Romans 10:5-21
We see the divisiveness in the human family. From my experience I would say that we have few families that are not divided and at odds with each other. I have seen where a brother or sister was so angry that they would not speak to other family members. It is hard for our human family to overcome jealousy, greed and anger. We just want things to come to our way of thinking and everything that we think be accepted as right. Much of the divorce problem grows out of people having little respect or concern for their spouse.
Our nation has been divided over many issues. One of the issues was about slavery and it ended in a blood bath of a civil war. Today we have some deep divisions in our nation. We have groups that want to tear apart the Declaration of Independence that gives to all Americans equal freedoms. The special interest groups want to take over and tell us what we can say, how much we can have and what we can do with our life. I would hate to see what these people would to Bob Hope, Jack Benny and Red Skeleton. All forms of socialism have produced pain and suffering for the mass that lives under the power of the few. We have no unity in that raw angry world of socialism
The Christian church could be a source for unity for us. The truth is that the cheap grace that is being preached and lived out is the source of divisions in the family and nation. The Christian church is trying to operate on the human plan. That is the source of our division. We have all kinds of division in our churches over race, gender and cultural groupings. The cheap grace of today does not offer God’s plan for us to live in unity. God’s plan is for all races, genders and culture groupings. Cheap grace does not offer a solution to sin and evil. The humanism in our churches today is about believing anything a group decides. Then these groups use political clout to say to the rest of us that we must accept their thinking, even if it goes against Jewish and Christian living for the last five thousand years. These people think they are so smart that God’s plan for us is outdated.
God’s salvation plan is the only plan that can, and will, end the divisions in families, government and church. In the tenth chapter of Romans Paul gives us God’s plan that brings unity into real life. “For Moses writes that the law’s way of making a person right with God requires obedience to all of its commands. The truth is Jesus did not come to destroy the law. But faith’s way of getting right with God says, ‘Don’t say in you heart, ‘Who will go up to heaven?’ (to bring Christ down to earth). And don’t say, ‘Who will go down to the place of the dead?’ (to bring Christ back to life again).’ In fact it says, The message is very close at hand: it is on our lips and in our heart.”
And the message is the very message about faith that we preach. “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by confessing with your mouth that you are saved.” As the Scriptures tell us, “‘Anyone who trusts in him will never be disgraced. Jew and Gentile are the same in this respect. They have the same Lord, who gives generously to all who call on him. For Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
This is God’s plan of salvation that brings us under the unity of His grace. We have that grace in us when we repent of our sin and by faith confess Jesus as Lord. It is in this faith that if the Scriptures name something as sin and evil it is so. Even when Bishops and Elders say the Bible is wrong. The unity comes out of faith in God’s plan for salvation. His plan of salvation will never change. God’s love will never change and God’s judgement will never change. Many people in America have rejected God’s judgment.
How can God’s plan be spread to end all the broken lives living by the ideas and concepts of the world? This message comes from us that have confessed our faith in the living Christ and now have repented and live in unity with God by His free gift of grace. Paul tells us in Romans that salvation and God’s grace gives us unity with Him. This plan of salvation includes all races, genders and cultural groupings.
But how can they call on him to save them unless they believe in him? And how can they believe in him if they have never heard about him? And how can they hear about him unless someone tells them? And how will anyone go and tell them without being sent? That is why the Scriptures say, “How beautiful are the feet of messengers who bring good news!” The messengers are called and sent with the Good News if they have faith in Jesus Christ. These all the real questions for us and our churches.
But not everyone welcomes the Good News, for Isaiah the prophet said, “Lord, who has believed our message?” So faith comes from hearing, that is, hearing the Good News about Christ. But I ask, have the people of Israel actually heard the message? Yes, they have. “The message has gone throughout the earth, and the words to all the world.”
We make the choice between division in the human plans or we make the decision of unity that is found in God’s plan in the Scriptures. God’s plan never accepts evil and sin as written in the His Scripture. His plan for unity starts when we repent of those sins and accept by faith that God’s plan is the plan that brings unity and wholeness and happiness.
