with, spoke with, and prayed with people whose family members chose to reject salvation from the hurricane: everyone had known the storm was coming; everyone could have been saved. And thousands were. That is the good news. We can all be saved.

 

Can you imagine news reporters being so ashamed of the fact the hurricane was coming that they didn’t share the information? Can you imagine meteorologists being so ashamed of the fact that they did not know the exact time and hour the hurricane was going to strike that they told nobody? Can you if imagine your neighbour knew the hurricane was coming and she evacuated but she never told you because she was ashamed that she couldn’t explain exactly why, where, how, and when it was coming? Can you imagine the horror as you look up to see your life being swept away – and no one had ever told you how to be saved because they were ashamed?

 

An eschatological hurricane is coming. Indeed, it has already started. People in this world today are sleeping in their beds, working, playing on their phones, watching a game, doing something else right now and have no idea that the end is coming. People are like the homeless man of our earlier analogy and living their lives away from their Heavenly Father when He wants nothing more than to have them safely at His side. People are out there needing and even wanting us to point them to salvation. So, let’s do that!

 

Today let us be the rescue workers pointing people to safety. None of us knows when our lives are going to end. We may be taken tomorrow. None of us knows when the Lord is returning and bringing with Him the end to our world. But, like the meteorologists watching the storm, we know that the things of this world are going to pass away (Matthew 24:35, Mark 13:31, Luke 21:33, Revelation 21:1) – and we can see that the eschatological rain has started -  so it is our job to share with everyone the good news of the way to Salvation so that others need not perish – and we can take shelter with the Lord from the storms of our very lives today. And it is our responsibility to share this gospel, for the gospel is the power of God for all to be saved both now and forever.

 

On this Thanksgiving Sunday, let us thank God for this, His most precious gift: the gift of His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him will not perish but have ever lasting life and let us look for opportunities to share that good news with others we meet.

 

Let us pray.

Romans 1:20: The Reconciliation of Creation (and more!)

Presented to Alberni Valley Ministries 05 October 2024 and the Nipawin Corps, 07 June 2009, by Major Michael Ramsay

  

This is the 2024 BC Version. To view the 2009 Saskatchewan edition, click here: https://sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2009/06/appeal-of-creation-genesis-1-romans-1.html

   

We just completed a few months of looking at the book of Mark. Did everyone have an opportunity to read it on their own? Susan thought that Romans would be a good next book to look at and as I have written a book on Romans for The Salvation Army I was inclined to agree. (You can read the book here: http://www.sheepspeak.com/ebooks.htm )

 

So this week I get to welcome you to our first stop on this journey through Romans. This is an exciting stop as we can see both Romans 1 and Genesis 1 from this vantage point. Romans 1:20:

 

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities − his eternal power and divine nature − have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

 

This reminds me of a time when my wife Susan and I served as Officers in Nipawin, Saskatchewan. After a day of dealing with another vandalized window at the ministry centre, packing boxes for move day, and writing sermons, we decided to take a short walk in God’s creation. We were depressed, stressed and then… It was amazing. As we walked, our spirits immediately lifted. We strolled around the trees in some of the small forests there. This very beautiful part of the country reminds me in many ways of where I grew up. The trees are not nearly as big nor the forest as thick, but t is quite beautiful.

 

When I was a young adult my friend Dan and I went hiking almost every weekend. I lived in Victoria. He would pick me up after I finished work on Friday nights and we would drive up island as far as we could go, finding new areas to explore. It was a lot of fun. One often experiences the power of God in these times.

 

Stepping out into the wilderness can be like peeling an orange. Much of our life, it seems, has become a peel hiding the beautiful fruit of the Lord’s creation. Our cities and towns have added ever so many layers over God’s creation.

 

We have our warm houses and our heated cars – Susan’s car even has heated seats that Heather likes to turn on! – our paved streets, telephone lines and other wires obscuring the view or more and more being buried beneath the ground; and on the prairies there are ATVs, snowmobiles, and some fancy farm machinery that make life easier but also changes the simpler ways we would otherwise work and play. In our society today we also have the imaginary worlds of television, video games, social media, the Internet, and other entertainment avenues adding a further peel of distance from the realities of God’s creation.

 

Social barriers obscure God’s creation as well. Our education systems let us think that we have solved most of the world’s mysteries all on our own. Our political system leads us to believe that we have absolute control over our own destiny and that we should actually do as we see fit in our own eyes (cf. the sin of Judges, 21:25). We seem to believe western democracy’s line that the majority is right the majority of the time. As we move further and further away from God’s creation physically, spiritually, emotionally, intellectually, and practically, we are enticed more and more to believe the old serpent’s lie that as humankind evolves our “eyes will be opened, and we will be like God” (Genesis 3:5). Stepping out into God’s creation removes the peels from society and allows us to taste the fruit of the Lord (Psalm 34:8). If we don’t do this from time to time, we can fall into the trap described in Romans 1: 18−23 of ignoring and suppressing the obvious truth of God:

 

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities— his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

 

Acclaimed to be wise, Sigmund Freud – the father of modern psychology– actually believed that society had progressed beyond God. He hoped that civilization would quickly progress even further and move beyond its “illusion” of religion the same way one should outgrow a “childhood neurosis.” Freud had faith that eventually humankind would indeed do this. He thought that “nothing can withstand reason and experience and the contradiction that religion offers to both is all too palpable” [1].

 

Moving beyond the ‘illusion’ of God and religion, for Freud, “would be an important advance along the road which leads to being reconciled to the burden of civilization” (P. 41). Freud was not alone in denying the existence of God. Our society seems to want to progress beyond God’s creation -- as if that were possible.

 

Karl Marx says of religion, “Man . . . looked for a superman in the fantastic reality of heaven and found nothing but the reflection of himself.” [2] He says religion is the “opium of the people” and “the abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness” (P. 42).

 

Marx, Freud, and many others who have had a profound influence on the world even into the 21st century seem to have chosen to reject God. Even though, as Romans 1:20 states, “… since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities − his eternal power and divine nature − have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made…”

 

God loves us so much that He made it obvious through this life and all He created that He is God; all we have to do is peel back the artificial barriers we create in life, taste the fruit of Jesus Christ and see that He is good. As important as the peels are and as beneficial as many of our modern manmade developments are, it is just as important to take the time to actually see and taste God’s creation and know how good He is (Psalm 34:8).

 

We read the creation account in Genesis 1, which reminds me of a love letter of sorts akin to the Song of Solomon. Look at how poetically the creation story is related to us in Genesis 1.

·       First, on Day 1, our Heavenly Father creates light and day and night and then,

·       on Day 4, three days later, after creating this environment, He lovingly creates the sun and the moon and the stars to be placed within that light (Gen 1:13-19).

·       Next, on Day 2, our loving creator makes the water and the sky and, three days later,

·       on Day 5, He makes sea creatures to be placed in this sea. Next, He makes birds to soar into the skies God made for them (1:4−8, 20−23).

·       On Day 3, our Heavenly Father gathers together the waters to create dry land.

·       On Day 6, He creates plants and animals to be placed on this land that He made for them. God then creates man and woman in His own image (Genesis 1:9−13, 26−7), blesses them and graciously assigns them the job of filling the earth and taking care of it (Gen 1:28−31). The Lord loves His creation: it is good, and He loves us too.

 

It is obvious that God loves us but – too bad – the story of creation and of Adam and Eve doesn’t end here. As we know, Adam (the first man) disobeyed God and he − instead of taking responsibility for his actions ̶ blamed the woman, Eve, and even God.

 

When confronted with his sin Adam said to God, Genesis 3:12, “The woman you put here with me – she gave me some fruit from the tree and I ate it.” And lest we think the woman was any better than Adam, she responded, in Genesis 3:13, that “the serpent deceived me, and I ate”. This was The Fall. With humankind’s sin, we separated ourselves from God’s creation and from God.

 

Now God, of course, had a remedy for this. He really does desire that all the people of the earth be blessed as He blessed Adam and Eve. Genesis 12:1−3 promises that all the nations of the earth will be blessed through Abraham. And God is faithful to that promise. God sends His only begotten son to die and rise again on the third day, so that we might live and so that we might be reconciled to God and His creation.

 

So the, as we go about our lives, let us take a moment away from our busyness; let us walk outside, and as we walk let us take in the abundant beauty that demonstrates God’s love for us. Let us peel back all that blocks the view of our hearts; let us notice each other, our family, our friends, our animals, our gardens, our plants, and all His creation. Let us notice the sun today and the stars tonight. Let us notice all of this around us; then let us bow our heads and lift our voices in praise of our God because He loved us so much that He sent Jesus Christ, His only begotten son, so that all barriers to salvation would be removed. Now we can be fully reconciled to Him.

 

Monday was Orange Shirt Day, Truth and Reconciliation Day. Many of us from TSA walked along with the crowds to Tseshaht First Nation where we were invited to join in a meal and entertainment as a step towards reconciliation with our brothers and sisters here. As we stroll down the road of Romans through Bible Study a little further in the next few weeks and months, we will consider the eternal reconciliation up ahead at Romans 3:23 and elsewhere. For today. I encourage us all to step outside into the Lord’s glorious creation and thank Him so much for that reconciliation with Him, each other, and all of creation that He offers to us all through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.

 

Let us pray.

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