Sunday Sermon: An Introduction to Romans, Part 1 (Romans 1:1-7)

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You're listening to the preaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona.

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Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday on this podcast we feature teaching through a New Testament book, an

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Old Testament book on Thursday and our Q &A on Friday. Each Sunday we are pleased to present our sermon series.

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Here is Pastor Gabe. We're going to begin a brand new series today in Romans.

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On the same day that I also began a series in the book of Exodus. So in our Sunday school class, we're going through Exodus. In our service, we're going to be going through Romans and these two studies will coincide with one another.

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We'll draw some similar themes out of both. So if you haven't attended our adult Sunday school class, which starts at nine o 'clock, you would be invited to come to that too.

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And that becomes kind of an extension of this series that we're going to go through. This is going to be the first time ever that I have done an introduction to a particular book in two weeks.

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So I'm going to split up an introduction to the book of Romans between this week and next week.

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I've been preaching for almost 15 years, at least in the position of a pastor, been preaching that long. And I try to fit an introduction to a book in a single sermon.

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But with everything that we have to cover in Romans, this being so full and such a doctrinally rich book, even the introduction to this particular book is a lot of information.

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So I'm going to split this up between two weeks, then to try to go like clear past noon and keep you here all day, doing an introduction to this book.

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So this is part one. And next week we will do part two. And we're looking at in both of these weeks, we're going to be in Romans chapter one, verses one through seven.

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So in honor of the word of the King, would you please stand? Romans chapter one, verses one through seven.

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As we look at Paul's opening sentence to this church in Rome, hear the word of the

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Lord. Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promoted beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures concerning his son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the son of God in power, according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead

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Jesus Christ, our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, to all those in Rome who are loved by God and are called to be saints, grace to you and peace from God, our father and the

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Lord Jesus Christ. You may be seated as we pray. Our heavenly father, we thank you for this word, this opening to this great and doctrinally rich book.

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And I pray that you will bless our study of this book as we're going to delve into some pretty deep teachings and understanding what it is that the

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Lord has said according to your son, according to his apostles and prophets and how these things pertain to us as Christians.

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How do we, how do we live then in light of these deep truths that God has conveyed through his son and through his spirit.

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Lord may we be filled with the knowledge of these things, but we don't just sit under this teaching that we may gain knowledge, that we may puff ourselves up with knowledge that we may think of ourselves more theologically astute than the next guy.

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But our desire here is that we would mature in Christ. We would grow according to this word.

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We know how to put it into effect, into action, living according to these things, and even how we might communicate this truth to others.

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For as Paul is going to declare right at the very beginning of this letter, that the gospel is the power of God for salvation to all who believe.

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We come to understand that gospel and its implications through this very weighty letter.

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So may we also be guided in how we can share this with somebody else that they too may know the truth of the gospel of Christ and so be saved.

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Thank you for your great patience with us. And may we continue diligently to learn of your word and of your son that we may be conformed to his image as stated in Romans 8 29.

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It is in the love of Christ that we pray and all God's people said, amen. So how this outline is going to work today, and I said this introduction was going to be over the next two weeks, really could consider it over the next three.

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Because between today and next week, we're just going to do an overview of the letter.

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And then in the week after that, we'll actually do our exposition of Romans 1, 1 through 7.

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Today we're going to look at a history of Rome, a little bit of a history of this very city where this church is planted and to whom

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Paul is writing. After that, we'll consider a history of this particular letter. What are some of the events that led to Paul writing this?

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Why is he writing this and why is it being delivered to this people? What exactly does he mean to teach the church through this letter?

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And how is the Holy Spirit communicating that truth to us even now? And then last of all, we'll do a very brief overview, kind of a bird's eye view of this.

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What we'll do next week is we'll kind of zoom in on these things a little bit more. So be more intentional with our outline and understanding what we will see as we plot through Romans over the next year plus that we'll be studying this tremendous book.

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As R .C. Sproul had called it, the greatest piece of literature that man ever wrote down.

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Putting his pen to paper and writing out words, there have been none deeper, greater, and even more studied than the book of Romans.

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This is a very doctrine -heavy book. And it is the first of the epistles that we have written in the

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New Testament to the churches. But before we get into talking about that, talking about some of the things that we will see as we study through the book of Romans, let's consider a little bit of history behind this very city itself.

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The city of Rome is popular beyond its number of mentions in the

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New Testament, even in the book of Revelation. Rome is a worldwide famous city that many other nations try to pattern itself after.

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Even in the United States of America, the very concept of the eagle being our national bird is derived from Rome, who also used the eagle as their national symbol.

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If you know something about the history of the United States, you know that Benjamin Franklin actually wanted the turkey to be the national symbol if he had had his way.

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That's a symbol of the month of November, and I'm looking forward to turkey dinners, as I hope you are as well.

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But rather, we wanted a symbol that was more conveying of strength and of grace. And if you've ever looked at a turkey, strength and grace is not really what you think about in that kind of bird.

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So, Rome became something of a symbol, something of a model even for the United States of America.

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Rome was at one point a great republic, and the U .S. is even a constitutional republic in its government structure.

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So, this is a city that was not only prominent, a great empire at a particular point in history, but is something that many nations in the world have looked at with some sense of admiration.

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So, what do we know of this city and how it came to be in eventually becoming the empire that it once was?

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You're probably familiar with the story of the end of the Trojan War. There are all kinds of phrases that are used today because of this famed conflict between the

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Greeks and the city of Troy, including the statement, Achilles' heel, or Trojan horse that came out of this conflict, or telling a beautiful woman, you have a face that could launch 1 ,000 ships.

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Ladies, if your fellow hasn't dropped that line on you, well, he's just not a romantic. About 1 ,200 years before Christ, the

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Greeks were at war with the Anatolian people of Troy and laid siege to their city for 10 years.

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That Battle of Troy was a 10 -year -long war. This all began when

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Helen, the queen of Sparta, said to have been the most beautiful woman in the world, left her husband,

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Menelaus, for a prince of Troy named Paris. Menelaus, the

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Spartan king, called on all of the kings and princes of Greece to wage war upon Troy.

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The Greeks' greatest champion of this conflict was Achilles, who was said to be invulnerable in all of his body except for his heel.

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When he was born, his brother, according to legend, had taken the child and dipped him in the river

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Styx, and that was supposed to make him invulnerable to any kind of war, of conflict, of man.

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But in dipping him in the river, he held on to his heel, and that was the one part of his body that wasn't submerged in the water.

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And so, therefore, Achilles was vulnerable in his heel. And whenever you refer to someone's weakness, you call it his

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Achilles' heel, and that comes from the legend of Achilles. After the ten -year siege, the

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Greeks feigned surrender and fooled the city of Troy in accepting a gift of a large wooden horse.

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Now, they brought that horse inside the city, not knowing that inside of it was a

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Greek raiding party who came out of the horse at night, opened the city gates, and the

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Greeks were finally able to enter in and conquer Troy after this ten -year siege. But there was one

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Trojan prince who survived, Aeneas, who was said to be the son of Anchisus and the goddess

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Aphrodite. Aeneas, along with other surviving Trojans, boarded a ship and set sail on the

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Mediterranean looking for a new home. They eventually came to the peninsula of Italy, where Aeneas made peace with a king named

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Latinus and married his daughter, Lavinia. Aeneas led the Latins to victory against their enemies, the

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Etruscans, and established as a boundary the Tiber River, which is named after the river god,

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Tiberinus. Succeeding Aeneas was his son, Ascanius, who ruled the

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Latins as they grew in strength. After a succession of kings in the 8th century

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BC, so we're fast -forwarding here about 400 years, the kingdom came to rest on a man named

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Numitor. His brother, Aemulinus, wanted the throne for himself, so he banished

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Numitor and killed all of his sons. Only his daughter, Raesylvia, survived, but she was forced to become a vestal virgin so that she would bear no sons to threaten

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Aemulius' home, trying to get all these

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Greek names out. However, Raesylvia became pregnant by the god Mars and gave birth to twin boys.

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She was thrown in prison while the boys were taken to be drowned in the Tiber River. However, the

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Tiber had flooded, and the men tasked with executing the boys didn't want to wait out far enough to drown them, so instead, they placed the babies in the reeds to be devoured by wild animals.

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But Tiberinus showed favor to the boys, as the legend goes. A she -wolf came along to drink, and instead of consuming the twin boys, she fed them as she would feed her own pups.

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You've probably seen sculptures of this. Baby boys nursing from a strange -looking wolf called

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La Lupa Capitolina. This is an homage to the founding of Rome.

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A shepherd named Phostilus came upon the wolf feeding these babies, and he gathered up the infant twins and took them home to be raised by him and his wife.

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They named the boys Romulus and Remus. As the boys grew to be men, they became accustomed to fighting.

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They took it as a hobby. They loved creating conflict and kind of inventing their own conquests.

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But to do something a little bit more just in their efforts, they enjoyed fighting the local raiders that would rob the different farms and the camps.

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But at one point in these fighting against these raiders, Remus was taken captive, and he was brought before the exiled

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Numitor, not realizing that Numitor was his grandfather. But Numitor, knowing who this child was and a little bit of his background story and kind of putting the age and the timeline together, soon discovered that Remus was one of his long -lost grandsons.

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Romulus, in the meantime, had organized a band to free his brother. And when he found

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Remus with Numitor, the brothers learned of their past and joined forces with their grandfather to restore him to the throne.

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Aemulius was killed, and Numitor was reinstated as king of the

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Latins. Now, enjoying this adventure of conquest, the brothers decided they wanted to start a city of their own.

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But they couldn't agree upon where. Romulus preferred Palatine Hill, while Remus preferred

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Aventine. So, they decided to consult the gods through augury.

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This is looking for a sign among the birds. Six vultures came and landed at Remus' feet.

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And because these vultures came to Remus first, he said, I am the one who is being favored by the gods. But then

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Romulus received a dozen vultures who came to his aid. So, Remus claimed the birds came to him first.

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But Romulus said, no, he had more birds than Remus had. So, the two brothers fought, and Remus was killed.

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And Romulus founded his own city along with its government, institutions, military, and religion.

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And that city was named Rome. And Romulus became the first king of Rome.

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It was a kingdom before it became a republic. Now, is this the true story of the founding of Rome?

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No. Rome was destroyed by the Gauls in 386

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BC. And so, any actual record of the city's founding is actually lost to history. We don't know for sure how

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Rome was discovered. This origin story is obviously legend. There is truth to some of it, like the

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Latins, the Etruscans. There have been DNA records that have been taken of Italians that live in the area and finding some sort of connection with a group of people that had migrated from western

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Turkey. That, of course, would have been where Troy was located. Maybe there were twin boys that were named

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Romulus and Remus, and maybe there weren't. Pagans often told great tales of the founding of their kingdoms and nations possessing some kind of divine origin, like how

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Romulus and Remus were sons of Mars. Why open a study of the

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Book of Romans with this story? Well, here's the reason why. Our world is filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, and malice.

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They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and maliciousness. By the way, I'm quoting from Romans 129.

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Man simply cannot help himself. It is in our nature to act this way, as summarized in Romans 3 .23,

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for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

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In the stories that we write, we don't come up with stories that are just full of love and peace and grace.

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I think most people would actually find stories like that to be kind of boring. So whether you're watching soap operas, or you're watching

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Monday Night Raw, or you are binge -watching the latest streaming show, or you're going to your local theater, you see stories like the one that I just recounted to you, full of violence and vengeance, jealousy and greed, sexual immorality, and pagan godlessness.

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These pagans wanted a connection to the gods so that you would view their accomplishments as being something divine.

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They would connect their stories with sexual immorality and to materialism so that you would see the kind of pleasures that they offer.

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There would be a connection to war and to violence so you and their enemies would be awed by the strength that they possessed.

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And all of this can even be yours if you do what?

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No, not name the prices right. But as Satan said to Jesus, showing him the kingdoms of the world, if you then will worship me, it will all be yours,

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Luke 4, 7. But Romans 1, 18 tells us that the wrath of God is burning against these things.

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Eventually, Rome becomes this great city, this great empire even that everyone nurses at, just like Romulus and Remus nursed from a wolf.

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That's a pretty good description of Rome, in fact. But how many people had to die to get this great empire that would supply so much to the world?

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And how many people would be killed by the Romans in order to maintain this empire?

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This is not as romantic as it sounds. As many things have been said about Rome, like all roads lead to Rome or when in Rome do as the

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Romans do. And these kinds of sayings come with a promise of all of this great prosperity and all of this great accomplishment.

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Yet it doesn't ever actually supply what it promises. This is not the world as God intended it to be, full of violence and sexual immorality and greed and murder and strife.

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And just as the godless will be destroyed, so they also destroy.

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They will get what is coming to them. But before that day, when God brings judgment upon the godless, he is building his kingdom.

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And his kingdom does not come through violent force. It comes through peace and love.

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Though we may suffer violent persecution. And Paul talks about this in this particular letter. That is not how the subjects of his kingdom are going to behave.

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Though we are persecuted and we would be weak by the world's standards.

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Yet the kingdom of God advances not by the strength and devices of man, but through the power of his spirit in the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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The world is chaos. The kingdom is Christ. And the thesis statement of this letter is in Romans 1, 16 to 17.

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For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God. For salvation to everyone who believes, to the

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Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith.

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As it is written, the righteous shall live by faith, not by violence, not by chance and the fickleness of false gods.

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Not by selfish and fleeting pleasures, but by trusting in Jesus who died and rose again, who forgives our sin and makes us right with God.

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The just will live by faith. There is an attempt even among Christians today to try to reclaim some sort of power by the strength of man.

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I see this among Christians saying that we must hate the world and we must love

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Christ and his kingdom. And that is definitely true. But the way that they want to advance that is through some kind of force, through some kind of violent force, through some sort of showing of the strength of man.

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And though they may say, well, the strength that we have comes not from ourselves. It comes by the Holy Spirit. Yet we have numerous places in scriptures that are promising us we are going to suffer.

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We won't conquer in the ways that man expects conquering to be done.

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But we'll suffer and in the views of man actually be perceived as weak by the world's standards.

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Yet we will conquer. Romans 8 talks about this. We are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

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And Paul says this in the context of our suffering. It is through our suffering that we conquer just as it is through Christ's suffering that he conquered over death itself and over sin and over this world.

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So that as he said to his disciples in this world, you will have trouble. But take heart for I have overcome the world.

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The world is very much exemplified in this great nation that was called Rome. A nation that was not the first of its kind to be this way.

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As a matter of fact, the scriptures will also refer to Rome as Babylon. And so before there was

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Rome, there was Babylon being a great empire. But as we'll read about in the book of Revelation, fallen, fallen is

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Babylon the great. And so the same could even be said of Rome today. The Roman empire no longer exists, but the kingdom of God continues to advance.

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So that's a little bit about the history of Rome. And there's some elements to the history of Rome I haven't covered yet.

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I'll bring back into an introduction to Romans somewhat next week as well. What about the history of this letter?

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So we looked at the history of Rome. How about this letter that Paul has written to these Christians who are continuing to endure in this city, though they themselves are being persecuted by the worldly, by the pagans and the

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Gentiles around them? Well, the book of Romans is the fifth book of the New Testament. It is the first of what we call the epistles, or letters that were written to the churches.

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The letters were written for the purpose of building up the church. When we were in our series through the pastoral epistles, through 1st and 2nd

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Timothy and Titus, Paul wrote to Timothy, I am writing these things to you so that if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living

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God, a pillar and buttress of the truth. That was in 1st Timothy 3, 15 to 16. And we considered how that was the point of 1st

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Timothy. That's the whole reason why Paul was writing that letter to Timothy. So that you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is a pillar and buttress of the truth.

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But really that statement could be said to any one of these churches that are written to in the

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New Testament. Each letter is written for a definite reason to a particular group of people responding to specific circumstances, offering intentional guidance to a body of believers.

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The Holy Spirit speaks through those letters, even to us today, reminding us of the same timeless doctrine that defines us, correcting errors and issuing guidance so that we may see how as Christians, even now, we are to live with one another and in this world.

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Now, we just finished a series looking through the five major doctrines that were the foundation of the Protestant Reformation.

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The Reformation is the name that we've given to an important event that happened in the history of the church.

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But it's not the only time in history that the church needed to be reformed.

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The letters to the churches in the New Testament are essentially Reformation letters.

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Even from the moment a church is planted, it wasn't long after the beginning of that church that corrections needed to be made.

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And this letter to the Romans is no exception. Paul was not writing to a church with perfect doctrine.

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Incidentally, if Paul were alive today and he had to write a letter to Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona, he likewise would not be writing to a church with perfect doctrine.

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There are at times things that must be corrected, even in our own midst. It is great that we have such wonderful confessions, like the

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London Baptist Confession 1689, that we are a church that is committed to the preaching of God's word and everything must flow from that.

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But there are times, frankly, as flawed human beings, that we can take our eyes off of the prize.

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And hence why we need that reminder in Hebrews 12 to us often, fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and the perfecter of our faith.

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And as we run this race, we are focusing on him and running to him. So even in the case of writing to this church in Rome, Paul was not writing to a church with perfect doctrine.

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In fact, there's a lot of doctrinal confusion that was in that church and motivates many of the things that Paul writes here.

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Now, this is not considered one of Paul's rebuking letters. If you go to 1 and 2 Corinthians or Galatians, there's obviously a tone of rebuke that Paul has there.

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You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?

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Okay, and Paul doesn't take that tone with the Romans. Very loving and very endearing with this particular church.

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A church that he had not yet been to visit, but he would soon, according to what we read in the book of Acts.

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The book of Romans is broken up into 16 chapters. We've added that. As I've said to you many times before, the verse and chapter markers are not divinely inspired.

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So we've added those things to kind of help us break up the letter a little bit better and understand its various parts.

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But as you have it in your Bible, it's 16 chapters made up of 433 total verses.

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In most English translations of Romans, there are 7 ,111 words.

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To put that into perspective, if read briskly, that's about the length of an hour -long sermon if you were to read it very quickly.

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But if you were to read more slowly, it could be stretched out into about an hour and 20 minutes. If I were to have just read the letter to the

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Romans to you out loud, it would take about that long to read it. So when Paul wrote this letter to this church in Rome, here's how it would have been read to this congregation.

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They probably would have gathered on a Sunday morning. Yes, even during the first century, the church was gathering on Sunday morning.

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The reason for that was because a lot of the apostles, when they would go into a city and preach the gospel, where was the first place that they would go?

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They often went to the synagogue because that's where the word of God was kept in the scrolls.

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And so they would teach from the word of God in the synagogue on Saturday when it was common that the people would gather there.

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But when the Jews would reject that reading of the word and interpreting it as pointing to Christ as the

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Messiah that was prophesied, when they would reject it, well, they had to gather on a different day.

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So they would gather on Sunday, the first day of the week, which was also the day of the week that Jesus rose from the dead.

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And so it moved what we refer to as the Christian Sabbath in our own confession from Saturday to Sunday.

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So very likely that the Jews then are gathering there on that Sunday morning to hear the word of God preached.

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And it's in their gathering, in their weekly gathering, that this letter is delivered to this church in Rome.

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And there may have been elders in that church or someone who was responsible for the teaching who came before the congregation and said,

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I've received a letter from the apostle Paul. And then that letter would be read aloud to the congregation.

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And that was probably known to them even before they gathered on that Sunday. It's being whispered about among the

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Christians, Paul has written a letter to us. And so they're eagerly joining together on that Sunday to hear this letter read aloud to the entire congregation of Christians that has gathered.

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And so this letter would be read as if like a sermon to the people that were present that day when it was delivered to this church.

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And there's only one church. It wasn't multiple churches, though if there were multiple gatherings in different homes, the letter would have been copied and distributed to those respective gatherings.

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So this would have been written about 56 or 57 AD when Paul was in Corinth.

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Now, Paul never says exactly where he is in this letter, but that is the most likely location.

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He was in Corinth for a year and a half while on his third missionary journey In Romans 16, he mentions being with Gaius, and Gaius is one of the men that Paul baptized in Corinth, according to 1

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Corinthians 1. Paul did not write this letter with his own hand.

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It's his words, but he didn't sit down with a pen and parchment and write this out. It was written by the hand of Tertius, who was

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Paul's scribe while Paul dictated the letter. Romans 16 22 says, I, Tertius, who wrote this letter, greet you in the

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Lord. So Paul kind of gives him an opportunity to give his own signature to this letter. Now, what kind of letter is the book of Romans?

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I mentioned that Galatians is kind of a rebuking letter. Ephesians is an endearing letter.

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Philippians is what we call a thankful letter. 1 Peter is talked about as the suffering letter.

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So what kind of letter is Romans? I've heard different people refer to it as different things.

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One pastor friend of mine called it a missions letter because Paul lays out to them exactly his plans, when he's going to come to them, where he's going to go next after he comes to them, how they will help him on his way to Spain, which we read about in chapter 15.

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So it kind of has that feel of a missions fundraising letter almost. But I don't believe that's the main intention of the letter.

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That's kind of incidental to this letter. Romans is very straightforwardly a teaching letter.

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Every letter of Paul's teaches something, of course, but none are as deliberate and intentional toward a particular teaching as this letter.

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And what exactly is it that Paul is teaching in the book of Romans? Well, we talked about this a couple of weeks ago when we were going through our doctrine of faith alone.

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And more specifically, when the reformers referred to a doctrine of sola fide or by faith alone, they specifically meant justification by faith alone.

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So we are justified by faith alone in Jesus Christ. And that is the main doctrine that Paul lays out in the book of Romans.

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The teaching of this book is justification by faith alone.

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Now, even though we're going to read a lot about sanctification, we're even going to read a lot about our own glorification for those who are in Christ Jesus.

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Yet all of this flows out first understanding that we are justified by faith in our

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Lord Jesus Christ. And not just justified by faith, but justified by faith alone.

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Over and over through this book, Paul will say that we are justified by faith and not by our works.

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And so this is the important doctrine that Paul means to convey to this church. Why? What is it that the church in Rome needed that Paul is so deliberate and intentional about this particular doctrine?

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Well, look with me, if you will, if you still have your Bible open to Romans 1, 16 and 17. Let's look at that again. I've quoted it to you once, but look at the various parts of this.

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This is the thesis statement of this letter. This is what this letter is about. For I am not ashamed of the gospel,

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Paul says. That meaning good news. It is very simply the proclamation of what

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Christ has done for us and through him the salvation that we receive by faith. I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.

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To whom? To the Jew first and also to the

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Greek. Let me stop there for a moment. So this is in fulfillment to a commission that Jesus had given his own disciples that, if you'll remember from the beginning of Acts 1, before he's about to ascend into heaven and depart from them, he says, you will be my witnesses.

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In Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

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So where is the gospel preached first? It's preached first in Jerusalem. You have in Acts chapter 2, the day of Pentecost, when the apostles go out into Jerusalem during that feast and they preach the gospel to all of the

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Jews who are gathered there. And it's even said there in Acts that those Jews are gathered there from all different parts of the world.

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And there's even various languages that are being spoken at Pentecost. Hence why the apostles who are blessed with the

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Holy Spirit go out into Jerusalem speaking in tongues so that each person in their own respective language hears the gospel of Christ preached to them.

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This is in fulfillment of how the gospel would be spread. It would be spread first to the Jews and then also to the

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Greeks. When the apostle Paul later in the book of Acts goes to the city of Corinth, first place he goes, as we mentioned, he goes to the synagogue and he's preaching first to the

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Jews. They reject what Paul is saying. They will not accept the gospel. They will not accept that Jesus Christ is the son of God through whom

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God is accomplishing everything that he had laid out in the law and in the prophets. And so Paul shakes his garment as symbolic of shaking himself free of them.

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And he has said, I have preached to you the full counsel of God. Your blood is on your own heads. For now,

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I am going to the Gentiles. And Paul then begins to preach to the Gentiles that are in the city.

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Now, that doesn't mean that he wasn't preaching to Jews anymore, for we do have it said there in Acts that there were some of the

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Jews that were persuaded by him and followed him as he went out to then preach the gospel to the

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Gentiles. So this is in fulfillment of how the gospel would be proclaimed. It would go to the Jews first and then also to the

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Greeks. And so that statement being made here even in Romans 1 -16. Now, what would the church in Rome have been made up of?

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It would have been made up of Jews and Greeks who were the first ones to preach the gospel in Rome.

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They were Jews. And it would have been the Jews who were at Pentecost and heard

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Peter and the other apostles preach the gospel for the first time. Some of them were gathered there for Pentecost from Rome.

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And so as you read about this in Acts, what ends up happening is persecution comes upon the

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Christians. You read about the stoning of Stephen who becomes the first martyr in Acts chapter 7.

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And after Stephen is martyred, then the Christians who are gathering by the thousands in Jerusalem as the church is growing there during that time, they're now scattered.

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Seeing that persecution is coming against the church, they leave Jerusalem and go out into other places.

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And so some of those who were there from Rome end up going back to their residence there in the capital city of the

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Roman Empire. But they bring the gospel with them. And when they come to Rome, they're preaching the gospel to people who were there.

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A church begins, which is made up of Jewish converts to Christianity. And as they're preaching the gospel throughout

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Rome, there are many Gentiles that come to hear the gospel and become Christians. And so the church becomes filled with a blend of Jew and Gentile.

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But largely what they would have followed as far as practice was concerned was everything that was influenced by Jewish custom.

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Now, what ends up happening is an emperor comes to power who sees this conversion that is happening in Rome, and he doesn't like it.

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The Romans had this deal and this arrangement made with the Jews that they could have their religion as long as they paid their taxes and as long as they didn't try to convert others to their religion.

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That was the arrangement that the Jews had with Rome. Because at the time when the Roman Empire overthrows the

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Greeks and now Rome is the dominant empire in the world, and there's so many

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Jews that are part of their empire, they're looking at this group of people who are devotedly monotheistic.

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And the Romans were not that. We've already talked about even looking at the history of Rome, the pantheon of different gods that they believe existed and worshiped.

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And Romans beyond this even had their different Roman religions that would be tied to something ancient.

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So they would even draw from religions of other ancient civilizations and believe that they were doing something more advanced than even their

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Roman neighbors when, hey, I can even worship the gods of these false gods. Look how many more gods

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I have. And so the Romans said, fine, to the Hebrews, you can have your own god that you're completely devoted to, one god you're weird, but we'll let you have him.

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That's kind of the way the Romans had this. As long as, once again, you pay your taxes. Get your taxes paid, there won't be any problem between us.

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And that you're not trying to convert other people to your religion. You're not trying to proselytize.

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If you as a people, as an ethnicity, want to have that worship to your god, we'll let you have it, but you can't interfere with the kind of worship and religion that we're doing as Romans.

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Well, what happens when these Christians come back to Rome? They start preaching the gospel. And the people that they're preaching the gospel to become converted to Christianity.

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The emperor didn't like that so much, but he targeted the wrong group of people.

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He's hearing about this Jewish carpenter that the people are following. So this whole conversion thing, this has got to be the

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Jews' fault. So what he does is he exiles the Jews and kicks them all out of Rome, out of the capital city of Rome.

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So you have this exile that happens where there's no Jews in Rome for a number of years.

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But because the emperor targeted the wrong group of people, the Christians remained there and they continued to preach the gospel and continued to make more converts and the church just continued to grow.

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Well, then Nero came to power. And even though Nero was a very oppressive emperor and he would put many, many

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Christians to death, that's not the way that his reign began. And he undid that exile of the

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Jews and let them come back to Rome. Well, when the Jews came back into Rome and they come back to the church that was started by Jews preaching the gospel, well, they find a church that is filled with what?

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It's Gentiles. And there's even now more Gentiles than there are

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Jews. And that creates some conflicts. Because what aspect of the

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Jewish law are we supposed to be continuing here when we have all these Gentiles that won't acknowledge our

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Jewish ways and customs? And this was creating some conflict in the church in Rome between the

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Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians. So many of the things that we're going to see here in the book of Romans is

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Paul speaking into that matter of seeing some of the conflicts that exist there and clarifying, here's the doctrine that we believe.

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And then, therefore, here is what that doctrine produces in the lives of believers.

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And so you have that statement in Romans 1 .16 that the gospel is first for the Jew and then also for the

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Greek. But we all believe the same thing. And so how is that going to produce in us life change as believers?

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We're no longer marked as Jew and Greek. We are a new people in Christ. And so what does that new people look like?

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Now, even through these first three chapters of Romans, Paul is going to bring all people into condemnation.

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Through chapter one, all Gentiles are under condemnation. Through chapter two, even all Jews are under condemnation.

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Chapter three, because all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And so Paul will show how you all have a need for the gospel, whether you're

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Jew or Greek. And then pointing to that gospel that they would understand our justification before God is not by our works.

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It's not by our efforts. It's not because we're Jew or Greek. We are justified by faith in Jesus Christ alone.

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And that's the point and the purpose of this letter. As Paul Washer has said, there is no book of the

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Bible that is systematic theology. Systematic theology is what we do.

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Like we will take an understanding of theology, perhaps the Trinity, just to borrow an example, just to single out one.

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And then what we do systematically is we go through the whole Bible and we look for the evidence of that doctrine that we would refer to as the

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Trinity doctrine, or understanding that God is triune, one God, but three persons in the Godhead.

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That's what we do systematically. So it's coming through the whole scriptures that we would understand a particular doctrinal point.

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Romans, or sorry, so in the Bible, there isn't systematic theology since that's what we do with the

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Bible. But as Washer has said, if there is any book that comes the closest to systematic theology, it's the book of Romans.

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It is a systematic theological look, if you'll pardon the expression, over the whole of God's word and to see how he accomplished justification by faith in his son,

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Jesus Christ. That's the book of Romans. Some other great quotes regarding this particular book from Martin Luther.

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This epistle is really the chief part of the New Testament and is truly the purest gospel.

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It is worthy not only that every Christian should know it word for word by heart, there's a challenge for you, but also that he should occupy himself with it every day as the daily bread of the soul.

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We can never read it or ponder over it too much, for the more we deal with it, the more precious it becomes and the better it tastes, unquote.

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So something I want to commission you in, the assignment that I'm going to give to you, not quite as heavy as the one that Martin Luther just gave to you.

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But I would still commission you that between now and next week, you read through the entire book of Romans.

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Because what we're going to do next week is we'll comb over the entire book, bird's eye view of an outline of this book and see how it's laid out for us, that we may understand its doctrines more deeply.

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It'll be easier for you to follow along with me if you've already just read through it. And now you've got, okay,

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I've read through Romans, now let's pick this apart. And we'll see how Paul is going to lay out his arguments and give his instructions to the church.

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John Calvin said this about Romans, when anyone understands this epistle, he has a passage open to him to the understanding of the whole scripture.

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J .I. Packer, all roads in the Bible lead to Romans. And all views afforded by the

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Bible are seen most clearly from Romans. And when the message of Romans gets into a person's heart, there is no telling what may happen.

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And I hope in that respect, entering into a study of this particular book is something that would be exciting for you.

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It may seem laborious to hear a pastor stand in front of you and say, we're going to take a couple of years to read through Romans.

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Oh my goodness, a couple of years in Romans. And that may seem like a great labor, but I hope to all of us, it would be a labor of love.

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Because we would desire to know the depth of God's truth. And that we would comb these scriptures desiring to know more about it than we knew yesterday.

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That we may come to know the Lord more deeply. This is not just one man 2000 years ago who wrote this letter to a church and we're studying it for that reason as though to pick up a piece of history.

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This is the Holy Spirit who is speaking through these words. These are divinely authorized words given to us in this book that we may read and know the

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Savior all the more and be conformed to his image, which is said exactly in Romans 8 29.

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So let us desire to know this book all the more that we may understand our faith in Christ our

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Savior. We see right from the very first chapter that the wrath of God is burning against all the injustice and unrighteousness of man.

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But praise God, Paul so quickly resolves this tension by giving the gospel for all of sin and fallen short of the glory of God.

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But we are justified by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus to be received by faith.

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And my friends, one of the most relieving verses in the entire Bible that I remind myself of constantly is

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Romans 8 1. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

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Though the world may condemn us, we are not condemned in the presence of God, for we have been justified by faith alone in him.

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You've been listening to the preaching of Pastor Gabriel Hughes, a presentation of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona.

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For more information about our church, visit our website at providencecasagrande .com.

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On behalf of our church family, my name is Becky, thanking you for listening. Join us again