Bible Text: Deuteronomy 4:33-40; Romans 1:1-7 | Pastor: Pastor Jason Bryant |             As I was cooking dinner for my family last night, I was filled with a profound sense of gratitude for the gifts God shared with me.  In a similar way as us all, I’ve been blessed with certain strengths, you have too.  Now mine may not be yours and vice-versa and while that awareness may vex us on occasions (God did not gift me, for example, with a 100-mile per hour fast ball though I wished he would’ve) the fact of the matter is that, at the end of the day, I hope we’re all grateful for the raw materials God provided us with.

            And while strengths are wonderful things, there’s also the flip-side, isn’t there?  I don’t know how it is for you, but it seems to me like for every gift God’s given me, I’ve got an equivalent weakness somewhere else.

            Take for example something that happened back when I was a pastor in Mount Holly.  Every year, the city of Mount Holly holds a spring festival.  Packs out Main street with vendors and events.  Well, I thought it’d be a good idea to rent some bounce houses for the kids that came.   We arranged the money and were looking forward to hosting a fun kid’s event.

            Then, I got a call quite out of the blue from the event’s leader.  In a very curt tone, the leader told me that she’d heard we were having bounce houses and she was calling to let me know that we couldn’t do that.

            Can’t put bouncy houses up on the front lawn of a church? I inquired.

            She explained, the festival had already contracted with someone to do bounce houses, only they were to be paid for.  Ours were going to be free.  For that reason, she couldn’t let me do it.

            Well, that just didn’t sit right with me.  After all, who is going to tell me what a church can, and cannot do, on its’ own front lawn?

            That’s when the leader informed me that if I didn’t comply, the fire marshal would simply declare our bounce houses unsafe. We’d be out the money and unable to host the event.  A double loss.  One that I considered a real possibility since her husband was the chief of the fire department in the city at the time. 

            Now look y’all, I gotta tell you, I was FIT TO BE TIED.  Part of me wanted to go to war with the organizers of Springfest and the entire town of Mount Holly for that matter if I didn’t get my way.

            Thankfully, an Elder of that church intervened.  She fashioned a solution that met everyone’s needs.  My wife observed at the time that she thought that I’d really made a mountain out of a molehill.  Then she said something deeply true – it’s almost as if being told NOT to do something gets you fired up to do it.

            Ouch – the truth hurts.

            Sometimes I confess that, being told what to do, makes me uncomfortable.  IN fact, it quite oftentimes has the effect of making me want to do the very opposite thing.  IT’s just my nature, unfortunately.  But as I read the pages of Scripture and interact with other people on this third rock from the sun, I can’t help but realize something – we’re all natural born rebels. 

            And while rebelling against potential governmental overreach MAY have some benefits, rebelling against God definitely DOES NOT. 

            Thankfully, God in Christ provides a solution.  Paul is going to mention it in our reading today from Romans.  I read to you now from Romans 1, verses 1 through 7.  Hear now the Word of our Lord:

“Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

            I continue our sermon series on Romans this week.  Just for those who are interested, I’ll take a break from this series towards the end of the month as we get towards Thanksgiving.  I’ll return to it after the Christmas season.