Song of Solomon 7:10
I am my beloved’s, and His desire is toward me.

GLORIFY GOD TOGETHER
ROMANS 15:7-13

Therefore receive one another, just as Christ also received us, to the glory of God. ⁸Now I say that Jesus Christ has become a servant to the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made to the fathers, ⁹and that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy, as it is written: “For this reason I will confess to You among the Gentiles, And sing to Your name.” ¹⁰And again he says: “Rejoice, O Gentiles, with His people!” ¹¹And again: “Praise the LORD, all you Gentiles! Laud Him, all you peoples!” ¹²And again, Isaiah says: “There shall be a root of Jesse; And He who shall rise to reign over the Gentiles, In Him the Gentiles shall hope.” ¹³ Now may the God of Hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Vs. 7 Therefore receive one another, just as Christ also received us, to the glory of God. Continuing on with the messages of verses 5 and 6 Paul is telling both the strong and the weak to receive one another in confidence and genuine love. This is absolutely necessary, because of what our experience is, Christ also received us therefore we should make it our business to receive one another. Is it possible that we who deserve to spend an eternity in hell because of our former lives and have been adopted into God’s family by means of the new birth; is it possible that we can refuse to fellowship with and love any one Christ died for? No! Thanksgiving and praise should break out in our hearts and mind knowing that we have been given the opportunity to do something to the glory of God. 

Vs. 8-9 Now I say that Jesus Christ has become a servant to the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made to the fathers, Paul writes to the Roman Church that Jesus Christ has become a servant to the circumcision for the truth of God, diakonos servant, minister to the circumcision peritome the mail Jews generally. Christ is speaking in Matthew 15:24 I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Our incarnate Lord on His becoming man was born in Bethlehem of Judah and sent to preach to the Jews that had the sign and seal of the covenant made with Abraham and had scribes that wrote and rewrote the Old Testament for thousands of years on scrolls, that were read and preached by their Rabbis, they should have understood His mission—to confirm (establish and bring to realization) the promises made to the fathers ⁹and that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy, as it is written: “For this reason I will confess to You among the Gentiles, and sing to Your name (2 Samuel 22:50).” God’s promises do not fail!! The Lord Jesus Christ had a mission to also bring the gospel to the Gentiles. Christ being made a minister/servant to the lost sheep of the house of Israel was not only that He might confirm the promises made to the fathers; ⁹ and that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy as it written: For this reason I will confess to You among the Gentiles, and sing to Your name. Listen to this! We (Gentiles) are not left out, the Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross after much suffering to save sinners, the question is are you a sinner?

Vs. 10-12 And again he says: “Rejoice, O Gentiles, with His people!” ¹¹And again: “Praise the LORD, all you Gentiles! Laud Him, all you peoples!” ¹²And again, Isaiah says: “There shall be a root of Jesse; And He who shall rise to reign over the Gentiles, In Him the Gentiles shall hope.” If you are a sinner, born again, born from above, these Old Testament Scriptures provided above in verses 10-12 should thrill you heart. Verse 10 is taken from Deuteronomy 32-43, verse 11 from Psalm 117:1, and verse 12 from Isaiah 11:10. Now let us take a look at what the apostle Paul was led by the Holy Spirit to write about you and me: And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1).  Dead nekros the actual spiritual condition of unsaved men. I watch Fox News through the week from 7 to 9 PM, I find one of the advertisements is a plea for man to make a prayer to God confessing that he is a sinner, he is sorry, and wants to be saved. If the Holy Spirit has not made the man/woman aware of their sin so that they cry out from their heart, “Lord be merciful to me the sinner,” it is a waste of time. When I was a young boy living with my parents in Danville, Illinois, I was sent to Sunday School each Lord’s Day. Across from the church building was the public school, it had a big playground. Well one day the preacher told me it was about time for me to join the church and he expected me to be at the altar next Sunday. Sunday school was over, I was playing at the school and heard the church organ playing, I remembered I was supposed to join the church so I ran into the building down the center aisle, and kneeled down, having received several stern looks from the preacher and congregation. He sprinkled water on my head mumbled some words and it was over. I was bored with the sermon and sneaked outside to play. That’s not salvation, that came several years later when God’s providence got me under the truth and there was no sneaking away. The verses 10-12, Paul quoted and provided above bear witness to the fact that Christ was sent to save lost Gentile sinners by the Father based upon the Abrahamic covenant, God speaking in Genesis 12:2-3 I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you ALL the families of the earth shall be blessed. Then in Genesis 22:17-18 after Abraham offered up his son Isaac as an offering to the LORD He said, blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your descendants  shall possess the gates of their enemies. In your seed (Christ) all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice. I hope you can see we are in a covenant relationship with God!!!

Vs. 13 Now may the God of Hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. This verse brings to a close this section of the epistle. Notice Paul writes about the God of Hope because He generates hope in us. I believe He is the God of the object of hope. As John Murray writes in his commentary on Romans, “God Himself is the ultimate hope of the people of God because He is their portion, their inheritance, and their dwelling place (cf. Psalms 73:24-26; 90:1; Ephesians 3:19, Revelation 21:3).” The fullness of joy and peace that Paul writes aboutis based upon what is implied in the title God of Hope.Only the hope created by God gives the basis for joy and peace and when this hope is present joy and peace should be full. The joy is the joy in the Lord, Galatians 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy peace, ,longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; and the peace is the peace of God, Philippians 4:7 and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. As joy and peace are conditioned by hope, so they are produced by faith and they promote hope. The fulness of joy and peace as a call to action is to the end that hope may abound more and more in the hearts of those that think upon hope. The graces being exercised in believers never reach the point of fulness to which no more can be added. Joy and peace come from hope and they contribute to the increase of hope, like a circle they go around and around. The object that is meditated upon in hope is far above our ability to understand and the problem is that what we are now and what we shall be 1 John 3:2 Beloved, now we are the children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is; therefore, we wait upon  it as the Holy Spirit witnesses it to us. This is significant as the closing words of our text are, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Ephesians 1:13-14 In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory.

Gods Covenant Mercy and Promised Justice

Therefore, know that the LORD your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments; and He repays those who hate Him to their face, to destroy them. He will not be slack with him who hates Him; He will repay him to his face. Deuteronomy 7:9-10.

Fallen sinful man is incurably religious by nature, as he has been created as the image-bearer of God—though this image has been distorted by the Fall. He perceives God through his fallen, sinful mind and seeks to emphasize God’s goodness and beneficence while avoiding any sense of Divine justice or Divine judgment.

Man wants—needs—a given amount of religion to pacify his heart and conscience, but not sufficient to bring him to a state of repentance, faith and reconciliation with God. He, in reality, worships the “god” of his own imagination unless forced out of his stupor by reality. Crises, tragedies, natural or man-made disasters, often and suddenly bring men to think “This is the end of the world!” Such a jarring, traumatic jolt and experience reveals that, underneath man’s religious veneer, the awful reality of Divine judgment and justice remains a reality. What unimaginable blessings when, apart from disaster or tragedy, one is brought to reality through the gospel and led to repentance, faith and reconciliation with God!   

Catechism Question 45

Q:  What did God at first reveal to man for the rule of his obedience?
A:  The rule which God at first revealed to man for his obedience was the moral law.

Romans 2:14-15

¹⁴ (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. ¹⁵ They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.)