In Canada, Nov 11 is Remembrance Day. We all wear poppies in our lapels to honour our war dead. It is a particularly moving experience these days, especially as our nation is now at war in Afghanistan. Though our casualties are very light compared to the World Wars, the loss of young men to their families and our nation is still tragic.
Our messages this Sunday brought us once again to the book of Romans. I took both morning and afternoon services to advance a bit in our study.
The morning message was from Rm 1.3, The Gospel of the King. The proposition for the message was: "The coming of Jesus Christ to earth brings forward the royal man who fulfills every longing of creation ruined by sin." Mankind, fallen, broken, and insecure looks for the leadership of strong men, heroes, in order to provide peace and security. Every human king fails, but in Christ we have the one King who will not fail. Our passage tells us how the eternal Son became of the seed of David, as far as his human nature is concerned, in order to provide himself for us as the ideal champion all men are really looking for.
In the afternoon, we looked at Rm 1.4, The Gospel of the Resurrection. Proposition: "The resurrection marks out this one man as the only man able to provide dead men their one and only escape from the grave." In v. 4, we see that our Lord is not merely our royal Hero-Messiah, not merely the Hero-King of the seed of David, but he is, as to his divine nature, ‘Son of God in power’, and that power is especially the power to cause certain men to live forever. Our Lord is declared to be such by the resurrection out of the dead, the first among many brethren. He leads the way and he provides the life.
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What a mighty God we serve. Our focus in these beginning weeks of Romans has been ‘the gospel of God.’ Words cannot extol our Lord enough as we consider these powerful themes.
Regards
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3
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