Romans - Part 6

Credited Faith - Romans 4:1-25

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

If you guys have been following along, you guys have been here in this, we are focusing on the book of Romans, which is a letter from Paul to the church in Rome, is all about the power of the gospel. This was almost the first letter that Paul wrote. It's not the first, but it is near the beginning of the emergence of the early church. So we come onto the scene. Jesus has been in Jerusalem three years. He's died on the cross, rose again, was around for a bit, and then ascended up into heaven. And then the early church, the disciples gathered, turned into the apostles, And then they started going about their business and being scattered to go start churches. And church after that, after that, after that, granddaughter, granddaughter, great daughter, great daughter, you get Spring Valley Church. This is where we come from. So we can trace all our lineage all the way back to this first early church movement here in the Roman Empire area, but specifically first this early church in the book of Rome or in Rome, the book of Romans. And so as a pastor, I get all sorts of questions. I get all the questions. You can think of the craziest questions and they get crazier after that. But I get all the questions. But one that I always get from time to time is how do I know that I am saved? How do I know for sure without a shadow of a doubt that this gospel, this salvation piece that Paul has been talking about and setting up this very lengthy, deep, iron clad, brick, solid rock proof of a lawyer's argument here for the power of the gospel. How can I know that this is true and specifically applied to me today?

At the end of chapter three, Paul walks through this idea about how Christ's righteousness becomes ours when we receive it by faith. Pastor Andre did a fantastic job last week, walking us through that and talking specifically about this idea of righteousness through faith. And if you missed it, you can go online, you can catch it. We're on our website. We've got the podcast rolling now. You can listen to it and you're cruising in the car. It's great stuff. I love it, it's fantastic. But you can listen on that. But Paul here, he, what? This idea, this idea of righteousness becoming ours when we receive it by faith, what does this exactly mean? I mean, these are some big words. I don't know, I know some of us in here are very highly educated in the room and some of us barely got through high school, praise Jesus, we made it, okay? Hallelujah. But sometimes we can get lost in these big words. But Paul here is like, how do we know that? How do we know that we know that we have it? And Paul here is gonna break down in this chapter, some incredible, a incredible example of faith. But if you asked Christians, and you probably surveyed us here in this room, what is faith? We get the whole range of answers. We'd probably get somewhere as faith is believing than something that you can't see like the wind that blows the trees. You can't see the wind, but you can see the effects of the wind. Maybe faith is just kind of this general sense that God is real. That there's something out there that put this universe together and in such an intricate way that it can't just be by happenstance. Or faith means just I am a proponent, exponentially pushing forward, religion. Or maybe it's something that has to, I'm serious about my faith. Jesus is something very special and meaningful to me in my life. Or maybe just faith is more of a general outlook in life. Or maybe you would say that faith is that time that some place, somewhere, sometime you prayed a prayer and you asked Jesus into your heart. Maybe that is what you would say is faith. But Paul here is gonna give us kind of an analysis of what faith is and how it really saves us and how we can know for sure that we have it. Paul kind of puts this faith on the table and kind of just opens it up for us. Maybe you could say it kind of dissects it for us in this chapter.

And it does it by looking at faith of one of the most important figures in the Bible, a guy by the name of Abraham. And this not only is important for us, but this is absolutely unbelievably the important person if you come from a Jewish background. And he is regarded as the father of faith. Anybody sing the song? ♪ Father Abraham ♪ And then he's, yeah, anybody? No, no, all right. But Paul here is saying that Abraham is the father of our faith. And so I want us today to kind of learn about what this faith is and how it saves and what it looks like in his life, because then Paul applies it to our lives as well. And Paul divides up this section and he has three questions for us, okay? The first question of which is how was Abraham saved? How was Abraham saved? And then he'll go into when was Abraham saved. We got a little timeline piece we're gonna break down. And then what were the components of Abraham's face? So here's where we're headed this morning. If you guys wanna know, here's our roadmap. We're all gonna go on a journey together. And it's all gonna start Romans chapter four, starting in verse one. We're gonna go through verse one to eight for this first section. So you can follow along, maybe bring out your old school Bible like me, or tap, click, wherever you want on your phone, and follow along, and it goes like this.

This is Romans chapter four. "What shall we say then that Abraham, our forefather, according to the flesh, discovered in this manner?" Talking about faith. "If in fact Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about, but not before God. What does scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. Now to the one who works wages, you're not credited as a gift, but as an obligation. However, to the one who does not work, but trust God, who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness. David says the same thing. When he speaks of the blessedness of the one to whom God credits righteousness apart from the works. Verse seven, blessed are those whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed are the one whose sin the Lord will never count against them.

So Abraham here is a forefather of our faith, okay? And so this first question that Paul is gonna ask was, how was Abraham saved? How was Abraham saved? It says here that Abraham was saved, he was justified by faith. See this, Paul here is quoting directly from Genesis 15. All the way at the beginning of the Bible, the Old Testament, first book, Genesis 15, six says this, Abram believed the Lord and he credited it to him as righteousness. So Paul here is talking about this idea that Abraham received salvation, was credited to him righteousness by his faith. See these verses here kind of show us this inner logic of faith. And faith is not something that tries to earn salvation, but instead receives it as a gift. The premise of every job that you have had in your life went like this, you do the work and you're paid for it. Right? That's how it works. You show up, you clock in, you put in your time. And at the end of the day, the boss hands you a check or the end of the week or the month or whatever, hands you a check and you go home with your money. I've never had a job. maybe I'm weird here, I've never had a job where a boss paid me money and I said, "Oh my goodness, thank you so much for your generosity. You are so incredibly giving." No, that's not how it works. I'm not talking bonuses or raises, I'm talking about the bare bones basis of your job. Why? Because the reality is your wage in that moment is what you are owed. You put the time in, you did the job, you checked the box, now you get paid. And see, in this, most people approach their relationship with God like this. They approach, they say this, "Hey, I do good things, and then God pays me with heaven." "or my rewards for good works are eternal life." And most religions around the world work off this premise, this idea of earning. I obey, therefore I will be accepted. They believe that God gives us acceptance as a reward or a wage for our obedience. Gospel doesn't work like this. Gospel works off a different premise. Acceptance is given as a gift. given as a gift to those who will receive it.

We see this specifically in verse five, because verse five here is probably one of the most important Bibles or verses in the Bible on salvation. Did you guys catch that? It says this in verse five, "However, to the one who does not work, but trusts," or it can also be understood as, "or believes God who justifies the ungodly, their faith, like Abraham's, is credited as righteousness. So what does Paul mean? Paul means this, he says, "To the one who does not work." What does that mean? Well, it means that you're not trying to earn God's salvation. You're not trying to earn his acceptance through good works. You're not trying to be good enough to get that entrance ticket into heaven. But instead, as verse five says, "You believe on him who declares the ungodly to be righteous." Is that you believe God's understanding and the promise that he has graciously gone through everything necessary to give us such a gift. To give us this gift. And that it was purchased as salvation when Jesus died on the cross for you and me, just like he said. And when you believe that, you will have acceptance as Christ's righteousness as it is credited to you.

This word credited is really interesting term. It's actually a banking term I found out. I was doing some research on this. And the Greek word here, for those who would love to delve into this, is logizomai. It's a fun word, logizomai. (congregation laughing) And it's a banking term. And it means this thing that is something that is put into your account. I love how Paul uses this. I remember as a kid, getting my first bank account or savings account, my parents helped me open it up. And I didn't have hardly no, I had no money. I was a kid, let's be honest. I had no money. And my parents, logizomai, credited me money and put it into my account. Now I wasn't allowed to touch it, but I could look at that shiny little paper statement and go, ha ha, there's my credit. It would be the same if I had for my kids. Like if I find myself in a place where I only have a week to live, and I would go and I would open a bank account for my kids. And I would tell the banker, hey, I need you to transfer all the money that I have. You'd look at my account and laugh, but I would say, I need to take all of this money that I have, and I need you to log in "O my, credit it to my children "so they can have it when I'm gone." This is what's happening right here. Paul here is explaining that this is what happens when Christ's righteousness of when you trust Him, when you call on Him as your sin bearer, your Savior, your Lord, you trust in Him as your substitute, your Savior, all of His righteousness, all of His favor with God, because he was perfect, he was blameless, he had done nothing wrong, he basically logizomai credits into our account salvation. That's what Paul's here saying. He's saying that all of this is logizomai to you. And this is how Abraham was saved, by faith.

Let's continue on, verse nine here in Romans. Is this blessedness only for the circumcised or for the uncircumcised. Okay, Paul here, real quick, a little translation piece. Paul here is using this term, circumcised, uncircumcised as the law. So for those who circumcised are following the law, uncircumcised, those who are not following law. Just a quick shorthand. So don't get caught up in all of this words here, okay? We have been saying that Abraham's faith was credited to him as righteousness. Under what circumstances was it credited? Was it after he was circumcised or before? if that was not after, but before. And he received circumcision as a sign or a seal of that righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. So then he is a father of all who believe, but have not been circumcised. In order that righteousness, well, boom, the accredited, the father of the circumcised, to all who are circumcised, but also in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised." You guys follow along? Okay. Clear as mud. Beautiful. "It was not through the law," here we go, Paul, he fixes it for us so we can understand this. "It was not through the law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be the heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith." You guys following? "For if those who depend on the law are heirs, Faith means nothing and the promise is worthless because the law brings wrath. And where there is no law, there is no transgression. Therefore the promise comes by faith so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham's offspring, not only to those who are the law, but also to those who have the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all, as it is written, I have made you a father of many nations. He is our Father in the sight of God, in whom He believed, the God who gives faith to the dead and calls into being things that were not.

So Paul here, in this super lengthy argument in these verses, I don't know if you guys followed all of it, basically asked the question then, when was Abraham saved? He says in verse 10, under what circumstances was accredited? it after he was circumcised or before? See, remember Paul here is using this term "circumcised" as shorthand for all of the Jewish law. So Paul here is asking basically this. You guys ready? Basically asking this, "Was Abraham declared righteous before or after the Jewish law was given?" That's the premise here. That's the question that's being asked. Because if it was after, then maybe Maybe righteousness can be earned through law, through observing the law. But if it was before, well, that changes everything, right? So here, Paul answers his own question. I love it when he does this. He answers his question. He's like, "I'm gonna answer it in two verses." Verses 10 through 12. "It was not after, but before. And he received circumcision as a sign, a seal of the righteousness that had been by faith while he was still uncircumcised. So then, he is the father of all who believe, but have not been circumcised, in order that righteousness might be credited to him. And he is then also the father of the circumcised, not only are the circumcised, but also those who are the footsteps of the faith of our father Abraham, and before he was circumcised." That word is in there way too many times.

So here's the answer to Paul's question. It was not before or not while, not during, but it was still before Abraham received the law that he was credited faith and justification. So that proves here is basically Paul's, this whole big argument, Paul's basically trying to tell us that it proves that obedience to the law is not necessary for salvation. Why? Because we are already saved and because Abraham was declared righteous over 600 years before the law was given to the Israelite people. 600 years. It's crazy. So the logic here goes like this, all right? Here's a breakdown. God declared Abraham righteous in Genesis 15, six. Circumcision or the law wasn't introduced until way, way later. So before any of these religious laws or rituals were given, Abraham was already declared righteous. Already declared righteous. Therefore, you can't say that obeying the law is necessary for salvation. It's still necessary for stuff, but it's not at the core of salvation. The law isn't the means to salvation. and Abe was saved even before any of this stuff was around. The law had been sent for a different purpose to provide us of how to live our lives after we've received salvation. So Abraham was saved by faith and it was before the Jewish law he was saved.

This leads us to our final question. What were the components of Abraham saving faith? Paul is leading us always to this point where he's got something he wants us to take home, something he wants us to kind of put in our pocket and think on and wrestle with this whole week. And he says this, he says, "Two important things that emerge from this final section." Romans 18 through 25, it says this, "Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, so shall your offspring be. Without wrecking, wakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead since he was about 100 years old. And that Sarah's womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he said he had promised. This is why it was credited to him as righteousness. The words, it was credited to him, were written not for him alone. Here's where we come into it. But also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness for us who believe in him, who raised Jesus, our Lord from the dead. was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.

Here's the first part of this. You see this faith's posture. What do I mean by faith's posture? Well, you see Abraham believed in a specific promise that God had given to him. And then Abraham adjusted, refocused, reprioritized everything in his life for that promise, specifically believing on that. What was that? Well, that was that there was going to be a kid that was gonna come from the nation of Abraham that was gonna have the savior that was gonna be the promised Messiah for the entire world. What was the problem with that? Here was the problem. Abraham and Sarah ain't having no kids. Abe's what, almost 90? Sarah's over 70 at this point. Even on the best day, there's only a slim chance that any of this is happening, okay? But Abraham believed, that's the awesome part. And what did Abraham do? Abraham started living his life in this promise. What do I mean by that? Abraham went off, he started buying stuff for a nursery. He started picking out names. Him and Sarah went into Target, got the little clicker guns and going around and registering. Abraham went and got the coffee mug, world's greatest dad. He got the T-shirt. He's out searching for a land for this nation. Like Abraham goes 100% in on this promise of God and nothing has yet to happen. Nothing has yet to happen to this point. A hundred years. Can you believe that? A hundred years and Abraham changes his whole life and shifts into this posture of faith and says, God promised it, I believe it. That's what he says. And it says, verse 21, "Being fully persuaded," or another translation would say, "Convinced that God had power to do what he had promised. And because of all this," verse 22, "this is why it was credited to him, logizomai, to him as righteousness." Just like Abraham believed that God could give him a son in his old age, just like he promised, we believe that Jesus paid for our sin and rose again, just like God had promised. That's where we come into the picture. And it's a little bit different, why? Because Abraham believed in something that was yet to happen. That's Abraham's faith. It's a forward-looking faith. Looking to the future going, "God, you promised it, I believe it. "I know it's gonna happen, I'm all in." Our faith is looking back to what Jesus did on the cross 2000 something years ago, saying, I believe it, I trust it. God said it, it's done, it's over, it's taken care of. I live in that faith. That's our faith. And Paul here is saying that we know we can be justified through that same faith that Abraham had, because it's the same God who was the same yesterday in Abraham's day, in Jesus's day, in yesterday, on Saturday afternoon, February, or March 25th, as he is on the 26th, as he's gonna be tomorrow on the 27th. That's that kind of faith that Abraham is talking about here and Paul is writing in this to say, this is the faith. And it's a kind of faith that you can go all in on, that you can fully lean into, that you can put all your faith into. It's a surrender kind of faith. And it's a posture that we have to take with God in believing this. And we know it is true.

The second piece of this is the faith boast, which is God's faithfulness. Did you guys catch that in verse 21? It said, "Yet we do not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded, fully convinced that God had power to do what he has promised. Because Abraham leaned into fully that God would provide him with the Son that would become the nation of Israel, that from the nation of Israel would come King David, who would come a descendant of David, would be the Messiah who was Christ our Savior that lived here on earth and went to the cross fully perfect for our substitution of death for our sins, conquered that death, rose again, and we're going to celebrate that in two weeks. Amen. That's what we're talking about here. And in this, God gets all the glory. God gets all the glory, right? Because we can't but give God the glory. Does that make sense? That's the only thing we do. 'Cause we can't get to heaven. And if there was any part that we had done, oh, we'd be walking around heaven like a boss, right? We'd be like, "Yeah, that was me. I'm the spiritual mega man. I was the one that did it. Temptation came my way and I said, no. I was the one that had the strength. I was the one that pushed the devil away. And I am here on my salvation. and I'm the one here to boast. Does it work like that? No. None of us are going to get that when we get, get to say that when we get to heaven. The only thing we're gonna get to say when we get to heaven is that we've been there 10,000 years, bright, shining like the sun and no less day to sing God's praise when it first begun. And in heaven, God's grace will be our boast because that is the only way that any of us will get there. I'm sorry to burst your bubble today. If you came in this morning trying to get that gold star, checking that Sunday off, getting to that 500th Sunday streak, I will give you a firm handshake and a bagel on the way out and tell you congratulations, but that's kind of as far as it's going, okay? I'm sorry, that's all you're gonna get from us today. It is only in God's that salvation is the sole object of our faith. He is our hope, He is our love. And He has to have the first place in our hearts. He has to have that first place because He is the one that's gonna get all the glory from our lives. And Abraham's faith was a trust kind of faith, a surrender completely kind of faith, fully go all in kind of faith.

And that is a question for us, do we have that faith? Do we have that same kind of faith that we are an all in kind of faith. A lot of us as Christ followers attempt to have this faith like Abraham, but we kind of end up of what I call a mutual fund kind of a faith. If anybody has invested any money in the stock market or tried to have any future dividends or retirement or anything, you guys know what a mutual fund is. A mutual fund is a stock that you invest with or with a company and they take all your money and they spread it across a ton of different companies. Some have four or five, some have thousands of companies. Why? Because the idea is that you hedge your bets. If this company goes down, hopefully a company over here rises up and you kind of balance out. And hopefully in the end, you still move ahead. We do that in our life. We build our portfolio and we wouldn't want to not have God in our portfolio, but God is just a portion of our portfolio. He's just a kind of piece over here. We got all these other kind of things going on and we think, okay, man, we have, I still kind of keep God over here and kind of put the, it's just gonna work out. Now that's probably a wise investment strategy as I've been told and invested in, but for our faith, it doesn't work like that. That's not kind of faith that God wants in our lives. God wants an all in, all for nothing, fully all in, everything you got, everything, everything, kind of a faith that God wants for us. And that's the kind of faith that Abraham had. And we can have that same faith when we trust in God and go all in on who he is and everything that is there, that's the faith that we can have. It's an all or nothing kind of a thing. That's the only way it works. I mean, you might go, well, you know, pastor, I'm like 90% in with God. That's awesome. Still not 100. I don't know any husband that could say, you know, I'm 90% committed. That's some scary stuff right there. Maybe you're less than 90, I don't know. But even that less than little pit, even if it's a bit, we would still call them an unfaithful husband. See, God loves us so much and he cares for who we are. He wants all of us. He doesn't want 90, he doesn't want 99.9999, he wants an all in everything kind of a faith in him.

And when we look back at who Abraham was and the place that he found himself in without a child, without a future, without a hope, without anything, God shows up in his life and makes a miracle happen and it changes the world. And it's that same God that we serve and we love who cares for us and has everything that he wants for our lives planned out in a way that is absolutely beautiful. We just have to go all in. So that's the question for us today. This is where Paul is leading us. And real quick, when I say fully surrendered, It doesn't mean we're never gonna sin again. I sin, I struggle through it, everybody's gonna struggle. It's not until we get face to face with Jesus and he makes us perfect, is that gonna be taken care of? But what I'm saying an all in kind of a faith is not you are intentionally choosing outside of what God wants for your life. That is this kind of all in. And do you have that type of surrender? We're gonna move into a time of communion this morning. I want us to focus in on that, to have this mindset and this heart of thinking about the all in that Jesus went all in for on the cross and gave that sacrifice for us. And because of that, we get to boast in who Jesus is. We get to boast in God's glory for our lives to then let that flow out of us to as we have our vision and mission here is to see our community saturated with the glory of God. That's that Abraham faith right there. That's that kind of faith that I am talking about this morning.

Romans - Part 5

How We Are Saved - Romans 3:21-31

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Excited to be here in our series in Romans. Our desire is that these Sunday gatherings, say ours in the leadership, Pastor Chris and I, that these Sunday mornings are a good part of your weekly rhythm in life, and that you come here to be a part of your own continuation in being a disciple of Jesus. We have it on our wall here of making disciples in the everyday stuff of life, and that's both for us, and then we wanna be helping others be disciples too, but this Sunday morning is such a good part of us continuing in being disciples of Him. And so we just hope and pray that that is true, that we can grow together and closer to each other, grow closer to God. And I share that just as this church has continued to come out of the fog of COVID, at this heartbeat of this church, Spring Valley, will continue to grow and become louder in our community and that we become more and more alive in our walks with Jesus and bring more people to be a part of what God is doing here at this church. So I know that is your prayer too, and we just wanna acknowledge that everything we do is in light of that. We wanna be a light in this community and be growing closer together into him. So can we just get an amen for that? Amen? Yeah.

Well, we are continuing in our Roman series, part five, chapter three. Don't get confused by that. Just we're in chapter three. I get confused on like part five, this number, then this number. But it's good 'cause we're going verse by verse, just going through the scripture, trying to do our best to understand Paul's argument here, argument for the gospel. I love a good breakdown moment, like be it a book or a movie. I'll take a movie, I'm probably more of a movie person at this point in my life. But whatever it is that you're reading or watching, there's sometimes a scene that epitomizes the whole story, that summarizes the entire reason why you're about to watch you're gonna watch. And it kinda goes back into history to explain how you got to this point, and it's going to help understand everything that you're about to watch. And if it's done really well, it doesn't seem out of place, it just seems like, oh, good, I needed to know this information to understand the story that I'm about to watch. I'm a bit of a Lord of the Rings nerd, so my example would be Lord of the Rings. At the beginning of the movies, this is not a spoiler, And if it is, it's okay. They've been out for like 20 years. (audience laughs) But the beginning of the movies, the very first movie you watch, it doesn't start with the main characters, it goes back in time. And it says like, all this long time ago, this is what happened. The ring was created. And then the bad guy did this, and some of the good people tried to do this. And then over time, and it catches you up to like this point where the story actually begins. So it goes for like 10 minutes of this like history lesson. But because of that, you now know, You're in the story, you know, I get it. I now know why the good guys are going to try to do what they're about to do. And I get why the bad guys are trying to get after them. So it just explains everything. And it's this great breakdown of a story. And as a viewer, like I said, you're caught up on the events, why this situation exists.

And it also brings you to understand what the solution is. These breakdown moments kind of help you understand, in order for good to prevail in the story, this thing needs to happen. And that's what today's passage is in Romans. It's this transition in the story that Paul has been sharing from all the bad, all the evil, all the sin that he's been talking about. And it's this transition to hope. It's this reference that ties all that has happened in the past and it helps make sense of what the future holds for us individually. And in the story that he's telling, what the future is gonna be, what it's gonna be like. So Paul is giving his commentary, playing over history and scripture, and giving an explanation for why things had to happen. And in today's passage, after the previous chapters of Paul stating that everyone will be judged, he's kind of painted a very dark picture, he now brings light to the situation, and because Jesus enters the conversation. Many theologians and scholars consider this paragraph, that we'll cover a couple paragraphs, 21 through 31 as the most important in all of the Bible. Martin Luther thought that this was the center point of Romans and therefore the entire gospel. So it is vital to our understanding of God's word. It's so important because it shows the culmination of God's plan of salvation. And that was in the life of Jesus through his birth life and especially in his death and resurrection. And so this paragraph, these 10 verses, explain how one is saved, and it explains the difference between Christianity and every other religion on earth. It brings hope to our human situation of sin. And whereas other religions say that once you obey or once you do this, once you're good with the law, you're good, you're in, you're gonna be fine. Paul will explain how being a believer, how being a Christian, a true disciple of Jesus, hinges on something totally different than one's own ability to accomplish the law. So let's dive in, and this morning I really just wanna camp on some major ideas and flesh out a bit some of these ideas that Paul brings to the surface and make sure that we're walking away today with some clarity about our salvation and what God has done for us.

So if you turn in your Bibles, Romans 3, you can follow along, I'll read out loud as you guys Read it to yourself, so verse 21 it says this, "But now apart from the law, the righteousness of God "has been made known to which the law "and the prophets testify. "This righteousness is given through faith "in Jesus Christ to all who believe. "There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, "and all are justified freely by his grace "through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. "God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement "through the shedding of his blood to be received by faith. "He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, "because in his forbearance he had left the sins "committed beforehand unpunished. "He did it to demonstrate his righteousness "at the present time so as to be just "and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. "Where then is boasting? "It is excluded. "Because of what law? "The law that requires works? "No, because of the law that requires faith. "For we maintain that a person is justified by faith "apart from the works of the law. "Or is God the God of the Jews only? "Is he not the God of Gentiles too? "Yes, of Gentiles too, since there is only one God "who will justify the circumcised by faith "and the uncircumcised through that same faith. "Do we then nullify the law by this faith? "Not at all. "Rather, we uphold the law.”

Would you guys pray with me? God, we come before you this morning eager to hear your word, to hear your truth. And God, we give you credit for the life that we can live in you because it is all from you. Your salvation is a gift. And we're so thankful for what your son has done. I pray that through this text, God, and through the working of your spirit in our hearts, we would come to deeper understanding and appreciation of who you are and what you've done. Give this time to me, pray this in your name, amen.

I wanna walk through verse by verse to understand Paul's explanation here because it is absolutely essential to our faith. And so I'm just gonna start, and this is covering 21 through 31 is the process of salvation. Paul's laying it out. This is how he kinda went through the first Several chapters, you cannot be saved this way. This is how one is saved. So in verse 21, Paul starts off with, but now, which is one of the biggest transitions in all of scripture, because God's way of righteousness has now been revealed. He's talking about salvation. So God's plan all throughout the Old Testament that was there and it hadn't come to fruition yet is now here. In verse 22, Paul talks about how the law only makes us aware of our sin. He's been kind of hinting at this, he's been saying this. It cannot change our hearts. It cannot make us love something that we cannot love. Paul's words here speak of something we'll talk more about later, but the fact that salvation is given to us. It is a gift. Again, Paul is hammering this home every chapter, every other paragraph it seems. is making sure that people understand you cannot earn your salvation. You cannot do it. God's righteousness does not disparage between Jew or Gentile, but is for all, all who believe in Jesus Christ, given through faith. We'll come back to that in a second. Verse 23, Paul now summarizes the previous chapters in one phrase. He says, "All have sinned and fall short "of the glory of God." Again, pointing to the all-encompassing nature of sin. It touches every single person. There's no one on earth that is not affected by sin. All of humanity, none escape it. We are all plagued by sin. And Paul doesn't want anyone to think, believer or non-believer, religious person or non-religious person, that they are somehow exempt from needing Jesus. Every single person needs Jesus, period. Everyone. And then verses 24 through 25, and now we get to the good part here.

What can we do about our sin? Well, we can't do anything on our own. And Paul introduces some big theological words here, but I wanna unpack them and make sure that we understand what this passage is saying, because as I prayed, it leads to a deeper appreciation of who God is, what he's done for us. And that's the point of every Sunday, is to walk away with a deeper appreciation for God. So the first word that Paul gives us is justified. He says, "And all are justified." That phrase, all are, is referring to those who can be, those who are saved. And then justified, this is this term that means to be declared righteous. It's a legal declaration that you are innocent before God. We were previously sinners, we were guilty in the eyes of God because of our sin, and so how are we made innocent? How are we justified? Well God, instead of seeing our sins, now sees Jesus' righteousness. And when Jesus was on the cross, he took on our sin that made us guilty. and his righteousness is then ours. So when we believe that Jesus is the savior and we entrust our lives to him, he takes on our sin and it is paid for on the cross. And what we receive is perfect righteousness, allowing God to see us as innocent.

Jesus' sacrifice justifies us before God. So we get the term justification. It's our first word. The second word we see is redemption. through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. Redemption is about bringing something back from destruction, from death, or to buy something back from destruction. We've been going through this series on RightNow Media with J.D. Greer, and he gives a great example, and so I'm just gonna repeat it to you, to help make sense of this process. He asks, what do you call it when you cash in a coupon? You redeem it, right? And when you're shopping at the supermarket, let's say you received a coupon for some ham from a certain manufacturer. So you go to the store to redeem that coupon. You go to the ham section, you pick up that ham, you go to the clerk at the front, and you check out. And that clerk says it's going to be $23. And you say, well, not for me, because I've got a coupon. And you give them that coupon, and you pay nothing. You just got this ham for absolutely free. And what did the manufacturer pay? The manufacturer paid full price. And the pig is the real hero of the story because the pig paid everything. The coupon availed you to their generosity. Yeah, thank you J.D. Greer for making us think of some delicious ham and bacon during our service. But that example helps us understand what Jesus did on the cross and the redemption that we experienced. This is how it worked. God sent his son Christ Jesus. You present faith in Jesus and you receive eternal life. You receive salvation. His sacrifice is yours. The third word that we see is atonement. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement. And this word means that God's wrath has been satisfied. The debt has been paid. Other translations use the word propitiation, which is the turning away of wrath by an offering. So God's wrath was turned away from us and put onto Christ in order that we may be saved. Jesus took our place on the cross, taking the punishment that we deserve, and in doing so, he atones for our sins. He died in our place, he paid our price. And so the sacrifice of atonement is about Jesus taking our place. Now you may be wondering, why was sacrifice even necessary?

Well it comes from the Old Testament, and what God required before Jesus' ultimate sacrifice to cover all of our sins. In the Old Testament, the process of being made innocent involved regular animal sacrifice, something to atone for people's sins. In the Old Testament, there was no forgiveness of sins without the shedding of blood. Hebrews tells us that, reminds us of that old custom, that in order for a person to be seen as clean in the eyes of God, they had to sacrifice something. So if you were back in the Old Testament, you would go about your day, your week, and you would recognize that I've sinned. I didn't uphold the 10 commandments and all the other laws that God had given at that time. I messed up. Somewhere along the line, multiple times, I need to do something about my sin. I've sinned against God. And now I have to make it right with God. So you gotta atone for your sins. What would you do? You would go to the temple, you would bring an unblemished animal, perfect, meaning just it had the best looking fur, and there were no like defects with that animal, so perfect animal, and you would have to bring it to the priests and they would sacrifice it. And that sacrifice would be pleasing to God. And in that process, God would recognize that you are now clean again. But the, so the basic system is you sin, you sacrifice, and you substitute yourself with an animal, and temporarily you are seen as clean. For a time, you were right with God. Your relationship was temporarily restored. Now it's still a heart issue, 'cause people back in the time, the Bible tells us that people made sacrifices that didn't have a contrite heart, and God said those sacrifices were not pleasing to me. I don't like those sacrifices. Don't just do this because you have to. You need to have a contrite heart, a repentant heart, acknowledging that you did wrong, that you have offended me, God, and you need to make it right. So going to the temple to sacrifice was a regular part of their lives. It was one of the rhythms of life. And this system in the Old Testament foreshadows what Jesus would do on the cross.

Because that Old Testament system is now nullified by Jesus' actions. So Jesus is the ultimate sacrifice. No other sacrifices are needed anymore, thank goodness. This sacrifice covers all the sin. The sin that we have committed, the sin that we will commit, we no longer need an atoning sacrifice because Jesus paid that price. And like we mentioned before, the salvation is free. So our fourth word is grace. It says, "By His grace." This salvation, this being justified, being redeemed, is completely free for us. It is a gift, it's not something that we earn. Someone once explained grace as God's riches at Christ's expense. No other religion in the world revolves around grace like this. a God-given grace, where you don't do anything, and yet God can still give you eternal life. You didn't earn your way, you didn't have to check this off the box, all these laws, obey everything. God's salvation is a gift. So with those four words now, kinda having the definitions fresh in our mind, let me reread part of this verse here. It says, "For all have sinned and fall short "of the glory of God." So that's our status right there. and all are justified, those who believe, are justified freely by his grace. Through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus, God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of his blood to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness. Hopefully that brings a clearer sense of what God has done, who He is, His character, and how He loves us, and what He did out of that love.

Verse 26 continues in saying that on the cross, God did two things. He satisfies the full demand of God's justice. Sin is an offense against God, something has to be done, so Jesus pays that price, and so God's justice is fully, fully met. And at the same time, God saves us. So Jesus on the cross satisfies God's wrath and at the same time gives us salvation. God demonstrates his righteousness, his perfect action towards sin, so he is perfectly just by carrying out his punishment against sin. And at the same time, while he's exercising his justice, he is also saving us. That's amazing. That's incredible. Not only is he being perfectly righteous, but he is sharing his righteousness with us and those who believe. The rest of this chapter 27 through 31, Paul circles back to the law. He's been going on about the law. The law does not save you, and he's offered clarity about what the law does, and so he just wants to capstone that with, again, okay, now that we understand how you are saved, The law is still relevant. The law is still a part of this picture. And its purpose is to offer guidance and direction. It cannot transform anyone's heart, but for the heart that is transformed, it points to God. And even for the heart that isn't transformed, it still points to God. Provides direction, but it cannot make us go in that direction. That's the power of the gospel. That's what Jesus and the Holy Spirit in us does. But without it, we wouldn't know how to be more like God.

So God's law, Pastor Chris said this last week, is like a mirror. It helps, makes us see ourselves with more clarity. It tells us how far away from God we are. So if I know God's word and I'm saved and I look at the law, I look at what I'm supposed to be doing, I can see, man, I'm really far away. Like I'm not living the life that God wants me to live. Or it could be encouraging. You look at the Bible in that mirror and you're saying, man, I am walking with God. I'm doing what God wants me to do. This is great. It tells us how far away or how close we are. It tells us how to be more like him. Again, Paul doesn't want the Jew or the Gentile to forget about his law. He just wants them to have an accurate understanding. And Paul wants the same thing for us today. That's why the Old Testament and the New Testament are so important. It's why it's so vital to be in the word daily. It's why it's helpful to participate in church life, to be a part of this body of believers so that we can be aware of our vicinity to God. How close are we? How far away? How do I, what does God need to work on in my life? The better we understand God's word, the better we understand him. And the better we understand him, the better we understand how we need to grow, those areas of strength, the areas of weakness that we have, the areas of sin that need to be addressed. When we better understand ourselves, we can better partner with the Spirit and the transformative work that he is doing in our life and in the lives of others.

So looking in that mirror, looking at God's word, the law gives us direction, and for those who are saved, because our hearts are transformed through the power of the Spirit, we can start to head in that right direction, closer to Him. So, there is our passage. That's going through all of Paul's words, verse by verse, but I wanna take a moment to kinda take us out of the letter and put it into the story of what Christ did. Paul alludes to it here, but to help us fully understand what we may already know, or to clarify what might be new to you, let me tell you this story, and it's our story. So the story goes, every human that's ever lived, every one of us, is marred with sin. Our hearts are stained with sin. And before we are saved, there's this separation between us and God. Why? Because God hates sin. It's a direct offense against him. To help us kind of understand how real this is, I mean, even in the Old Testament, God used to dwell in the tabernacle or in the temple, and it was the Holy of Holies, which was this inner room inside of a room. And that's where God's presence was. And the only person that can go in there was the high priest. And even then, it was only during a specific time, and you had to go through a process to be made clean, but no one else could go in there. And if they did, they would die automatically because their sin and God's presence, it's like oil and water, it does not mix.

And I share that to help us see just how serious God takes sin. So with that in mind, we are separated from God until God intervenes in our lives, until the Holy Spirit makes us aware of our sinful status, at which point we can put our faith in Him. But in order to save us, in order for us to be able to spend eternity in God's presence, God had to do something about our sin. So God sent his son Jesus to live the life that we could not live, which was a perfect one. Never having needed to make an Old Testament sacrifice, Jesus never needed to do that because he never sinned. And yet despite being perfect, Christ was condemned to die on the cross. a death that sinners deserved, a death that we deserved, because our sin makes us guilty. But Jesus dies on the cross, and as he's hanging on the cross, he doesn't just die a human death, but he fights a spiritual battle, and he takes on all of our sin, all of it. Like, just sit in the weight of that for a second, not just your sin that you've committed so far, but all of your sin, and then multiply that all the sins of this people in this room. And then you think of the entire world and all the sins that happened. Jesus is dying on the cross, bearing the weight of all of our sin. And because of what we know about God and sin, like oil and water, they don't go together, now the picture of what's happening on the cross between God and His Son, Jesus, becomes even clearer. There's no tension there. Christ was the ultimate sacrifice to atone for for our sins and God's wrath against that sin, against those who committed that sin, against us, instead of it being on us, now God's wrath is focused on his own son. And it meant that God had to turn his back on Jesus for that moment because of that sin that Jesus bore. And in that moment, Jesus cries out, Father, why have you forsaken me? I mean, does that hit us? Like, not just in our heads of like, I understand that that relationship was, what was going on, but does that hit us in our hearts? That emotion is palpable. And this really is the darkest moment in history. It's because of our sin. Son of God, perfect, dies on the cross for us. And I say this as our story because He did it for you. He did it for me. through Jesus' death and sacrifice, for you who believe you are saved. Your guilty status now changes in the eyes of God to be innocent. You are justified. You were dead in your sins, believing in Christ. Now your souls have been redeemed. You are brought to life. Your soul and your heart can now be transformed by the Spirit because Jesus has atoned for your sins. And this happens based on nothing that you have done in life. You haven't earned this. This is a complete gift because he loves you. I mean, what a gift. What grace, what sacrifice, and what love from God. And so if this is your story this morning, then I hope you are filled with praise and thankfulness for God. And if this isn't yet your story, It can be.

The most important question that Paul will ask, that we will ask in this series, is have you trusted Christ Jesus with your salvation? Are you looking to anything other than Christ for your salvation? If you're thinking that you're hoping to be good enough in the end, or that you've done enough in your life to get into heaven, the answer is you haven't, you won't, you will never be able to. The only way is through Jesus, through faith in Jesus. And so if you've never received Christ, or even if you have, I wanna take this moment to pray. And I want you guys to pray this prayer with me. So if you could bow your heads, close your eyes, and inside, just silently to yourself, repeat this in your hearts. Lord Jesus, I know I am a sinner and need to be saved. I turn from my sin right now, and I acknowledge that you are the Lord and the Lord in my life. I receive you right now as my savior. And right now I am putting my sin on you. You are the sin bearer. You took my sin and died the death that I deserved. Thank you, Jesus, for saving me. God, we come before you fully recognizing as much as we can that you have done amazing things, that your work on the cross through your son Jesus is everything that we need. It's the only thing that we need. And God, I pray that that would, you would help us to feel the weight of that, to feel the weight of our sin on the cross and the gift that it is that we don't have to die that death but you did it for us. God, I pray that your spirit, whether we've been walking with you for years or we are just starting right now to walk with you, I pray that we would be filled with a joy and an appreciation, a thankfulness, and just praises for what you have done. We give you all the glory, God. Amen.

Romans - Part 4

Faithfulness of God - Romans 3:1-20

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Well, we are continuing in our book of Romans, our series. We're moving on to part four this morning. And Paul's finally gonna let up. No, I wish I could tell you that is the case. If anything, Paul pushes even deeper and further and goes in even more to the point, I was reading through some commentaries and scholars are saying, this is the hardest section of the entire book of Romans. So congratulations, you're here to receive the hardest part of the book of Romans this morning. No, but it's gonna be great. I'm excited. everybody who's still hanging on with us online. We love you, we miss you, get well and come back soon. So Romans chapter three, if you wanna turn there with me this morning, we're gonna jump in. But first before we do, I wanna kinda tag back a little bit into what Pastor Andre talked about a little bit of last week is that Paul here is setting up this giant argument. One point onto a next building block, onto a next building block, onto a next building block, onto a next building block, onto a next building block. It seems like this argument is just taking forever to get there. So before we jump into his next building block, I want us to back up a couple of verses into chapter two and starting in verse 28, then we can kind of set us up to roll into this first part of chapter three this morning.

So if you would, we're gonna start Romans chapter two, verse 28, and then we're gonna roll right in through the first eight verses of chapter three. But it says this, it says, "A person is not a Jew who is only outwardly, "nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. "No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, "and circumcision is circumcision of the heart by the Spirit, "not by the written code. "Such a person's praise is not from other people, "but from God. "What advantage then is there in being a Jew? "Or what value is there in circumcision? "Much in every way. "First of all, the Jews have been entrusted "with the very words of God. "What if some were unfaithful?" So Paul's gonna start getting into this, like this inner lawyer debate with himself. He's gonna go, "What about this? "What about this? "What about this? "What about this?" I texted Pastor Andre yesterday. I said, "I feel like I'm watching two incredibly brilliant people argue with each other in their own mind. And I'm over here sitting with like an IQ score of like 20. And I'm like, "I don't know what's happening here." This guy is, Paul is just brilliant. So here's his first argument. He says like, "What if someone were unfaithful? Will their unfaithfulness nullify God's faithfulness?" "Not at all," the other one replies. "Let God be true in every human being a liar, as it is written, "so that you may be proved right when you speak "and prevail when you judge. "But," here's a counteract, "but if our unrighteousness brings out God's righteousness "more clearly, what shall we say? "That God is unjust and bringing wrath on us? "I'm using a human argument." He, Paul's even just talking to himself right here, right before our eyes. "Certainly not," the other Paul responds. "If that were so, how could God judge this world? "Some might argue if my falsehood enhances God's truthfulness "so that increases his glory, "why am I still condemned as a sinner?" If I'm being made an example of, why do I have punishment on top of being made an example of, is basically what they're saying. "Why not say, as some slanderously claim that we say," get a little sassy here, Paul, "Let us do evil that good may result." The other responds, "No, their condemnation is just."

That make any sense to any of you? Okay, cool. We're all on the same page here. All right, so Paul here is having this inner dialogue, back and forth and so we'll say this, we'll then say this and say this and say this. And it's so funny because Paul here, which if you remember, Paul himself is of Jewish descent. He's a Jew himself, okay? So he's making this argument about what it means to be a Jew versus a Gentile and what the advantages and disadvantages are and how people in this today in society are basically using that as their identity or their badge of honor to manipulate the situation for their own personal gain to have control over other people to put them down. Clear as mud? Perfect. So what Paul here is saying is that a person is a Jew on the inside. The Jewish heritage comes from their lineage. It comes from their legacy of what they're born into. It's something physical about them that makes a person a Jew. And so what is here is a DNA level of Judaism on a person. And Paul here is saying that, yeah, that's how you are a Jew. But what's happening here in the early church is that people are coming into the faith in Christ and coming under what they understand this religion of flowing out of Judaism through Jesus. They're finding these people, the Jewish people, are saying, "Hey, you gotta do this. "You gotta do this. "You gotta do this. "You gotta do this." And then when you do that, you essentially will bestow a blessing on you and say, "You are now seen as a Jew." as a Jew. And Paul here is saying, "No, stop it." He says there even in that verse, if you do that, you're basically getting praise from man, you're not getting praise from God. And on the flip side, Paul here is saying, "You don't need to do that. You don't have to come under the laws and the festivals and the circumcision and all these rituals and all these things to be considered someone on the faith following Jesus, because Jesus took care of all that. Jesus is the fulfillment of the entire law itself.

And so Paul here is saying, "Don't listen to those people because what they're trying to do is to control you. They're trying to lord over you to say, well, if you don't do this, then you gotta show me your Jew card on the way into church because if you don't, then I'm sorry, you can't come in here to church." And Paul's like, "This is ridiculous. Jesus came for everybody. Jesus came for the Jew and he came for the Gentile. And Paul, I think in this inner dialogue is kind of jumping back and forth between, hi, I'm Paul the Jew and hi, or excuse me, sorry, I'm Saul the Jew. Remember Saul before he became Paul, he goes, I'm Saul the Jew and now hi, I'm Paul over here, the redeemed follower, disciple of Jesus. And so this is where that inner dialogue back and forth is coming about. And it's like, he's having an argument with himself. Like if we see Paul like trying to like write this letter, you probably look like a crazy person just walking down the street talking to himself. And he's like, "Well, no, this, this over here, this over here, oh, have you forgotten about this part here?" Or he's getting sarcastic because he's losing the argument with himself. So he starts getting sassy. And so in the end, Paul is like, "Just stop it. Just stop it because the reality is it's not about us." This is Paul's entire argument since the beginning of this book. Because remember, this is a letter. We sit here and we chunk up these pieces. This is a whole conscious thought of many run-on sentences, twists and turns, rabbit holes, surprises, rollercoaster loop-de-loops that Paul's writing here.

It was funny. I was talking to Pastor Andre last night about this because I was like, man, I feel like Paul's argument just keeps going deeper and deeper and deeper. He keeps answering all these questions. I'm like, who's asking these questions, bro? Like, it's okay, calm down. And then the more we talk to you, realize like, man, if we didn't have Paul counter all of these questions, we'd be left with a book that has a bunch of holes in it that then could be left up to argument and confusion and so much even to the point where then we start having heresy, which is false teaching, in our churches because Paul is basically locking this thing down behind a gate, behind a fence, behind a steel wall with locks upon locks, all inside of like a bank safe, all surrounded with security and 24/7 patrol and helicopters and all this stuff. He's locking this down so much so that nobody can even attempt to poke a hole in this. And so when we see it in that light, I go, All right, well, this makes more sense. Like, okay, okay, Paul, I'll roll with you. I'll see what you're talking about here. We'll figure this thing out together.

But only Paul gets to this point that being a Jew is awesome. He says that in there. He's like, it's great to be a Jew. Why? Because of the history that you are God's chosen people. You were first entrusted with God's word. You were the one that God said, I'm gonna live among you. I'm gonna be in your space. You are my loved. And that's something worth noting. I want us to think, remember that. Paul's not saying here, it's bad to be a Jew. Paul is saying, celebrate that. That's amazing. You should do that. But don't let that be your identity because there's so much more that God wants for our lives than just to put a name badge on and say, "I'm from Israel, I'm one of those cool people," and go on with your life. God's chosen people is something worth noting. And it's only because of God's chosen people that we have a basic understanding of who God is. His character, His love, His grace, His mercy. We read about in the Old Testament to understand this Yahweh, this God of God, the King of kings, the Lord of Lords, the Alpha and Omega, everything, Heavenly Father, King of their own, Creator, healer, everything that we know of who God is. Why? Through the Jewish people and their relationship with Him. And because of that, we see how God has faithfully cared for, led, rescued, and set apart that nation, His people. And Paul here is also making an argument it doesn't stop there. There's so much more at play here, which leads us into Paul's argument. He says in verses three to four, "What if some are unfaithful?" What if some are unfaithful to God? Will their unfaithfulness nullify God's faithfulness? Not at all. Let God be true in every human being a liar, for it is written, so that you may be proved right when you speak and prevail when you judge. Paul here is reminding people that Paul, that God doesn't need people to be faithful for people to recognize that God is faithful. God is apart from us as humans. God is above, God is greater, God is holier. We are not, there's a separation, there's a whole thing going on here that God is faithful. And God's faithfulness isn't dependent upon us saying yes to him. That if some are faithful to God, awesome, praise God. Some are faithful. But Paul is also making an argument here that if nobody is faithful to God, it doesn't change God. God is still faithful. We don't change who God is. And Paul shows you that God's faithfulness might also be recognized when he judges people's sin. That's a hard thing for us sometimes to wrestle with in our society. We don't like that word sin. We don't like that word judgment. We don't like that because it takes away from this loving, caring, gracious, oh, just gonna wrap my arms around you, God, that we like to put in our minds. But I would argue, and so is Paul here, that you can't have that loving, embrace God, authentic love without God calling us out when we gotta be called out. You can't have one without the other. And Paul's saying there's just a special place of Israel God's plan, but it doesn't protect them from God's judgment. They don't get a pass. They don't go, "Oh, who are you? And what's your heritage? Who you come from? Who's your father? Your forefather? Your forefather's forefather? Forefather's forefather? Oh, you're Jewish? Okay, cool. I'll just turn a blind eye to that. You just as you were." No. Paul's not saying that. Paul's saying almost even more so, "You already know, and yet that you're living this life, you know better as parents. How many times have we told our kids? You know better. My poor kid's sitting on the front row this morning right now. But Paul here is saying that just because you come from this Jewish descent doesn't make you immune. There's no preferential treatment for Jewish people. Just because Israel people are God's chosen people, they don't get a pass. There isn't a lesser punishment. See, I think the problem is that the Jewish people wanna kinda look at this from a different perspective. They wanna kinda twist this a little bit so that they can wear this badge of honor, this identity, so that they can manipulate other people for their own gain. Well, if I gotta follow the laws, then I gotta do all this stuff. Everybody should be following all the laws. If I gotta be miserable, but everybody's gonna be miserable in it with me. But that's a flawed logic as well. And Paul is counteracting all of this stuff in himself and he's reminding everybody, every reader of this letter, the church in Rome, that God's faithfulness is not about Israel.

God's faithfulness is not about us. God's faithfulness is not about the church. God's faithfulness is about God. It's about his promise and his person of who God is. And that God is righteous when he does punish, when he does call out his people for their sins, as well as when he rewards them for obedience. So both and. We'd like to pull out that judgment piece and not touch it with a 10-foot pole and we just, "I just wanna talk about the promises of God. I just want God's promises." That's great. God wants those promises for you too, just as a parent would want great things for their children. But in that also comes the reality of when those actions are in line of what God wants for us, our lives, there has to be a correction piece, and that correction piece is filled with nothing but love. That's hard for us, right? We don't wanna get called out, we don't wanna get reprimanded, We don't wanna get like going, "Hey, that's not right." Like we don't want that. We want just God's blessing and promise and love just to flow into our hearts. But that's not really true love, is it? If a parent were to give everything to their child, but not call them out on behavior, I don't see that as true love. I see that as, "Here you go, just go away. Just here, take it, do your stuff. I don't care about you. I just get you out of my hair and I can focus on what's more important to me. And Paul here is saying that all too often, we as Christians have presumed that God's grace to us exempts us from any concern for our own sin. Let me say that again. That we as Christians have presumed that God's grace to us exempts us from any concern about our sin. There's such danger in this thought that God sovereignly somehow maintains, even in our regenerate state, and holds our salvation till the end. And I'm saying too easily, we forget that God's ultimate concern is for His glory, not for our own personal glory. It's all about God's glory. It's all about who He is. And we like to stand on these promises, and this is entirely inappropriate. We must not forget that God's promises, both seen in the Old Testament and the New Testament, all throughout the scripture in this entire book, we see who God is. And we also see who He is and how He rebukes and chastises His people who sin, but then also He blesses them too. Let's not forget that. 'Cause I think sometimes we camp over here in Promised Land, and sometimes we can't over here in the hands of, or what was it? In the hands of an angry God, sinners in the hands of an angry God. You guys have probably heard that before. We camp over here and we're just like, oh, we're horrible people and God hates us and we're going to hell and oh, blah, blah, blah. There's nothing we can do. Woe is me. No, it's just as wrong to camp over here in Promised Land as it is to camp over here in this vengeful, angry God. That's not who he is. And Paul here is saying that even because you're Jew and you're supposed to have this promise doesn't mean there's an excuse to do whatever you want and sin. And Paul is also saying, hey, you don't just go, oh, who cares, whatever, I'm gonna sin, I'm gonna sin, I might as well just live here. Paul says, no, there's a greater life and promise that God wants for you to have. And he wants you to step into this new life that he has for you. And this is the entire argument that Paul is bringing up to this point through the end of chapter three, that he's gonna flip this all in its head next week to be continued, dun, dun, dun, with Pastor Andre. Set you up, buddy, I got you. But right now, Paul continues on a little bit deeper, okay? Paul's been kinda hittin' on, kinda beatin' up the Jewish people a little bit here, of their heritage, but it's gonna come around to everybody here in a moment.

Here we go, verse nine, it says, "What shall we conclude then?" All right? "Have we any advantage? Not at all. For we have already made the charge that Jews and Gentile alike are under the power of sin. For it is written," Paul's gonna quote some scripture here, a little Old Testament OG scripture coming at you right now. Here we go. "There is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands. There is no one who seeks God. All have turned away and they have together become worthless. There is no one who does good, not even one. Their throats are open graves. Their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Hey Paul, don't hold back, buddy. Here we go. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Ruin and misery mark their ways. For the way of peace they do not know. there is no fear of God before their eyes." Whoa. Paul, tell us how you really feel, bro. "Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore, no one will be declared righteous in God's sight by the works of the law. rather through the law becomes conscious, we become conscious of our sin. This is the point in the book or the book or the letter, it's always darkest before dawn, right? We've been in the dark, Paul's been pounding, we've been hit and hit, we're sinners, no one's righteous, we all are failing in the law, God is angry and mad at the sin of humanity, Like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And yet in verse 20, there's that light starts to peek through the edge of the horizon. And Paul here is saying, no one is righteous. The greatest Jew, not righteous. The worst Gentile, not righteous. God's chosen people, not righteous. Those outside of God's chosen people, not righteous. We are all sinful. Why? that are under the power of sin. Who wants to focus in on that? There's power. We've talked about this for a couple of weeks now. And I think sometimes we flirt with this idea of, ah, it's just sin, it's not that big of a deal. There's a power and a weight to it that Paul here recognizes and he is serious about because he understands how focused and intent and what ultimately what is at stake. People's eternity here. That's what's at stake here. This power of sin that is holding humanity back from being able to have redemption with Jesus. It is a real strong, scary, dark, wicked, evil thing. And Paul says, we're all in this. We're all in the same boat. We're all sitting in the same pool up to our necks, up over our heads in this power of this sin that has control over us.

And so he quotes some of this collection of Psalms and Isaiah verses 13 through 14 comes from Psalm 14 itself. It says, "Their throats are open graves, their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness." Paul here specifically is calling out sin of speech. Did you guys catch that? Paul mentions every single organ involved with speech. The throat, the tongue, the lips, the mouth, the throat being equated to this open grave, focusing on inner corruption and the deadly effects of sinful speech. Then he continues on talking about the tongue, deceptive flatteries of those who intend evil, eloquent speech meant to deceive and twist and pull us in under and keep us in this power of sin. He moves on to Isaiah 59 verses 15 to 17. Their feet are swift to shed blood, ruin and misery mark their ways. And the way of peace they do not know. Sin of violence to others is what Paul talk about here. The direct action of one person against another person to control them, to hurt them, to harm them, to Lord over them. This is what Paul is talking about. And he's reiterating here that Israel, in their utter corruption, are on the same level as the wicked. Just because you are Jewish, you come from Judah, you come under the Israel lineage, does not make you exempt to any of this. Everyone is under this rule of power of sin, which makes no one righteous. Paul doesn't stop there. He keeps going on. He talks in Psalm 36 verse 18. "There is no fear of God before their eyes." Paul right here is kind of bookending this section of quoting Old Testament scripture, talking about the root of all of this unrighteousness. Where does that lie? The root of all of this is our thought that we are God. And Paul is continuing to hammer in here that God is God and we are not. That's the reality. And as much as we want to make up in our minds that we're our own God and we put on this crown of royalty ourselves and declare our own lordship and then say, "Well, I know better than God and I know how to do it and I know how to fix things and it's going to be under the law and everybody's getting circumcised and everybody's got to start fasting and having the Sabbath and do all these festivals and go kosher and God's, you gotta do all this stuff. Paul's like, no, you and your righteous pageantry are even unrighteous. You're not because everybody will quote a scripture here further in Romans for all of sin that falls short of the glory of God. And it's the same focus that Paul has had in this beginning of this chapter to set up this entire argument and this one flowing thought to this point, that nothing a person does, either the object of obedience or the motivation behind that said obedience can bring him or her into favor with God. I'm sorry to burst your bubble this morning. If you came in thinking you could earn your right standing with God, unfortunately you can't. 'Cause we're too far gone. And Paul here is saying, it doesn't matter if they're trying really hard. Well, they got a participation trophy. Doesn't do anything. But Paul, their hearts were in the right place. Doesn't matter. But they're almost there. They're so close. It's like right there. I don't know if I can say this in church. I'm gonna say it anyway. Almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. Almost doesn't count with God. And it's not because he's an angry God or a vengeful God, but because there is a line and he is holy and we are not. And there's nothing that we can do. There's nothing we can earn, there's no good merit, there's no good deeds, there's no any of that stuff that can put us into a place of favor or standing with God. That we like to live in this gray zone, don't we? There's no gray zone with God. That's just who it is. Don't get mad at me, get mad at the Bible, get mad at God. But there's no gray zone. And if it wasn't, but that isn't from God. That's from human motivation, wanting us to make ourselves feel better, this gray zone. Well, I'm not that bad of a person. I mean, have you seen what they did? Have you seen them over there? Oh, well, good thing I'm not even close to who they are. Hey, God, we're tight, right? We're good? We're good? We're all right? I mean, I haven't killed anybody. I mean, it was 20 bucks. I needed it real bad. God, you knew, you knew where my heart was. It's just 20 bucks that I took. And really, they're not even gonna miss it. They don't even, they're so rich. It's not even that big of a deal. God sees that and goes, "No, you stole, you killed, "you lied, you thought about it in your head." This is some hard stuff that Paul's walking through. It's either yes or no. We don't like that. We want this love, this kindness, this goodness of who God is and reminding us that even in God's judgment of saying, "Hey, you did wrong," there's God saying, "I love you. I care for you.”

Paul's been talking about all of what the law is not, right? He's pounding this away. Just this is not this. It's not this. It's not this, it's not all this stuff. It's not our justification, it's not our salvation. It's not making things right. Either possession for the Jews who possess the law themselves. There's no credit just because they had it. Or like, "I remember great-great-grandpa was at the foot of mountain when Moses came down. Like we're tight, like it's okay." Paul's like, "None of that matters. And it doesn't matter if you're a new Gentile being like, "Hey, I'm just new to the scene with this. Sorry, like, is there like a mulligan for like a new guy on scene? Like, is that how this thing works?" And Paul's like, "No, it's not how it works." And so Paul then finally shifts into what the law is. Verse 20, "Therefore, no one will be declared righteous in God's sight by the works of the law. Rather, through the law, we become conscious of our sin." So there is purpose to the law. You might think through this that Paul is like, "Well, I'll just throw the law out, baby with the bathwater, just get rid of it all. Forget it, we don't need a law. We're righteous with Jesus and His grace can cover me. And I just, you know, I sin, I just pray, "Hey Jesus, sorry about that. I'll try again next time." And then we move on. And we find ourselves in the same place with sin again, going, "Hey God, yep, I know, me again. Sorry about that. Thanks for your love and your grace and your kindness, your goodness, amen." All right, move on. What Paul here is saying, no, there is purpose to the law. And the purpose of the law is to shine a flashlight into our lives and to our hearts, And to say, God telling us I don't like that, that's not right. This is right. This is truth. But it hurts, right? This isn't easy. It doesn't make us feel good. But that's the purpose of the law. I've met Christians who are like, yeah, I just don't read the Old Testament. Just doesn't matter. It doesn't mean anything to me anymore. 'Cause you know Jesus, he fulfilled all that blah, blah, blah. It's like, so how do you know what's right and wrong? Well, I just like kinda let that feeling inside. I was like, is that God or is that heartburn? Like what do you, how do you know the difference in that? I said, that's why the Old Testament is still the Old Testament. It's old, but it's solid. And it gives us direction and insight and guidance of how we live our lives.

But then Paul here also talks about this idea of experience. Sometimes this knowledge comes through reading God's Word and Scripture, but it also comes through experience. And when we find ourselves in a place of sin, sitting it going, "Whoops, this isn't right," there's forgiveness in that as well. But there's also a learning in that. I mean, we probably weren't the best at something we tried for the first time, whether it was sports, maybe a hobby, maybe shoot painting, a wall. That first wall that you ever painted in your life probably had streaks in it, it was running, it was thick, it was thin, it was patchy, just didn't look good. But as you painted more walls and you had more experience, you got better at it, you grew in that. And that's kind of those situations where even our heritage, where we come from, John Wesley, he was a great, brilliant theologian and preacher and teacher. He talks about this idea of sins of surprise. Sometimes we find ourselves in this place going, "Oh man, I didn't know that this was wrong. "I've never been here before." But there's grace in that and God goes, "Okay, that's all right. "I love you. "Now you know, don't do it again." And that's what Paul is ultimately leading us in here is that this law gives people life as an understanding of sin and how to live our lives. Why? Because the law since the beginning was all about pointing us to God. And Jesus coming on the scene continues to point us to God, continues to drive us to Jesus, continues to say, "This is the way to live your life. And this is the life that I want for you.”

So why, why would Paul write all of this? Well, I think a couple things. One, there was actually, whether we think they're ridiculous or not, a group of people, the religious zealots, the highest of the high of that day, that believed that they could earn salvation through doing stuff. And Paul here is to say, "No, you can't." As much as you believe that, as much as you want to do that, because here's the reality. The Jewish people have been the closest to God on the face of the earth. They walked with God. And it talks about in the Old Testament, a pillar of fire, a cloud by day. They had this Holy of Holies, this place where God would physically dwell in their presence. They saw miracles before their eyes. They saw rescue. They saw Moses come with the tablets, the 10 commandments. These people saw, eyewitness God before their eyes. And yet what? Failed. So how do we, as Paul is making this argument, how do we think we can somehow earn the salvation? If the Israelite people who were the closest to it, of anybody on the face of the earth, failed right there face to face, how do you think you can get there? It's nonsense, Paul is saying. But then Paul is also offering the salvation in this. He's saying that Jesus is salvation. That's why the power of the gospel, the title of our series in this book of Romans is what Paul is setting up here. And Paul continues to fight on multiple fronts in this. Paul is fighting entitlement from Jews who think they're the special God's chosen people. Paul is fighting the ones who says, who cares, we've already failed, it doesn't matter mentality. Paul is fighting the law above all, religious elite. Paul is fighting these extra add-ons that the Israelite people in their heritage are saying, "You new Christians, you Gentiles, you have to start doing this to these converts." Paul is fighting this idea that you can earn salvation by being good. Paul is fighting, "At least I'm not as horrible as that person," camp. And Paul continues to fight all of this time and time again. And all of this sounds so frighteningly similar to our world today in our church, does it not? How many years later removed and there's nothing different?

So can I tell you something? Be encouraged today. I know I took you down the same path that Paul is taking you, but be encouraged today, why? Here, I wanna tell you some truth. There is freedom in the fact that we don't have to earn salvation. Jesus has already taken care of it. Doesn't mean there's no responsibility on our end or accountability that we have to hold up to, but we don't have to earn it. That's a blessing. We're not going to worry about burnt offerings. We don't have to worry about walking so many feet on a Sunday. We don't have to worry about all these laws, dudes, not worrying about circumcision. Amen. Preach. Come on. And Jesus has already taken care of all of it. Be encouraged today. But also let the Word of God and all that it is, its laws and the scriptures, give you life on your journey. Okay? Let that truth dwell in your hearts and to begin to change you, because it's a matter of perspective. Don't get focused on what you do not have. So many times we find ourselves maybe in a power outage in a storm with a flashlight in the dark. We don't sit there and go, "Well, I don't have a light for the rest of the stuff around me." You take that flashlight and you shine it before you and go, "This is my focus. This is where my attention needs to be. This is what needs to matter in my life right now." Where is God shining a light in your heart today? Where is he putting that focus to say, "This is what I need you to change in your life." Don't worry about all this other stuff that's dark. Remove that from your attention. Focus in right here. Focus on what you do have. The salvation in Christ and the Holy Spirit to guide us every single step of the way. Bring your focus back to Christ today. Don't get lost in the weeds of all this stuff over here and all this stuff and all this stuff and what they're saying and what they're saying, what they're saying, what they're saying. Focus on Jesus.

How can you this week keep your eyes more on Jesus? That's my challenge for you this week. It might take some changing of priorities or maybe a weekly routine or something that's out of balance and out of whack, but God should be the number one priority in your life. And that's what Paul is saying here. You're not God, God is God. Put God in the right place. Doesn't matter where you come from, what your background is, what you think your excuses are, or this gray area you wanna live, God should be God. And that's it. Easy peasy, right? That's good, I like that. How can we this week bring God's righteousness to light in our lives? Not for us, but for God's glory. Think about that this week. I'm right there with you guys. I'm wrestling with this just as much as you are. Some tough stuff, but that's what I love about this series. It's so good. Let's pray and we'll get out of here. Heavenly Father Jesus, thank you for this morning. God, thank you for your servant Paul and his heart and his just brilliant IQ, off the charts mind to be able to walk through all of this stuff step by step and come out in the end just pointing back to you. Absolutely love it. Jesus, thank you for coming to earth, dying on the cross, giving of your life so that we could be made right with you. Because there's no other way we could have. There's no other way we could have attained that. Only through you, Jesus. So we say thank you. God, may we live in that light this week. May we live focusing on allowing God's righteousness into our hearts, into our lives, not for the sake of, hey, look at how super Christian I am, but to go, yeah, I don't have it figured out. I was a mess. I was broken. I was gone. It was all messed up. But Jesus showed up and it's him. All praise and glory to God. That's how we should live our lives. So Jesus, help us to remember that this week, help us to shine light on places in our lives that you want to change in us for your glory. We love you, Jesus. Amen.

Romans - Part 3

What Saves Us - Romans 2:1-29

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

So if you are new or visiting we have started a series in Romans We started a couple weeks ago and so we are just going verse by verse through it and each week having a new part of this letter. And so little plug if you want to catch up or if you want to listen again. We now have a podcast you can go back and listen to the sermon again if that would please you so check that out. You can get the links on our website or look us up on whatever podcast platform you use.

But yeah, we are going through and so now we're in chapter 2 and so far in this book of Romans, Paul is laying down a foundation. As we go farther and farther into his letter, we'll see how he's laying brick by brick, kind of this argument. He's laying out this argument of the faith, his reasoning to believe, and why unity in Christ is of utmost importance. We've seen in chapter 1 that Paul is passionate about sharing the gospel, that nothing will come between him and getting the truth of Jesus out to all the nations. It's his top priority. And then last week, finishing chapter one, Pastor Chris talked about God's view of sin and how he can't stand sin and that humanity is bent towards sin. So therein lies a problem. I don't know if you know this, well Pastor Chris and I, we didn't know each other growing up, but you know we started to run into similar circles and so we share a mutual friend, someone that He went to elementary school, junior high, and high school, and someone that was a close friend of mine growing up.

And that friend is now a lawyer in DC, and he's a believer. And so I called him up this week to get his lawyer perspective of Romans. I'm not even close to a lawyer, don't even have that mind. Obviously, I'm a pastor, and Pastor Chris. So we have our pastoral conversations about Romans, but I wanted to get another perspective of a lawyer.

Paul had a judicial mind of being a Pharisee, and so I wanted to see, is there anything that I don't see? And so I asked him, I said, "What are your thoughts on Romans, the first couple chapter of Romans, and how Paul lays out this argument for the Gospel?" And he said that, he commented that Paul's rhetoric was top class, like it was amazing. And the rhetoric being the way that Paul weaves together a story and an argument, and how the story will progress the argument, and how the argument progresses the story. And Paul does that beautifully in this book of Romans, and as lawyers they study how to do that when presenting cases and defenses and trying to prove a point. So Paul is an example of that. He also brought up Paul's history, his own personal life as Saul, you know, Saul then becomes Paul, possibly playing a major role in his communication to the early church, especially to the Jewish Christians.

Saul was a highly regarded Pharisee, one of the best, well versed in the law, in the Jewish customs, and at one point, deeply entrenched in the Jewish mindset. So just everything that happened, he would process as a Jew. And so if anyone were to understand what the Jews were thinking and feeling in the early church, understanding their reactions to things, how they would respond, their initial thoughts or frustrations, it would be Paul.

So just further evidence that Paul was the man for the task. God knew, despite Paul's former life and all the persecution that Saul at that time oversaw over God's church, God knew that his power to redeem Paul's life and purpose was far greater. So I think it's fascinating that thousands of years later, Paul's words still make an impact, whether approaching the text from an analytical mindset or a theological mindset, or just wanting to simply understand what is Paul trying to say, there is something here for everyone. And today, Paul will continue to build upon his argument, another brick being laid down in his defense of the gospel, in his argument for the Church of Rome to remain united, to fight to stay together, to find their commonality in Christ. I want us to remember this morning, all of us here, that this letter was written specifically for the Church of Rome, but this chapter definitely pertains to us today. You've probably heard this tendency that we have as Christians when we read the Bible today to associate with the good side.

So in the Old Testament when God is speaking through the prophets and warning or coming down on the Israelites, we tend to think like, "Yeah, Israelites, come on now, you should know better.” Or when Jesus is addressing the Pharisees, we're like, "Yeah," or his apostles for making whatever mistake. We're like, yeah, come on, we understand. Why don't you understand? But really those same words that convicted them might need to convict us today. So we shouldn't always just assume that we know what's up. Maybe God's words are trying to speak to us. And so let's be open-hearted and open-minded as we grow in Christ and mature in our spirituality. Let's not lose that humility that brought us to Christ in the first place. Being willing to listen and undergo further work and and transformation by the Spirit. So let me pray, then we're gonna jump on in to chapter two. God, thank you again for your word that you have given us. And God, we pray for understanding. We're here to better understand your truth, your word that you have given us to live by. And so I pray that through your Spirit that you would help us to better understand you and then therefore better understand who we are supposed to be. We pray that your spirit would work in our hearts to continue to transform us to be more like Christ. Encourage us, God, through the teaching of your word. We pray this in your name, amen.

Okay, so Romans 2. We're gonna kind of break this in half. We're gonna cover verses one through 16. And in this section, I think God is saying, or Paul is saying, sorry, that God's judgment is for everyone. Now if you're thinking, well, we just covered that last week. We just talked about how God's judgment is for everyone. Didn't Paul finish that? Well, let's read and see what this really means. So you guys can follow along. I'm gonna read out loud.

Chapter two, verse one. "You therefore have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. Now we know that God's judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. So when you, a mere human being, pass judgment on them, and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God's judgment? Or do you show contempt for the riches of His kindness, forbearance, and patience, not realizing that God's kindness is intended to lead you to repentance? But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God's wrath, when His righteous judgment will be revealed. God will repay each person according to what they have done. To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil, first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. But glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good, first for the Jew, then for the Gentile, for God does not show favoritism. All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law. And all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. 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. 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. This will take place on the day when God judges people's secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares.

All right, again, God's judgment is for everyone. Paul shifts now from the guilt of the Gentiles

in chapter one, 18 through 32, what Pastor Chris preached on last week, and now points the spotlight on the guilt of the Jews. I don't know if you've, there's a reoccurring scene that happens in movies and TV shows where there's like a classroom or there's a big family at home and all the kids or the students are acting out. You know, they're being crazy. And the teacher or the parent comes in and is like, starts to hand out punishment and starts to lecture them. And sometimes in the scene in TV shows or movies, there's that one student who kind of starts standing by the teacher or the kid and looking at his fellow siblings or fellow students and like, yeah, you guys, that's right. Yeah, you weren't supposed to be doing that. And they think that they're good. standing next to that authority figure like yeah yeah you let's tell them let’s tell them these people what's up and then there's like maybe a silence in this scene and they realize that that parent or authority figure is like looking down be like you too and they're like what I'm your favorite student or I'm your favorite your favorite kid and then they're realizing that they’re gonna also face whatever punishment was happening for the class and whatever favorite favoritism that they had doesn't equate to a reward in that moment. I don't know if this rings true, if you can think of a scene in a movie or a TV show, or maybe real-life experience.

But this is the sort of scene that is playing out here in the second chapter of Romans. The Jews thought they were standing next to Paul as this letter is being read in the early church, and they're like, "Yeah, Gentiles, yeah, that's right, God's going to judge you." And again, Paul is anticipating, he's not there, but he's anticipating, knowing the Jewish mindset, anticipating what he thinks is gonna happen, what these Jews are gonna do. And he anticipates that they're gonna think that they're in the clear. Yeah, this judgment, God's judgment, all those things that Paul's talking about, that's just for you guys, we're good. And now Paul turns and looks down at the Jews in the early church and is like, I'm also talking to you. They thought that they were God's favorites, and Paul is gonna make it clear that This judgment is for everyone. So let's unpack some of these verses here and see how Paul lays this out. In verses one and two, the word for judgment here is the word to condemn. And so we recently talked about this in our Sermon on the Mount series that Jesus talked about not judging others. And while we can discern, talked about this this morning in our class, we can, judging others in the sense of discerning and figuring out who they are, we can do that, but we cannot condemn other people. That is the role of God and God alone. And that's the word, the condemned word is what Paul is saying here, that these Jews were in a sense condemning the Gentiles around them or other people, something that they should not have been doing. That act of condemning others is in a way acting like God, trying to be like God. And the Bible is very clear that you shouldn't try to be like God. Every example that it gives, Adam and Eve, to Satan, to the people at the Tower of Babel, Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, all these people who tried to be like God, it doesn't end well. Don't try to be like God.

So Paul is reinforcing Jesus' words here. The Jews should not be condemning the Gentiles. In verse two, Paul is saying that God's judgment is just and true. Again, Paul is anticipating these thoughts that the Jewish people would have. And they're a thing, he's trying to just squash Every argument, but Paul, and he's like, no, and then this, and then this. So each verse is just another thought of how, geez, you don't have anything to stand on here. You too will also face judgment. And so he's saying that if you have an issue, you gotta go to God's character. God is a just and true God. So in a sense, if you have an issue with this judgment, you have an issue with him. And again, this thought that they were favorites because of all their history of being with God, they would know how just and fair and true God is. So that argument squashed. Verse four, Paul is addressing this Jewish thought that, they thought that God would exclude them from judgment. Again, given all their previous experience of God's goodness and mercy, and that story that I shared of like the favorite child or the favorite student, they thought that they were on that side, that God's judgment didn't necessarily pertain to them. And later he will riff on the memory of God's word of his blessing coming first to the Jews and then to the Gentiles.

And we know that as Jesus being born to the Jews and witnessing to the Jews before spreading out further to the Gentiles. And he uses this in a kind of a sassy remark of, yeah, God's judgment is coming to you first and then to the Gentiles. So he is, as Chris was swinging last week, he's throwing punches and now he's facing the Jews and he's saying, I'm not messing around. This is serious, you too will face judgment. In verse six, Paul shares that God will judge both Jews and Gentiles and he will do so fairly. So we're reminded again that God will judge everyone and in doing so, no one will escape and it's done in complete fairness. And he explains in verses seven through 11 that people will be judged by their hearts and the lives that they have lived. So for the evil person, they will face wrath and anger. For the good person, they will receive honor and glory. For both Jews and Gentiles, this is the same judgment. Now, if you're thinking too about that judgment, that's a little too simplistic. For the evil person, for the good person, well, remember, this is Paul building an argument. So parts that are maybe have gaps right now, he will fill in later. In the coming chapters, we're gonna hear more about good and evil and what that is and who falls under those camps. But for right now, he just says, God will judge fairly based on the lives that they have lived and based on their hearts.

And then in 12 through 16, Paul is describing God's judgment on Jews and on anyone who had the law. We've heard this before, right? It's not those who hear the law, but those who obey. It depends on the response. Pastor Chris preached on this, again in the Sermon on the Mount, when dealing with building your house upon the rock. those who hear Jesus' words, then have a decision. Where will they build their house? And God is saying it's not just those, or Paul is saying it's not those who hear, but what they do after they hear. Verse 14, Paul is telling us that even for people who do not have the law, like Israel, Israel had the law from way back in the Old Testament, and there are many people now in Rome with different backgrounds and nationalities coming to the church. They didn't have the law, but Paul is saying there's something innate, natural inside of them that knows what is good and what isn't. And that comes from being made in the image of God. God has put in all of us something different than the rest of creation, and that is his image. And when I say image, think more likeness, not physical characteristics, but inner character, being made in the likeness, the character of God. So we are made in his image, his character, And therefore simply being human means that on an inner level, deep within us, we know to a certain extent what is good and what is evil. And so Paul is saying that even for those who didn't have the law, the official, the 10 commandments and everything in the Old Testament, they could still know what is good and what is wrong. And if they live by that voice within them that's telling them what is good, they too could possibly receive the honor and glory of God. coming to believe in the faith of Jesus Christ. And so how necessary are Paul's words to the Romans back then? How necessary are they for us today? I think they're incredibly necessary for us to hear because as a group of believers in a church, I'm not saying this church, but just in general, churches can quickly become a place of judgment, of condemnation, where believers just condemn those outside the walls of the church, outside of that church family, we start to look down on people that are not a part of this body of believers.

And we make this divide between us and them even bigger, saying we are over here and you non-believers are over there. Or to reference that movie scene, we tend to stand next to God and say, "Yeah, all of you, not me, but all of you guys." We wanna be a place known for loving like God has loved us, known for compassion, for kindness. We can also be known for knowing the truth and living by the truth, but hopefully we're not known for condemning people. So for us today, there can be a tension. Living as Christians, we wanna present and live this inner transformation that the Spirit is doing inside of us. At the same time, we can't lose our ability to be vulnerable and to relate with those who are struggling, to those who are in the midst of sin. If we give off this attitude that we are better than others or above people, then we're losing our ability to witness. So there's this tension that we must deal with, living a life being transformed by God and yet not being above people, not living a life that says because of God and what he's doing in me, I'm actually better than you. It's not how Jesus taught us to live, it's not how he taught us to minister. And so as we encounter new people that God brings into our lives, or maybe the people that were already there, but as we transform, we kind of sense this, well, now we're kind of going down different paths. May we fight against the urge to have any sort of dominance or superiority over them, whether in interactions or just in our minds even, thinking that we are better than them. Instead, our prayer should be that we see a person made in the image of God, standing before us to recognize our responsibility to be a light to them. Whether they're a believer or not, whether we even know of their relationship with God, may we just have an intentional humility and boldness to present Christ in everything that we say and do.

Let's not sit behind our religion as a guard thinking that we are above the messiness of other people around us. 'Cause as Paul points out, we'll all be judged by God. It's our hearts that matter, not necessarily how clean and pristine our lives look on the outside to other people. So in this first section of chapter two, we see that God's judgment is for everyone. We see that God will judge fairly and with no favoritism. And we are reminded that we are not in a place to condemn. It's never our role. As we move into the second half of this chapter, Paul will further explain how the role, what the rule of the law is.

And so I wanna just present now this little question, does the law save us? Don't answer it, just in your heads, think about that. Does the law save us? Let me go ahead and read our second half of the chapter.

Verse 17 says, "Now if you call yourself a Jew, if you rely on the law and boast in God, if you know his will and approve of what is superior because you are instructed by the law, if you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in the dark, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of little children, because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth. You then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? As it is written, God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you. Circumcision has value if you observe the law, but if you break the law, you have become as though you had not been circumcised. So then, if those who are not circumcised keep the law's requirements, will they not be regarded as though they were circumcised? The one who is not yet circumcised physically and yet obeys the law will condemn you, who even though you have the written code and circumcision are a law breaker. A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a person's praise is not from other people, but from God.

I'll be honest, Paul is really wordy, and it's really hard to read sometimes. He just packs so much in there, there's so much. So Paul is continuing this argument that the Jews are not justified simply by having the law. He references their own hypocrisy as they teach others or inform others of the law, but they don't even uphold it themselves. He uses circumcision as an example of how being Jewish only holds value if that person also obeys and lives a holy life. Ethnicity is not as important as a person's heart. I grew up in a church, going to youth group, And in the past 15 years, I've known many of my fellow youth group friends to walk away from the faith. And many of them referenced, as I had conversations with them, the hypocrisy they saw within the church, from people in their lives calling themselves Christians, not living a Christian life. And I'm not saying that Christian hypocrisy justifies them abandoning their faith, But I think I get some of Paul's frustration here as he's talking to the Jews saying, "You were supposed to be a light, be a representative. "And you talk a certain talk that is what God's truth is, "but the way you live your life "is going against those very words that you teach." And I think the same thing happens today. Non-believers are looking down on God because of the way Christians in their lives have acted, giving a false testimony of who God is, a really bad representation of God's character. And it's humbling to think about some of these friends that I've had, a couple of them who were close friends, and we haven't talked about this, but I wonder, did any of my actions fall in that camp of something that they saw as hypocrisy? They saw me at a younger age, so I've gone through different seasons and maturity levels in my life, but back then, I may have misrepresented Christ. Did any of the sin that I let live in my life, that I let fester within me, that I even lived into, did any of that play a part of them walking away from their faith? I don't know. And maybe some of you have wondered something similar about someone in your life, or maybe you're that person who has struggled with hypocrisy in the church. But Paul's words here remind us to be mindful of how we live our lives. to be mindful that other people are watching us and it matters how we live. Not just what we say, not just when someone asks, what do you believe? And then we have the right answers. But from every moment of every day, the words that we say in conversation, how we are with our kids, how we are with friends, what we live out matters. And it shows what's in our hearts.

Paul's words here remind us to be mindful. His warning and scolding of the Jews who were guilty of this is a warning for us too. So let's take a deeper look at some of these verses. Paul is again putting the spotlight on the attitude of moral superiority. He says that you Jews were relying on the law. And again, this is the thought that they had final exemption from God's judgment. So Paul is making sure, he's like ripping it up to shreds. Anything the Jews thought they could stand on to say, no, we're gonna be okay, no, whatever God's judgment is for the Gentiles not for us. He is making sure there's not a shred of that left in them. He's ripping it up. Paul, in verse 19, is pointing to some old references here. The original reference is that God, found in Isaiah 42 verse 16, that God is a guide to the blind. The blind being Israel, they don't know what they're doing, God is their guide. Jesus, in the New Testament, makes a riff on this, mocking the Pharisees, insulting them, calling them blind guides. They're the guides, but they don't know what they're doing.

And so Paul is mocking now the Jewish Christians in the early church calling them guides to the blind. They're again trying to be like God, but you can't be like God. In verses 21 through 23, Paul is pointing out the hypocrisy again. The Jews are not justified by having the law. They are doing the very thing that the ungodly do. They're dishonoring God. They have the law, they possess the law, but they They fail to faithfully heed its commands, and therefore they undermine the law's purpose. And then in 24 through 29, Paul wraps up his point and shows how misguided the Jewish thought could be at that time. In 24, he reminds them that God elected Israel as bearers of his promise, to bless other nations. Somewhere along the line, Israel kind of got selfish with that blessing and didn't feel like sharing it, and felt like, yeah, we'll share some of the blessing, but we're like the OG people here, so we get special status. And Paul's saying, no, it's not how it is. The Jews' hypocrisy instead is making the Gentiles blaspheme God's name. And again, this should make us pause and reflect on our own lives and actions and words. Are we representing God, helping other people better understand who God is, or are you misrepresenting him? Paul then gets into circumcision as a practice closely connected with the covenant to Israel and the Jewish identity.

Paul is warning them that their disobedience decreases the value of their ritual and covenant that they are so attached to. So Paul, again, is making sure that every possible point of these highly religious Jews in the early Roman church might be able to stand on is knocked over. You think, he's saying to them, you think your association with the law can save you? No, it can't. You think because you're circumcised and that's a sign of the covenant, you think that will save you? No, it doesn't. And in verse 29, he wraps it up, Paul says, he's emphasizing God's desire for genuine loyalty and obedience with heart, mind, and soul. And that's a callback to Deuteronomy when God is talking to his people in the greatest command, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, Jesus would reiterate that to his disciples. So Paul is making it clear what is demanded to be saved. And it is not the law that saves, but it is Christ who saves. He's kind of teasing here, right? We're not gonna get, well, in the coming chapters, we're gonna get a better explanation of how Christ saves in this argument, but he's just laying the foundation here for it. The law is not the answer.

I think of another story in the Bible that makes, I think brings a lot of clarity to those who called themselves believers, but only thought they were believers 'cause of the law. And that's the story of Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a Pharisee, not just any Pharisee, but he was the ruler of the Jews. Jesus even called him the teacher of Israel. Nicodemus was the top dog during Jesus's time. And even though there's a couple different ways to approach the story of Nicodemus, what is true is that Nicodemus was someone who thought they had a tight relationship, sounded Australian right there, that was awesome. They had a tight relationship with God. He thought that he was in. He thought he didn't have anything to worry about. I'm God's special servant. I teach God's people, the nation of Israel. Nicodemus' whole life was devoted to God and his law in a way that honestly would put us all to shame. Like Nicodemus, he had the whole Old Testament memorized. We don't, even as pastors, we do not have the Old Testament memorized. I live closely to this book and I open it often. The one area that Nicodemus was mistaken in is the area that mattered most, And it's what Jesus had to address in John 3-3 when he says, "You must be born again because you're not saved." You think you are. You think that your relationship and how you live your life according to all of God's laws, you think that you are saved, but you are not. And we tend to think of this interaction with Nicodemus as a evangelistic story of Jesus reaching someone who's not saved. And I think I just want to change that tone a little bit to someone who is on a spiritual pilgrimage. He clearly knew of God, he clearly respected God and desired to glorify God through the law. He obeyed the law. And I would better not call Nicodemus a non-believer, I would call him a not yet believer. And I think that mindset would help us today too. Instead of this divide of, well, we're believers and you're not, to have this mindset that Jesus did of I know where you're at and I'm gonna help,

I'm gonna give you a push one step closer to God. And if we view other people not knowing their status, we don't interact with strangers, neighbors, or even if you do, if you don't think that they are a believer yet, think of them as a not yet believer. And what can I do to give them a push in the right direction? What, in my interactions, in my words, in my, the way I live my life around them, how can I push them towards Christ? They're not, the non-believer seems so final. Like, that person's a non-believer. They've made their decision and it's not worth my time. They're a not yet believer. They could be, we don't know. And let's hope and let's push to help them believe. And that's what Jesus does with Nicodemus. Nicodemus had his relationship with God all mixed up, putting all the emphasis on the law, understanding the law, following the law. But he missed that the law points to our inability to keep the law. The law is so perfect and we are not, we will never be able to uphold the law perfectly. And it shows that we need Christ. So Jesus had to tell Nicodemus, you need to be born again. You're not saved from God's judgment. He had to learn that it wasn't his understanding, knowledge that saved him. It was belief in Christ, the need to be born again, to be transformed by the dwelling of the Holy Spirit.

And that lesson that Nicodemus learned, that Paul is also talking about here to the early church in Rome, is one that some people need to hear today, even within the church.

Maybe here in this room, or you know people who call themselves Christians, but maybe they are, they misunderstand what really saves them. Maybe they think that they're ties with the church, or how they were brought up in a Christian home, or how they attend church every Sunday, or they are a moral person, and they're just a law-abiding citizen, maybe they think that's enough. And they're like, "I know I'm good, I'm good with God. I'm not gonna face God's judgment." But they would be incorrect. And we would hate for them to get to the end and find out that they were wrong this whole time. And so if you know someone, if the Spirit's prompting you right now and saying, "That might be me," there's no shame in that. There's no shame at all. Nicodemus was someone who was on a spiritual pilgrimage. And it took, he was in that place for years until Jesus finally interacted with him. It can be years before the truth of God sinks in until we fully understand. And we praise him when it clicks. We just praise him for when it does, finally, we understand what it is that we need to do to be saved. And so if you're here today, I just wanna say this. If you're here and you felt the Spirit prompting you, you'd be like, "I'm not sure if I am saved. I might've been putting my hope in the law. I might've been putting my hope in following what the Bible says without that relationship of Christ, without the work of Christ." Come find me or Pastor Chris Affords. We would love to talk to you and just further understand where you're at and help you in coming closer to Jesus. The law doesn't save us. Christ alone can do that.

And again, now after chapter two, we have this foundational brick being laid down that we are all sinners facing God's judgment. So from the story of Nicodemus to the words of Paul here, we have a better understanding of God's law. And it's clear that the law doesn't save, but only the work of the Spirit. And next week, we're gonna move to God's faithfulness. So one layer of this argument is down. I'm gonna move on to the next layer. Paul has leveled the playing field. Not all of the early Roman church is aware that Jew or Gentile, they are now in the same camp. And he's trying again, if we remember our backstory, there's cause for division in this church, and he's saying, look, you guys are all in the same, you're all in the same room here. There's not one that's better than the other. You're all sinners facing God's judgment in need of Christ. In Spring Valley, as we continue to go through this series, as God continues to work in each of us and refine us and transform our hearts and our minds, let's heed this warning from Paul.

Let's not think that we are superior to anyone. Let's be intentional to remain humble. Let's be proactive in building each other up. Let's be willing to make the sacrifice that is committing to a body of believers. And I say sacrifice because it takes time, it takes energy, it takes vulnerability, patience and understanding. But this is what Paul desired. He desired that the church, that we today at Spring Valley be unified, that we be together in our commonality, in the belief in Christ that we share. So this week, all of us in our lives, from work to home, friends to community group here, let's choose to interact with each other, interact with God and partner with God in what he is doing in our lives and in the lives of others, amen? Let's pray. God, again, thank you for your word that teaches us that we cannot be saved without you. No matter how good we are, no matter how well we understand your law and live by it, it's an incomplete picture and we're still at a loss and we need your son and the salvation that he brings.

And in the coming weeks, as we get into God's faithfulness and how He has saved us and what salvation looks like through this letter to the Romans. I pray for those of us who are saved that we would just have a deeper appreciation and gratitude for the work that you've done. And for those who aren't yet saved, I pray that you would bring them closer to you. God, I pray for the people in our lives that we may think or have a notion that they're not yet a believer. I pray that we would not put them in that box of a non-believer, but we would be intentional to reach out to them and represent you well. Help us to be mindful of our words and actions that everything we say and do is pointing to you. And we want it to be an accurate picture of your character. God, give us the strength, empower us to live for you with everything that we have. We know you will, we know you can, and we give you all the glory. We pray this in your son's name, amen.

Romans - Part 2

Warning Against Ungodliness - Romans 1:18-32

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Good morning, everybody. A little drizzly, gloomy out there. been kind of a, I don't know, one of those weeks, I guess. And it doesn't seem to be going anywhere. So we're going to continue in our series today, part two of Romans chapter one. And so Pastor Andre did a fantastic job last week and set us up on this journey that we're going to be taking here for quite a while. We're going to go kind of verse by verse, section by section to the book of Romans for the next season, couple seasons. We'll have a couple breaks in there. But I'm really excited about this. Pastor Andre and I have been talking about this for quite a while now and praying through it. And he kicked it off last week, and the Apostle Paul writing this letter to Rome doesn't pull any punches. He opens up the chapter, boom, coming and swinging. I feel like last week Andre just presented like just a giant big old steak dinner and said, let's chew on this for a while. And the theology of this opening section was just so dense. We could probably spend a week, two weeks, three weeks, a month just in this opening section. We won't do that. But Paul just loads up this letter and it's not going to get any lighter. Paul's just going to keep it coming, coming, and coming. And if Paul last week was like a pop, pop, this week is going to be that left hook coming in. So buckle up this morning. No.

But Andre did a fantastic job setting us up and Paul isn't pulling back. Paul isn't slowing down. He didn't hit the gas into the turn then he's kind of feathering off and just kind of coasting like he is in it to win it. And I think I was having a conversation with Angus, a worship leader this morning. We were talking about Paul and who he is and his zeal and his heart and his passion that just flows out of this letter is because of his heart for the gospel and who Jesus is. And this is the series, this is the theme for the entire book of Romans, is all about the power of the gospel. It's all about Jesus. It's all about who he is, what he has done, and how he's here to change lives. And so Paul doesn't pull back, and we're jumping in this morning. If you wanna give a title, Paul is gonna just hit it and give a incredible, serious warning against ungodliness. Paul is kind of preaching some fire and brimstone this morning. So you know that's not my style. That's not usually who I am. But I want to honor the scripture and honor God's word. And so we're going to jump in and dive in today, if that's all right with you guys. We're going to go for it. So let's start in verse 16 because I want to back up a smidge because Paul here kind of tags on what Andre shared last week to kind to be the on-ramp onto where we're going with the scripture this morning.

So starting in verse 16 it says this, it says, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith. As it is written, the righteous shall live by faith." "For," we're gonna go right into this section, "For the wrath of God is revealed in heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened, claiming to be wise, but they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, and birds, and animals, and creeping things. Paul runs right into this section after this opening, talking about who God is, and Jesus, and the gospel, and says, The glory of God has been shown and revealed to everyone since the beginning of creation."

Ever since the beginning of the world, God has created around us, as we look out, I love this sanctuary to be able to look out here, Look out here and to see the nature and the glory of God that points us to him. And not only in that, but God also puts within us deep down inside a desire for something bigger than ourselves. A desire for something to make us go, hmm. A desire to go, if this is the world, there's gotta be something out there. And that wooing and that drawing is actually what brings us and draws us into who God is. It's impossible to live on this planet without recognizing God, as nature is proof of his existence. Whether you're toes in the sand on the beach, you're up looking at the snow in Lake Tahoe, you look at animals. I know I make the joke around here, but you think God's creative? Look at the platypus, it's hilarious. God has a sense of humor. The sun, the moon, the stars, even Psalm 19:1, the Psalmist says, "The heavens declare your glory, "the glory of God. "The skies proclaim the works of his hands." Also says in Psalm 33 five, "The Lord loves righteous and justice. "The earth is full of his unfailing love." Jesus himself, even in Matthew seven, talks about knocking and seeking and pursuing God. anybody who knocks, anybody who's, I'm standing at the door knocking, if anybody would just answer me, I'm right there. And so Paul here is sitting this, setting this thing up to say, say Jesus and God Himself, just everything around us is leading and drawing us to Him. That's what Paul's saying. And humanity either chooses to follow that leading, which takes them to Christ and finding salvation in Jesus, or they choose not to. It's one or two of the options.

Just coming to the knowledge of God isn't enough. Let me say that again. hearing isn't enough. We just talked about this, right? In our master class series talking about the sermon on the mount, the difference between the wise builder and the not so wise builder, the one who built on rock and the one who built on sand. It wasn't an issue of hearing. They both heard. It was their choice. It was their choice that made the difference of whether they were gonna hear and choose to do that or not hear or hear and not choose to do that. Paul Paul here is saying a very similar thing. He's saying that nature itself, there's enough drawing and leading and wooing of us to begin to seek something greater. And that something greater is God. Now I'm not saying this is a salvation thing. I'm saying this is what leads us towards the salvation piece of saying yes to Jesus in our lives. What I'm talking about here is that in this wooing and drawing, there's two choices. Either we say yes to that or we say no. And for those who have chosen not to follow that leading, Paul here is saying they are led by their own desires. 'Cause we don't choose God, who do we choose? Me, ourselves. And in that choosing of their own selves, they create many fake false gods or begin to view themselves as God. Paul says it right here plainly. They became futile in their thinking, their foolish hearts were darkened, claiming to be wise. These are the results of left to our own thinking. That we begin to believe that we know it all, right? We think we have this all figured out, and we put our own crown on our own head and claim our royal throne and say, I am God. And we rule our own lives like that, and we try to rule other people's lives like that. That's what happens. And Paul says all of this is actually so foolish. Foolish because they exchange the truth of the glory of God in our lives and become self-proclaimed gods.

I think we read the Old Testament sometimes and we see these stories of the Israelite people or other nations and they're making these false gods. We go, "How crazy are they? How foolish could they be to carve something out or to cast it with molten metal or whatever and go, "This is God. I will bow down and worship this statue." How insane are these people? And yet we do it in our own lives. We're not necessarily building a little statue out of clay or rock or wood or metal, but we make idols in our own lives of money, materialism, education, a political stance, fame, influence, status, a certain neighborhood or zip code to live in, you name it, we make our own gods. And Paul here is stating a life not choosing God leads down a very, very dark path. And he speaks from experience because that was Paul when he was Saul. Before Paul came and had that encounter on the Damascus Road, and we read about in Acts, where God showed up in his life in a massive, drastic way and shook him to the point that, do I have your attention yet, Saul? That moment when Saul's idol was persecuting Christians and being the religious elite of that day, Paul says, I know what that's like to have an idol in your life, that that's all you think about. You live on it, you breathe it, you focus in on it. Every single moment of every single day I've been there and God rocked my world and saved me by His grace. And I now, Paul, am trying to tell every person I know, don't live that life because it is a dark, dark place.

Let's continue on, verse 24. "Therefore, God gave them up in the lust of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth for God, about God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever, amen. For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature, and men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of righteousness, evil, covetous, malice. They were full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They were gossip, slanders, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.”

Whoo! Pow, pow, left hook. Paul throws down. So to recap, to put this scripture into a couple sentences, it goes like this. "God, since the beginning of time, revealed Himself in creation and in a leading to Himself inside each of us." Humanity either chosen to follow that leading to God or chosen not to. For those who have chosen not to follow that leading, they are led by their own desires. We just read a list. entering into creating either many fake false gods for themselves to worship or bringing themselves as gods. Those desires are not of God and lead to a place of sin, choosing one's own selfishness. That selfishness, left unchecked, leads to sinful desires, which ultimately leads to sin. And Paul lists those out. He says, "Lust, greed, envy, anger, strife, malice, hate, pride, these are the results of choices." That's what this is. These left to our own demise, our own thinking, our own going, "I am God," lead to this dark place of sin.

Paul says it perfect in Romans 1.25, "Because they exchange the truth about God for a lie, and worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen." Paul here also is saying that these choices aren't being made in a vacuum. But these choices here made, as he says in verse 20, that his eternal power and divine nature has been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. Paul here is saying, these people, you people, humanity, the created being of God, the created being, the only thing that was created in the image of God, us humans, understand what is being at play here. And Paul says, "You are without excuse." This hits hard. Because of the revealed God and the leading towards righteousness inside all of humanity, The consequences of the aforementioned sin that I listed off is death.

Paul's not beating around the bush. He's not buttering people up. He's not like doing the soft lead in. Paul's just like Kramer, like boom, right into the apartment going, "Hey, what's up? Do you know Jesus?" Like he's just like coming in hot. And I'm like, "Paul, bro, pump the brakes, dude." But there was obviously something in his spirit. He's hearing God saying, "Paul, I need you to tell the church in Rome what's going on. I need you to remind them what is at stake and it is their life." This isn't just a, "Hey, here's an investment opportunity. Maybe it works out. Maybe it doesn't." Paul's like, "This is serious business. This isn't something to be messed around with. And he's talking about directly saying that the end result of sin is death. And this is a place that everyone finds themselves in. This isn't for this person over here. It isn't for that worst criminal over here. This isn't for that horrible person over there. This is everyone. And Paul himself in the next chapter here, in chapter 3, we get to in a few weeks, is going to talk about this himself. He says, "No one is righteous," Romans 3 23, "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." It's everybody. Paul himself then again talks in Romans chapter 7 about himself being stuck in this cycle of sin in this fleshly, this carnal, unspiritual struggle with sin. Paul understands the struggle of sin firsthand. He isn't some perfect dude out there, because we only know the perfect person to ever be on earth was Jesus. Paul isn't this perfect dude out there going, "Yep, sin's hard. You guys need to fix that problem yourselves." Paul's going, "I know it myself. I struggle with it, but he understands the implications, the drastic nature of it. And it's because of that that he can understand. And he doesn't give himself an excuse. Not only no excuse for himself, but then if you remember the ending part there, he talks about others, those around him who also know better and are supposed to be living that way and see it done in other people they basically have committed it themselves. So there's literally absolutely zero excuse of anything.

The struggle is so real in our lost and broken world. There's been a progressive degradation of morals in our society and this debate over right versus wrong. We see in society this struggle of well it's not that wrong but do I really have to do what's right? there's got to be some gray area where I can kind of play around in, right? Paul here is saying no, it's not. And I think Paul draws on this even so much so of Hebrew tradition and teaching that goes back to King Solomon himself. If you guys know, King Solomon was the son of David. He was the third great king of Israel And he himself prayed to God and asked for wisdom. And he was granted so much wisdom that it was said he was the wisest person ever to live on the face of the earth, both then and forevermore. But King Solomon was the top dog. He knew it all. He reigned in that wisdom. He led Israel well, except for his weakness. And he had a blind spot, a fleshly weakness, a struggle, that he, over time, slowly tarnished the holiness of him seeking God through opening himself up to outside influence. And that outside influence came in the form of his 700 wives and his 300 concubines. And God had warned him, even the wisest dude on Earth has weakness. They're human, not God. And King Saul himself talks about, even recorded through 1 Kings chapter 11, this understanding that this compromise in what we worship and what we allow to influence our lives leads us down a path of immorality. That idolatry ends in immorality. And I would say specifically sexual immorality. I don't think there's a difference there.

And there is nothing different from King Solomon in the early 10th century BC, but it's also true in this first century of Romans in the church in Rome, which is just coming about 20 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus. Rome was known for sex. They were. Rome literally worshipped sex. That's what they were focused on. Their abuse of, their pride in, the rampant infatuation of sex shaped their culture and their societal norms. life was completely influenced, wrapped up in, and surrounded in sex. Some scholars would go as far to say that that was actually at the core of the demise of the Roman Empire, was their infatuation with sex. And Paul here is giving a harsh warning against this ungodliness. Paul's giving this warning because of the wisdom he knows from King Solomon. Because the way that the Romans worshipped and viewed and participated in sex is the polar opposite of which sex was originally intended. God has this beautiful image and purpose of sex, which was different than how they viewed it in Rome. See, sex created by God, it is intended for a God-centered marriage between a man and a woman. It is the fulfillment of God's intended creation of the intimacy. And just like the day that Paul wrote this letter, our society today has a corrupt image of sex as well. taking what is supposed to be this loving, emotional communion, bringing together of two hearts, is exchanged for a cheap, manipulative, broken, loveless shell of its original form. And it's an attempt to steal away what God intended for good. Sex in itself within a God-centered marriage actually is a form of worship to God. You ever thought about it like that? And this worship towards God has been polluted by society. Paul here is saying it was never supposed to be like this. It's never how God intended it. But in our selfishness, in our humanity, We made ourselves out to be God and said, "We know better." And that's sin.

And God hates sin. He absolutely hates it. That's just who God is. He is a holy God. And because of that, there has to be a separation between that which is holy and godly and that which is ungodly or sin and evil. Psalm 5, 4 says this, it says, "For you are not a God who takes pleasure and wickedness. "No evil person dwells with you." Paul here is saying, either you're the one who sees God in His nature and the leading inside all of us and responds to follow God, or you're the one who chooses to follow our own desires, our sin nature. And this is black and white and it's hard to swallow. I don't wanna be up here saying this this morning. I don't wanna be preaching a Psalm that says, "Hey, encouragement, trust in the Lord. He'll give you every all desires of your heart. Just seek after Him, it'll all be good." But Seth's not preaching the whole Bible. That's taking this idea of God and focusing only in on this loving God. You wouldn't make an excuse, this is loving, but we've painted this image in our mind of this flowery, loving God, right? Full of grace and mercy and love. Ever patient, abounding in forgiveness. But you can't have that dimension of God without His seriousness of how He views sin. I see it in an equating of a loving parent. You love your kids unconditional. But when they do something wrong, your heart breaks for them. And sometimes that requires a punishment. Sometimes that requires having to go, "I need to get your attention because you're not walking in the way of the Lord." And as parents, that's our obligation to do so. Kids are only on lease with us for only so long, right? And we have to do everything we can to lead them towards God and to push them in that direction. And sometimes it means getting serious with them. But that means we deeply, deeply love them.

And that's what I see here. I see a God who cares for us so much that he would send his son from heaven to come down to live on earth in our struggles, continue to be perfect, to sacrifice, to give himself up a painful, painful, excruciating death on a cross. Defeat death in the grave, rise again so that we could walk in redemption with Him, but that walking in redemption of Him means He wants to change who we are. God loves us so much that He sent His Son to die for us, but He also loves us so much to not leave us the way that he finds us. That's what Paul is talking about here. And in our church, we want to have just this loving God who's accepting of all which he is, but we begin to paint this picture that puts us in a place where we put sins into categories. Well, it's just a white lie. It's not, this is just a small sin compared to this big one over here. Like I'm not going there. I'm just, no I'm not gonna look at it. If I don't look at it I don't have to admit that it's in my life. We justify our actions. We minimize the way in which those pull us apart from God and lead us in unrighteousness. Or even worse, we get into the comparison game. Well, God, I'm not as bad as that guy. Or I haven't done something as bad as they did. I mean, God, let's be honest. I show up to church once a month, drop a couple ones on the way out. Like, God, good man, right? We're good. And I'll tell you, this isn't a situation where we're losing salvation or being pulled away or works versus faith. It's still a faith-based relationship of saying yes to Jesus. But Jesus has a purpose for us. And when we compromise and we sit in these places, we're not being used fully to God for our full purpose.

Paul here is saying, stop it. Stop it. Just stop it. You know better. You know you shouldn't be doing it. Just stop it. You know better. It doesn't matter. Well, God, God, the world says it's OK. It's not that big of a deal. Now, here's the part that I hate. I'm going to quote my mother right now. Well, if everybody jumped off a bridge, would you jump off of it? I hated that as a kid. Like, Mom, I've already inspected the water. I've already checked it out. It's not that far. Like, it's going to be OK. No. Paul here is saying, you know better. Knock it off. But the reality is that everyone has struggles. Yes, 100%. Everybody's got struggles. And Paul himself, on multiple occasions, through multiple letters, says he himself that he is not perfect. Nobody is, just Jesus. And the struggle in this is that there is seen and there is unseen struggles. And the danger is the unseen. When everything on the outside looks perfect, This is that comparison game. That is so dangerous. But I also want to say this morning that the power of the gospel can overcome anything, that nobody is too far gone. Well, Pastor Chris, you just don't know. I've heard stories, man. I've heard stories of God redeeming people that never thought would ever be redeemed. Some of your guys' stories that you have shared with me, you've been in those places, and God's light penetrates the darkest of the darkest of the darkest, can break through even the calloused of hearts.

That is this power of the gospel that Paul is preaching here right now. We could get into so many different things with this scripture this morning, but I want us to focus in on as we close today, is that it doesn't have to be like this. It doesn't have to be this struggle. It doesn't have to be this power that sin might have in your life. It doesn't have to be this struggle all of the time. 'Cause God wants to free you from this. We sang a song this morning, bring it all to the table. There ain't nothing he ain't seen before. I love that line of that song. He's not surprised by any of it. So just bring it to him. And on the other side, we need to stop minimizing sin in our life. That's not that bad. God doesn't want any of it. He doesn't like any of it. He doesn't want it to have any power or any crack or anything. Do you know water is one of the most powerful things on the face of the earth? Water can get into a tiny little crack and begin to expand. And when it freezes, it presses that nothing can stop it. God doesn't want any little crack in your life, even if it's a small crack. That's God's heart.

So the question becomes for us today, how do we respond to this scripture? I think respond in a way of how can you and I live a righteous life? A life that is focused in on who God is for us, allowing him to pour over us and to cleanse us from any little tiny itsy bitsy teeny-weeny thing of sin in our life and to not go, "It's not that bad." That's the kind of attitude that King Solomon had that ultimately went to his demise. It's just one wife from this place over here. We'll put Baal up so she can worship. How can we exponentially increase the revealed glory of God in our world? To allow the gospel of God to completely saturate our lives, bringing the righteousness of God here and now. I think it's amazing that God put his glory in creation so that if nobody on the face of the earth ever recognized God or worshiped him, he would still have recognition in this place. You ever think about that?

So the question for us becomes, will we either reflect that and build upon it, or we, in our settling of saying, it's not that bad, it's not that much sin, it's just okay, Will we then detract and push away God's glory here on earth? Vision of mission says to see our community saturated with the glory of God through making disciples in the everyday stuff of life. Do we add to that glory of God being here and now on earth? Or do we detract from that? So a way to add to that is through making disciples in the everyday stuff of life. of working through all of that junk by the power of God helping each other, encouraging each other, pointing each other to go to Jesus, to Jesus, to Jesus. And this is what Paul is saying. Will we further his reflection of righteousness in this world or will we detract from it? The choice is ours.

Romans - Part 1

Paul's Greeting - Romans 1:1-17

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

We are beginning a new series this morning. We're getting Romans. I'm excited for this. We're going to be in Romans for quite some time. So buckle in, settle down, and just we're going to be in Romans. I'll let you know. We're going to be in Romans for really through the end of the year. So we'll take some breaks for Easter. And it's true. It's a 24 week series. So yeah, I'm excited. We're going-- it's going to be a lot, but it's going to be really good. So we're going to dive in because it's a lot. If you've read Romans, you know it is dense. There's a lot to unpack, so we've got to-- we're already behind. We've got to go. All right. This is-- Romans is kind of like a timeless Christian theology book for all believers, wherever they are around the world through all time. But it still demands that we read it in its proper context, in the way that it was written-- who it was written for. We need to know that in order to understand it correctly and fully. And so with that desire and aim, I want to try to paint the scene before we dive into the actual text, just kind of paint the scene of what's going on.

So I want to cover Paul, I want to cover Rome and the early church, just a little bit here. So Paul, many of you know, was formally Saul. Saul's story was that he was a Pharisee, grew up as a Pharisee, and grew up around the time of Jesus. And so he saw everything that happened. And he was against the early church, persecuted the early church. And really was the name of the Pharisee that had risen to the top. He was a top dog, and until Jesus got a hold of him. And so again, you may be familiar with Saul's conversion to Paul on the road to Damascus, where Jesus confronted him and said, why are you persecuting me? And from that moment, Saul now, Paul, his life has changed. And he goes from, of all people that God could have grabbed, the very one who had taken joy in seeing the church suffer, will eventually suffer for God's church. And I love that radical transformation that happens in him. God has chosen Paul to be the one, the instrumental piece of growth for the early church. This is God's guy that's going to bring about new churches, bring about the gospel message to new corners of the world. Fast forward some time in Paul's life, we won't have time to cover all of him, but by the time he writes the letter Romans, it's been 25 years since he's been converted. So he's had some time in the mission fields. He spent much of that time kind of north above Jerusalem and then east in Aliricum, which is, I didn't know where that was, so modern day. Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia, Herzegovina, I think I said that right, Croatia, all in that area. Paul has been there planting churches for years, for years. And then he comes to this point, this transitional point in his apostolic career. And it's a time of transition for him where he is coming out of that mission fields and heading back towards Jerusalem and has thoughts of where he's going to go next. And along the way of, we'll cover this in a bit of where he wants to go, he's going to have to confront some issues happening in Jerusalem and in some of the other early churches that he was not a part of yet. But Paul has been preparing for this, some of these big church issues for some time. And the work in the mission field is a pivotal piece of why he was chosen to help address what is going on in the early church. So that's Paul, a little bit of Paul, just a little bit.

Rome, the setting for which this letter is written, is the dominant nation at the time. Rome is a world power and pretty much the world power. There's no one else really going up against them yet. They had control over the known world. And the early church at this time was not... It wasn't started by apostles. When I was prepping for this, I was like, yeah, early church. one of the apostles went out there and started it. No, actually, most scholars believe that the early Roman church was started by Jews who were converted at Pentecost. In Acts 2, when Pentecost happened, and they left Jerusalem and went to Rome. And there was already a Jewish community there in Rome, but these early Christian Jews went over there and started the church. And so this church has been happening for years, and it's great until it's not so great. There's some tension that arises. So at first the church is mostly Jewish people. But then as they start to grow and as Gentiles start to come into the fold and start to know Jesus, there's a tension that arises. And that tension is that because the early church was mostly Jewish, not just people, but in their customs. So they had mostly Jewish songs, they had mostly Jewish customs and things that they did in the service, mostly Jewish people, and the leaders were mostly Jewish. And so then there rose this tension for these Gentiles who were commenting and saying, "How much, how Jewish do I have to become? What is Jesus calling me to? Do I have to become a Jew to become a follower of Jesus?" And there was this ripe, it was ripe for division. It could have gone, "Well, let's start our own church. Let's do our own thing." And this is where Paul, God's bringing Paul into the mixing, "Hey, I don't want my church to split, and I need you to address some things going on." So, yeah. the circumstances were perfect for Paul to come in. Douglass Mew, a famous theologian, points out that what Paul had been doing in his years of missionary work is probably why Jesus or God picked him for this. He had been doing missionary work, planting churches, and integrating cultures and early church together. He had been doing that all over. one, maybe compared to other apostles who had stayed pretty local to Jerusalem, that would know best on how to bring the church together. Yes you're from this background, yes you're from this culture but you can still be a part of this church. So Paul knew how this works and how it worked well. He says, "Moo this, theologian says Paul hopes that his words and God through his words will heal the most serious social and theological rift in the early church, the relationship between the Jew and the Gentile and the people of God. And this possible division, Paul sensed this disunity amongst God's people could bring ruin to the entire early church. So this is very early in the church growing. It's not established yet. It's still a movement that's happening. And so any threat to the church, Paul and the apostles felt, like this is a threat to this whole thing that God has been setting up that Jesus started. So this is much of what Paul wants to address in his letter to Rome.

And then a little bit about the letter of Romans. It is labeled as an epistle, which is a letter to a church. But unlike other epistles, the way the other epistles worked is usually there was a church there started by an apostle or a bunch of followers of Jesus. And they had any issue or questions they would send a messenger or a letter saying, "Hey, by the way, church player that planted us, this is happening, what do we do?" And they would write back and say, "All right, yeah, you need to do this." And what we have in our Bible is that response letter. We don't have the original letter, but we can deduce from how those are written, like, "Oh, they were bringing up this issue." Because that's all that Paul's talking about is addressing this. Romans doesn't have an original letter. God just put it on Paul's heart to send a letter saying, "Hey, by the way, this is me, and this is the gospel." And so it's a beautiful thing, and it's why it's kind of become our handbook for Christian theology, because it doesn't just focus on one issue, he covers everything. And he covers, when he's covering everything, he covers, we'll kind of see that Paul is a run on thinker. It's like this is the power of Jesus, who is this person, who did this, who is from, you know, just like, "Come after, come after." Which is really good, but it's also why it's so dense. Paul's like, just, he's loading it with so much information. So, the letter of Romans is a little different in a way that really benefits us. Anything else? Yes, okay. Some of the general themes that we'll see throughout Romans and through this series are things that still we need to hear today. And maybe we've heard before, but we can always be reminded of them. We'll see that Paul's addressing the continuity of God's plan of salvation from the Old Testament to the New. He addresses our sin and the need that we have. He addresses God's provision for our sin problem in the person of Christ. He covers what it means to live a holy life. This word of righteousness is a big word that Paul loves to unpack over and over again. We'll talk about security in facing suffering and death. And we know from other letters of Paul that Paul fears he doesn't fear death at all. He almost welcomes it. And there's so much more that Paul covers in Rome.

So we over the the course of our series, we aim to cover all this and understand the truth that Paul has packed in here. And I keep saying this, but there is a lot to unpack. And so, it's a little plug. Come on Sunday mornings, we're going to unpack it some more before the service. We're going to all the questions that after Chris and I preach and we're like, hey, they didn't, they didn't cover this. I still have questions. Perfect time would be Sunday morning. Good. See you there. So we'll dive in now. We'll dive into our, we're going to be covering Romans chapter 1 through 17. And even though it's just kind of the introduction, his greeting, there is still so much in here. And so let me go ahead and pray really quick and then we'll read and we'll continue.

God, Thank you for this time and for this letter to the Roman Church. Thousands of years later, it's still serving us and feeding us your truth. So I pray that through this sermon, God, that it would be your words, that we would be encouraged and empowered to understand what it means to be a follower of you. And I pray that as we leave this morning, we're encouraged to give our entire lives to you, God. Help us to understand Paul's words here to see what he's really saying, understand them in the right context. And I pray that we would have an excitement and a joy for getting into your words. So we pray this in your son's name, Amen.

I'm going to break this into a couple sections. Since I'm going to start with Romans 1 through 7. You guys can follow along on the screen or in your own Bibles. Romans 1, starting at verse 1, says, Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God, the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets and the Holy Scriptures, regarding his son, who asked his earthly life was at the Senate of David, and who through the spirit of holiness was appointed the son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord. Run on sentence, by the way. Through him we receive grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith for his namesake. And you also are among those Gentiles who are called to belong to Jesus Christ. To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be his holy people, grace and peace to you from our God, our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Alrighty. Just an introduction, right? So much in there. So much in there. Paul's, I just want to go verse by verse. But yeah, his, I mean already from the beginning, Paul is writing from a place of passion, right? This is deeply on his heart. He was moved by the spirit to reach out and to write to Romans. And I think that passion really comes through. I mean, even in just saying the word Jesus, you couldn't just say the name. You had to explain who Jesus is, right? Goes to the Old Testament. Paul is, and I love that. I hope that we keep this throughout his writing that Paul is passionate right now. that quill and or, whoever his ghost writers that's writing it down for him is like, "Oh my goodness Paul, you're going crazy." So, there's passion in the text here as Paul is writing it. We'll just dive in.

Verse one. One of the first things that we notice here and it's evidently integrating is that much of Paul's identity is wrapped up in Christ's identity. He now identifies with the person of Christ and Christ's mission and Christ's goal. And I love, again, we covered who Paul was, formerly Saul. And now his identity used to be, I am the guy that's against the church. I am the guy that is going to take down the church. Like, Saul was the one the Pharisees had hoping to, you know, get rid of the early church, that movement. And now he's totally transformed. And now his identity is fully in Christ. And at the mention of his own name, he has to bring up who Jesus is. Because he is so tied directly to him. So I love that, his identity is there. We also hear the Gospel, the Gospel of God. And a little fun point is that the Gospel back in that time was not necessarily a religious word. We hear it today and most of us, and even non-Christians, would hear the word gospel, and they would think about Christianity, they would think about the Bible, they would think about Jesus. But back in that time, the Gospel was used even by Roman generals as a term to say, as a share of victory. we just went and conquered this and they would have a gospel messenger who would go to town to town and give Updating say hey, we just had victory over this area, you know go go Rome and That was the gospel messenger and that was the gospel and so I love that Paul is riffing on that terminology He's calling himself a messenger of the biggest victory in history Christ victory over death over the enemy, he is the gospel, the gospel messenger.

He's already throwing punches. He's like, "Hey, nice to meet you. My name is Paul. Boom, gospel." He's saying the gospel, this message of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the God of the universe, who is the only one with the power to save and the victory on the cross, the meant salvation for those who believe that savior, I carry his redeeming message to all of you.

Moving on to verse, verses three through five. Again, even in this introduction, Paul is connecting the old testament to the life of Jesus. He's making sure that people are seeing the work and plan of Yahweh. That this was not a new thing that God spurred the moment was like, by the way, I think I'm going to send Jesus. No, this has been in the works since Genesis 3. Since sin entered the world, God had a plan of salvation. And this is the one, the God who created the heavens and the earth, who flooded the earth, and saved it with Noah, who, the God of Abraham, of Moses, the God of Israel through King David and Solomon, the God of the Israelites and captivity through the prophets. This, this is that God that put this in the motion. And this is him at work, something he purposed. Verse 4 emphasizes or Paul is proclaiming the power of Christ, his deity, which Paul will reference several times in this letter, continue to emphasize that Jesus is God. So for the Jewish people, he's writing to this diverse church of both Jews and Gentiles, and for the Jewish people, Paul is connecting in their minds that this is the very Messiah that was prophesied in the Old Testament. Don't wait for anyone else. Don't think that it hasn't happened yet. Jesus was here, he lived, he died, he rose again. This is him. All the prophecies that you know, Jewish people, they point to Christ. Don't miss it. And for the Gentiles, Paul is reinforcing, hopefully, what the local church is teaching them, which is, you need to know your Old Testament. This Christ, this plan has been talked about, has been written about. the Jewish people know it comes from their history. This all revolves around Christ and what he has done for us.

He's making sure they understand that you need to know the Torah, you need to know the Old Testament. And that's an issue that gets brought up even today, right? Like, "Hey, I like people, maybe within the church, but people who maybe have a distant relationship with Jesus or kind of not really in the faith." They're like, "Yeah, Jesus's words may be true, but the rest of the Bible I can't get on board with. Or yeah, I like the New Testament, but the Old Testament is really wack. It's really weird. That was a real thing that people say. And Paul's words here address that say, "No, it's all tied together. All Testament, New Testament, it is all truth." And you need to know the Old Testament to fully understand the New Testament. So Paul, bringing it together. And verse five, Paul is bringing people's attention to the life that Jesus has called believers to. He also establishes his own authority, based on Christ's authority. He's saying, "God chose me. I'm an apostle." And he's sharing his purpose as an apostle is to be a messenger of the gospel, to spread the truth of Christ. Paul's whole life purpose at this point is to see people come into obedient relationship with God. And he's saying, "You need to do this. You people, all of you in Rome, come be in obedient relationships with God." So already, just in the introduction, We see themes of God's power to save and the life of righteousness that we are called to live, surfacing to the top. Paul's giving these little hints of like, I can't even help it. I'll bring it in here, but I'm gonna write about it in chapters to come, but like, this is important.

And in verse seven, Paul's audience, again, he's writing to a diverse church, Jews and Gentiles, believers and not yet believers. People who were maybe attending the church, but not yet committed their lives to God. And he's saying, this is the entire gospel message. I'm gonna lay it out for you. All right, so this is just the first seven verses. I imagine the leaders of Rome, like when they got this letter and they're reading it and they're like all circled around and the guys reading it to themselves. Like are you done yet? He's like, done yet. I just said seven verses. I had to think about it and unpack it so much. All right, Romans 8 through 13. We'll continue. It says, first, I think my God, through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being reported all over the world. God whom I serve in my spirit in preaching the gospel of his son, is my witness how constantly I remember you, in my prayers at all times, and I pray that now it lasts by God's will, the way may be open for me to come to you. I'd long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong, that is you and I may mutually, maybe mutually encouraged by each other's faith. I do not want you to be unaware of brothers and sisters that I plan many times to come to you but have been prevented from doing so until now in order that I might have a harvest among you just as I've had among other Gentiles. So as I shared in the introduction earlier, Paul has plans. He's been cultivating this missionary heart, growing heart for more and more people to hear the gospel and he's sharing that intention with the Roman church. I'm Paul. This is about what I am and I am very, very intentional in spreading the gospel message.

Verse 8, Paul writes about how God is moving in the Roman church. And I love that, and this is still true today, when God moves in a person's life or in a group of people's life, it makes waves. When God is moving in a people and in a place, that testimony of what's happening is an encouragement and a source of joy and hope for other believers. How many of you have heard of what's happening at Asbury's University? Yeah, a lot of you. For those of you haven't, over two weeks ago, there was a chapel, a weekly chapel. They have chapels at this Christian college. And two weeks ago, this chapel didn't stop. The praise songs kept going. Times of confession, reading scripture, prayer, and it's still going. The people have been flying out to go attend, and it's amazing. It's making news all over the country that the presence of God is at this place right now, and the people there are worshiping him with everything they have. And there's no reason to stop. Why stop praising God? One pastor commented in I agree, he says, "If this program or this work is merely human, It will fall apart. At some point in time, it will stop, it will fail. But if it is of God, there is nothing that you can do about it. And you better not be found fighting against God.” That was from Pastor Richard Viotis from New York, and I totally agree. We're not there. I don't know what it's like. It sounds amazing. And I hope in prayers that this is completely of God. And it's all to his glory. Now, wonder if it was something similar was happening in Rome.

Rome is this epicenter of culture. It's the center of the known world at that time. And God's stirring there is making waves. Rome is also thought of-- and Jewish people's mind, maybe it's the epicenter of everything pagan. This Roman culture is not a godly culture. Romans were thought of as very, very evil. Their obsession with war and victory to their rampant sinful lifestyles. Roman, the Roman world was not a godly one. And so the work that the spirit was doing in this place was becoming undeniable. And I love that God's transformation, it's not just undeniable, but it's also recognizable by other people who have experienced God's power. So other Christians hearing about what's happening in Asbury, what's happening in Rome at that time are saying, "Yep, that's God." There's no other answer besides that. That's how the Spirit works.

We moved to verses nine and 10, we see Paul's affection for the church. He shares his desire to visit soon, praying that God would make a way for it to happen. But even from afar, he's been supporting and praying and partnering with God about what's happening in the Roman church, praying for the continual spiritual transformation for these people. And I love, I think that's such a good reminder for us today to be mindful and intentional about supporting people who are not just in our church circle, our local church congregation. There's people all around the world in different environments, from different cultures, different circumstances that are praising God. And let's be mindful of them. But the church used to work out. We had missionaries that we supported come in and they would sometimes share on a Sunday. And I was always blown away that they would say, "Hey, by the way, we're praying for you. This church across the world is praying for your congregation." And I love that. And I'm sure you guys have here at Spring Valley have done the same. We have missionaries that we've supported. And to know that they're praying, they're thinking of us. We tend to think of it as like a one way, "Hey, we're your support. We're praying for what's God's doing over there, but they're also mindful of what God's doing here. So Paul sets a great example for us in caring for our Christian and brothers and sisters around the world. And then in verses 11 through 13 Paul shares his plan to be in contact for his future purpose. He's planting seeds for future ministry that the church may be called to be involved in. He's partnering, he wants to partner with them in the spread of the gospel.

And now you and I know that Paul is a theological stud. We think of Paul, he's a big boy in the Bible context. And the early church had to learn that. He still had this background of Saul. And so sometimes there was a little like, okay, you're sure, Paul? You're a good guy. You're going to kill me right now. But they learned that this is God's tool for helping the early church grow. Paul is still acknowledging that he can learn something from the church. And I think that's something that both churches and leaders today need to hear. Churches, church congregations, speaking to you, you need to understand and have an accurate view of church leaders. Your pastors, your leaders, speaking for Christ and I, we don't know everything. We are not experts in, well, we may be a little bit expert-ish, but so happens when you go off script, it wasn't planned saying the word expert. We don't know everything, we're not perfect. We are also believers in process being formed by the spirit just like you. And while we may have a different call on our lives as pastors, the position of pastor is still one that learns. It's still one that grows. And any pastor that thinks otherwise is gonna meet failure and a rude awakening at some point in their life and their church will suffer for it. And so leaders, talking to us and then also to you future leaders or you leaders, we need to be like Paul, lead with humility. Leaders are not the superman's, the heroes of the church, the end all be all of church communities. The world does not revolve around them. Leaders are meant to serve, to love, to shepherd. And as a church grows, not just in size, but in maturity and faith over time, hopefully, the maturity of the pastor and the leadership grows as well. They're learning as they're going, being encouraged and shaped and formed as they learn and experience what it means to be a part of God's people.

I love that Paul, who we know is this apostle, is still saying, "I hope that we can I'm usually learning from each other, Church of Rome. I want to learn from you, you learn from me. Paul models for us, that we are always learning and it really points us back to Christ's perfect humility. All right, one more section. We can do it, stay awake, move a lot to arms, whatever you gotta do. Romans 14 through 17. It says, "I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greek, spoke to the wise and the foolish, that is why I'm so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are in Rome. For I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew and then to the Gentile. For in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written, the righteous will live by faith. All of a sudden, the table here for the rest of the letter, letting people know both Jews and Gentiles, they're equally welcome. Against striving, Paul is striving for the unification of the Church. His purpose is to share with everyone. And again, thinking of us today and being like Paul, it's a good gut check for us. We need to be like Paul. And do we really have a desire to share with everyone or just people who are conveniently in our lives? And I say that as one being guilty of one of the struggles with this. I think, God, do I share with that person? I don't even know if I get along with them. They're not really my kind of person. I don't know if that was the time. I'm busy. Whatever it is, they're not my kind of people. I wouldn't know how to talk to that kind of person. I love that Paul's like, no, everyone. I got the gospel. I'm ready. Let's go.

Verse 15, Paul's saying, Rome, you need to hear this. You need to figure out how to be in community for each other. You need to figure out how not to be a segregated church of Gentile Christians and Jewish Christians, but you need to be a church that is united in the gospel and that cause and that purpose excites Paul. Then we come to the first 16 and 17 and this is really the purpose of the letter. This is everything. He talks about the power of salvation for everyone. No matter how bad the sinner, Jesus' saving power is greater still. Now again, we wanna put it out there again. The Jews thought Romans were terrible. There may have been thought in a Jewish mind of like, is this really, this is gospel message really for the Romans because they're the worst. They're the absolute worst. And Paul is saying, "The power of God offered to you, Jews, is also powerful enough to overcome whatever the Gentiles have done, whatever their lifestyle. Whatever sin they have committed in life, no matter how bad they think it is, how unforgivable think it is, no matter how far gone, Jesus's power is greater still. And that is so true for us today. Any of you thinking that? Have any ever thought that or still think that? That when sin enters your life and you think, "Ah, that's just too much. That one, that's a big sin." And I don't know if God will welcome me anymore. I don't know if God's got the power to save me. That one was really bad. Paul will make it abundantly clear now and throughout the letter of Romans.

The power that was used for Jesus to raise back to life from dead, that power, that power that that Jesus did all of his miracles, the power that God has been working everything from Old Testament to New, that power is the power that reaches out to you. Jesus's power is greater still. Verse 17, Paul is saying that the gospel reveals the only way that we can become righteous is through Christ. From faith to faith, righteousness is a gift. It's not based on works. So it'll be something we cover a lot in this series. It's tempting thought for both Jews and Gentiles to think of faith in a workspace system. The Roman Empire was very much a tiered empire, social status, and you gotta do whatever it is to climb to the top. So their minds were structured in a way like, what do I have to do to get to the next level? And we may have similar thoughts too, and it's easy to bring that into the faith. This is how it works in the world. So this must be how it works in church and in my relationship with God. How do I contribute to my faith? What do I do to get better in the eyes of Jesus? And Paul will say, it's not based on any works that you do. He makes it clear that righteousness is found in Christ's alone and it requires faith. It's a gift from God and it requires belief and relationship with God.

All right. We did it. All right, we did it. We did 17 verses in Rome and Romans. I wanna share this as I close. One of the reasons that Pastor Chris and I are so excited about this series is that purpose of Paul to bring together people and have the church be united, touches on a point that I think it's lost in church today, especially in America. And that is the emphasis on communal faith. We are meant to be in community with each other. The church, the people in this room are meant to be a part of your spiritual journey. We often think of our spiritual journey as me and God, but everyone else is included in that journey. They are a part of our spiritual formation, and we need to be doing it with one another. Walking step by step, We are made in the body of Christ, meant to be partaking in God's word and all that God calls us to with each other. You cannot experience holistic spiritual formation apart from the body of Christ. We can easily lose sight of how spiritual transformation is not only for us in our hearts growing, but it brings us closer to God and with each other. Robert Mollhullen Jr., who passed away in 2015, he was a professor at Asbury Theological Seminary just across the street from the Asbury University that things are happening today. And he wrote this, which I think we have the quote, it says, “Our spiritual formation comes within a corporate and social context. Our growth toward wholeness in Christ is for the sake of others within the body of Christ, that we might nurture one another in the wholeness of Christ. When we don't feel like worshiping, the community should carry us along in its worship. When we can't seem to pray, community prayer should unfold us. And when the scripture seems close to us, the community should keep reading and affirming and incarnating it around us.”

I think it's a beautiful picture of the church and what Paul had in mind for the Romans. It's a goal that we should have and we should strive for here at Spring Valley Church that we're not just having a focus on, yes, our personal transformation, but how that incorporates into the larger church body.

There's a story of Dwight L Moody and you guys made the Moody Institute in the Midwest, and he used to have these conversations and weekly conversations. And he was approached one time by this guy who said, "Hey, I want you to come over "and I want to have theological conversation with you." So he said, "Sure." So he goes over to this guy's house and the guys are very welcoming and sit by the fire and they're drinking tea and their chairs. And after some pleasant small talk, the man goes into how he thinks that a Christian can be a Christian outside of the church. And he gives a very well thought out argument. I mean, this man clearly even scripture involved of saying this is why I think that a Christian doesn't have to be a part of a church body. Without saying a word, Moody takes the fire poker. and he gets an ember from the fire, and he scoots it off into the hearth away from the fire. And they sit there silently and watch it go from on fire and flaming and glowing to black charcoal. And the guy sitting there sighs and he says, "Proven your point.”

So as a church as we study and learn our way through Romans, let's have this in mind that it's not just about our individual process of sanctification of becoming more righteous and everything that Paul does. Yes, it's natural. We're going to think about how does this apply to me and we should. But then how do we fit into this church body? How do we do this together? And again, I think one of the ways we do that is not just gathering on Sunday mornings, but we want to be integrated in each other's lives throughout the week. That's not a plug necessarily for the midweek studies, but if you're feeling convicted, probably means to be there. But even outside of that, just we should be involved in each other's lives so that we can grow together in Christ. All right, more next week. Let me pray as we close and come up for the last song.

God, thank you. Thank you for sending Paul, for putting it on his heart to write to the Roman Church about being unified, for sharing a gospel message with them, and that we, thousands of years later, can still benefit, and learn, and grow. And some of us in this room of red Romans a hundred times. And some of us, this may be our first time really diving in deeply into Paul's words, but no matter what, I pray that your spirit would work in our hearts, that you would convict, that you would form us, that you would transform our hearts to be more like you. Open our eyes to see where we need to grow and change and also how we fit into the larger church body. The enemy loves to isolate us God. Love to get us one-on-one because he knows that that's where we're not a threat. But when we're together as a church, that's when your gospel can be used to its fullest effect. And so I just pray, God, keep working in us. Keep working in us individually and through us as a church as a whole. We pray that your Spirit now and through all the weeks to come in this series will continue to move. us. We trust you God. We know that you can do this and that you will do this. Pray this in your name. Amen.

Masterclass - Part 6

True Disciples - Matthew 7:15-29

Masterclass - Learning from Christ’s Sermon on the Mount - is a deeper look into Christ’s explanation of the kingdom of God. In this sermon, Jesus is revealing to the people what the kingdom of God truly looks like, not just in heaven but here on earth. He’s constructing the pieces together correctly (whereas the people at the time had a misunderstanding of God’s kingdom i.e. ruling authority on earth, overthrowing the Roman Empire, etc.).

The people learn that God’s kingdom is upside compared to the world’s kingdoms. Where the world values strong and powerful, Jesus values the meek and the weak. Where the world values status and influence, Jesus values humility and compassion. Jesus’ sermon on the mount is like the 10 Commandments of the Old Testament, it tells the people how to live properly, how to be a follower of Jesus, how to live how God wants us to live.

Our goal, as SVC, will be to relearn and be reminded of what Christ calls us to. How our faith calls us to live differently than the world around us. It calls us to value life differently than the world around us. It calls us to live according to God’s kingdom and not the world’s kingdom, not the U.S. kingdom, not a political party, a cultural subgroup, but God’s kingdom. We are called to be defined by Christ’s love, compassion, kindness, generosity, humility, and peace.

Jesus is giving a Masterclass of being a citizen of God’s kingdom, he’s giving the ultimate lessons of what it means to be a Christian. We are learning from the master.

...

Also please let us know how we can be praying for you. You can always send us a prayer request or praise here or email Prayer@SpringValleyChurch.org.

To find out more about Spring Valley Church or to connect with us, check us out at the links below!

To give online, visit http://www.SpringValleyChurch.org/give

http://www.facebook.com/SVCrocklin

http://www.instagram.com/SVCrocklin

Masterclass - Part 5

Ask, Seek, Knock - Matthew 7:7-12

Masterclass - Learning from Christ’s Sermon on the Mount - is a deeper look into Christ’s explanation of the kingdom of God. In this sermon, Jesus is revealing to the people what the kingdom of God truly looks like, not just in heaven but here on earth. He’s constructing the pieces together correctly (whereas the people at the time had a misunderstanding of God’s kingdom i.e. ruling authority on earth, overthrowing the Roman Empire, etc.).

The people learn that God’s kingdom is upside compared to the world’s kingdoms. Where the world values strong and powerful, Jesus values the meek and the weak. Where the world values status and influence, Jesus values humility and compassion. Jesus’ sermon on the mount is like the 10 Commandments of the Old Testament, it tells the people how to live properly, how to be a follower of Jesus, how to live how God wants us to live.

Our goal, as SVC, will be to relearn and be reminded of what Christ calls us to. How our faith calls us to live differently than the world around us. It calls us to value life differently than the world around us. It calls us to live according to God’s kingdom and not the world’s kingdom, not the U.S. kingdom, not a political party, a cultural subgroup, but God’s kingdom. We are called to be defined by Christ’s love, compassion, kindness, generosity, humility, and peace.

Jesus is giving a Masterclass of being a citizen of God’s kingdom, he’s giving the ultimate lessons of what it means to be a Christian. We are learning from the master.

...

Also please let us know how we can be praying for you. You can always send us a prayer request or praise here or email Prayer@SpringValleyChurch.org.

To find out more about Spring Valley Church or to connect with us, check us out at the links below!

To give online, visit http://www.SpringValleyChurch.org/give

http://www.facebook.com/SVCrocklin

http://www.instagram.com/SVCrocklin