After the Message | Special Message

Thank you for joining us for After the Message.

To learn more about Celebration Church here in Orlando, you can follow us on social media under the handle at CelebrationORL or visit our website at celebrationorl.org.

What is up, everybody, and welcome to another edition of After the Message.

If you are stumbling along this podcast, you are on the Celebration Church Orlando podcast.

And this is a segment we like to call After the Message.

And it's just simply a conversation from the previous Sunday sermon.

My name's Nate, uh, and I get the pleasure of serving on staff at Celebration Church Orlando, and I also get to lead this incredible podcast after the message as well.

Um, for those of you in the uh Orlando area, hope everyone is doing well uh and they're safe.

Uh Hurricane Ian has just made its presence felt through our area over the past 24 hours.

And things are settling down here, um, but there are many still without power and uh definitely some needs that will need to be met.

So uh I'm sure our church, uh in fact, I know our church is is here, and uh we are gonna see uh what part we can play in uh kind of the relief efforts.

Uh unfortunately, Ian has also kind of affected uh the podcast in a sense where we were having a special guest come on this week and there were some scheduling conflicts, and then uh our attention kind of diverted to the storm over the past couple of days, and so that did not happen, but I did want to jump on here.

Um, and I know we talk about, you know, even on Sundays, hey, make sure you tune in to After the Message.

New episode dropping on Thursdays, so definitely wanted to honor that and just spend a a couple moments with you all, although this is uh a non-conventional uh episode, I guess, if you will.

Hopefully, we'll have um our special guest on uh here in the coming weeks.

Um but definitely looking forward to uh a more our more traditional uh style of episode with myself and another guest next week.

Um but on Sunday we uh continued on in our series called Good Grace, and we looked at Romans chapter five and the Apostle Paul continuing his argument in the book of Romans, and again, kind of like I mentioned on Sunday, I think a great place to start for somebody who maybe hasn't uh read much of the Bible um or any of uh the New Testament or Paul's letters.

Uh Romans is robust and Romans is thick, but I think uh sometimes we don't give people the benefit of the doubt.

And we also don't remember for whatever reason that when we read scripture, if we do it with the Holy Spirit, there's there's a whole that's a whole nother tool that is available to us.

So don't be intimidated by the fact that this is a a rich book or very robust and systematic, and you know, theologians spend their entire lives going through the don't don't be intimidated by that, okay?

Read God's word, read scripture, and do it with the Holy Spirit and and watch what happens.

And the great thing is you don't have to read it in a day, you don't have to read it in a week, um, and you can read it several times over the course of your life, and I think you know that's the beauty of of the scriptures is it's actually not meant to be just read through like you would a novel.

Um even if you are a reader, I'm sure you've picked up a book that you've read multiple times and and you continue to read that same book throughout your lifetime.

So obviously the Bible is not just something you read once and you have it figured out.

Um so but kind of tracing this all the way this tangent back is read Romans, don't be intimidated by it.

Uh I think obviously with the all the extra resources that we have available to us um and the translations that we have available to us now, having it on our phones.

I mean, come on, the Bible app, amazing, right?

I use it all the time.

Uh, but all the translations that you can use on that, just read it and read it with God and watch what happens.

What watch your mind start to be transformed.

And I I think the good thing is sometimes we get sometimes we get a little bit scared of the questions.

However, the questions are the things that lead us to the answers, right?

So if we're not willing to confront the questions, we won't get the answers, right?

So continue to read it uh and then continue to to explore some extra biblical um content in order to support what you're reading.

Now, I say all that to say it is like anything else in 21st century, it's inundated with content.

There are so many different voices, so many different platforms and things that you can read alongside of the Bible.

So I would caution you to perhaps be selective.

And you may go, well, Nate, how in the world am I supposed to know that?

I'm just starting to figure this out.

So I think reading a couple different versions of the Bible in the Bible app and comparing those, that's one way to do it.

Um, another way to do it, I think you know, a resource that we definitely back here at Celebration Church is Bible Project.

Phenomenal.

Um you can go on YouTube, you can go on Bibleproject.org.com.

Anyways, Google Bible Project, you'll be able to find it.

And they have a couple great videos on Romans, and so things like that, and again, if you have any questions about particular ones, like hey, should I read this one, should I not?

Um, reach out to us.

We'd be happy to help you along in that journey.

Um, so those are a couple things, right?

Don't be afraid to read it.

Use some resources that are available to you, and talk to people maybe who have maybe people in your circles or in our church, or maybe you're not in Orlando, but in your church that you trust that um can help point you in the right direction there.

Uh but something I didn't really get a chance to to speak to on Sunday was this idea of Paul's audience.

And Pastor Keith briefly touched on it in in week one, but the Apostle Paul here is writing to both the Jews and the Gentiles, and this new community of believers that has surfaced uh because of the good news of the gospel, because of the death, burial, resurrection of Jesus that is just totally um has just totally transformed everything, right?

And so the church emerges and obviously um the apostles go out and start telling the Jews about Jesus, and they also start telling the Gentiles, the Greeks, those outside of the Jewish faith about Jesus as well.

And we gotta remember too that there's other what you would call God fearers or or people who who knew about the Hebrew God, who who were familiar, who decided to make um Yahweh their God.

Uh and that's all the way back in the Old Testament, you'll see a couple instances of that.

But there are what we would call God fearers um in this time as well.

But anyways, that it becomes more uh established when the church is established.

And so what we have to remember is it's difficult it's difficult to to kind of write to both.

And it's actually an art form to be able to write to different audiences within the same vein.

So, you know, Paul's writing one letter here to both audiences, trying to answer questions that he knows both parties would have based on their um differing backgrounds.

So one thing that I think he is addressing here in this letter to um the Jews specifically is the fact that their justification or their right standing with God um is not just based off the fact that they are um Israelites, right?

So a lot of times we look at these passages and go, God uh Paul's telling us about how works don't get us to salvation.

And yes, I I think that's true, but I don't think I think the other side of that coin is Paul is specifically when he's talking to the Jews, he's letting them know, hey, just because you are an Israelite, just because you are uh a descendant, doesn't necessarily mean that you're in right standing.

It there's more to that.

It's actually faith in Christ.

And he makes kind of this argument in chapter four of Romans where he talks about Abraham and goes, Abraham was not a Jew.

Technically, he's you know, Abraham um from Ur the Chaldees, he's he's the father of the nation, but until there's a nation, it can't be named a nation.

Are you tracking with me kind of here?

So he's he's basically saying, but his faith is what was counted him as righteousness, and so therefore it's it's the same for the Jew here.

He's letting them know, like, hey, it's it's faith, uh, not that not just the fact that you were born into this lineage that sets you right with God.

It's your faith, and that faith is in the finished work of Jesus Christ.

I think that's still applicable for us today in the sense that I know for me I grew up in a Christian home, and I just kind of took for granted what I had, and I could almost feel um I could almost feel like because I was born in a Christian home in a quote unquote Christian nation, uh I could almost feel entitled to God, right?

I could almost feel like um my faith was passed down because of my lineage when in reality m my faith is not um inherited like sin is inherited, which is what we talked about on Sunday.

My my faith is something that um that is a a an individual thing, and yes, it can be fostered and cultivated and should be cultivated in the context of community, especially family.

Um but um it is not my family, it is not my lineage, it is not my Christian heritage that gives me right standing with God.

Um it's it's my faith in the work, finished work of Jesus Christ.

So something I didn't necessarily get to touch on uh Sunday, but I thought it was kind of important, and it's just a a reminder to us that um that we are not we are not entitled uh to God's saving grace.

However, um he is so gracious and good uh to extend it to us and it's through our faith in that that we can have right standing with him.

So uh just a quick quick little extra there that we didn't get to touch on Sunday.

Um be sure to tune in next week, guys.

Uh we'll be back on track.

We'll have our uh traditional format of after the message and looking forward to continuing on in this series.

Grace to you.

And if you're in the Orlando area, we'd love to have you come hang with us on a Sunday at uh the Orlando Museum of Art.

We're there at 9 a.m.

and uh we have a service at 1030 a.m.

as well.

So feel free to stop by.

Um we love you guys, and we will talk to you next week.

Thank you for joining us for After the Message.

To learn more about Celebration Church here in Orlando, you can follow us on social media under the handle at Celebration ORL or visit our website at celebrationorl.org.