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Also now, just do a moment for the children's catechism. So all the kids that would like to come up here and sit on the step up here, I would please invite you to do so. As always, we have another really, really important question to ask you guys.
Can you guys hear me? I can see people's feet just chattering as they're walking up, that's awesome. How are you guys doing today?
That's the first question I have to ask you. Are you guys having a good day at church so far? All right, that's the second question you answered that one right so far, so that's good. So this week, for the question that we have to ask you guys, is again, it's a really important one.
We're going through the 10 commandments with the kids, if you guys haven't caught on to that already. But the question for today is, what is required in the third commandment? What is required in the third commandment?
Do any of you guys know that? Yeah, that's, you wanna talk in the mic? Yeah, go ahead. Don't use his word in vain? Don't, yeah, don't use his word or his name vain. Yeah, that's absolutely right, amen to that.
Is that correct, everybody? That is a fact right there. Does anybody else have anything else that they wanna say about that? No? All right, so what we'll do is I'm gonna read the answer that's listed on here, but it's exactly what Lydia just said for us.
The third commandment requires the holy and reverent use of God's name. Titles, attributes, ordinances, word, and works. And so whenever we talk about God, whenever we think about him, whenever we worship him, whenever we do any service unto him, we need to be doing such in a reverent and deliberate, intentional way because the last thing we wanna do is to disrespect the God that has created all things.
Does that make sense for you guys? I like it, all right. Is it okay if I pray with you guys right now? All right, let's go ahead and pray. All right, Lord God, I thank you for this opportunity to have these children up here.
Lord, again, I pray for all the parents in this room. Lord, I just pray that you continue to use these kind of questions, their own personal time and their family to aid in assisting, raising these kids up in your glory and in your name.
Lord God, I just pray for each one of these kids that you'd be with them, you'd be before them, that you'd just look over them, Lord, in this fall period that we are in. Lord, just give wisdom to each one of these parents in regard to these things.
And Lord, what a blessing it is, I thank you again for each one of these kids that are here today. I just say this in your name, Jesus Christ, amen. Amen, can you guys say amen? Say amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.
All right, you guys can go back to your seats or go downstairs, wherever you'd like to go. You're gonna go to your seat, okay. What a blessing that is, that is truly wonderful to have each one of those kids up here today.
One thing I, let me turn this guy on here. One thing I did fail to mention for the announcements today is that Bible study, it normally is on Tuesdays, but this week it will be on a Wednesday, as well as prayer meeting.
So prayer meeting will start at 6 p .m. And we'll just meet at this building, of course. And then at 6 .30, we will do a Bible study. And since this week is a topical one, we're gonna just do some questions and answers, just give it really a time for open dialogue about whatever we would like to discuss.
And so I would encourage you to please come to that, as there'll be a lot of back and forth, and there'll be a lot of good thinking over these things. So I'm looking forward to that time. But brothers and sisters, today, as we, two weeks ago, we finished in the book of Ruth.
And we got to see some of the very peculiars of the whole purpose of the book of Ruth, is that there's this famine, there's no king, they go to a foreign land, they marry foreign women, they die, one of those foreign women come back with Naomi, and it is through all this awful sin, judgment, bad hardship that they go through, that comes about the very birth of King David.
And not only that, as we know how the story goes, it is the very fact that it brings about our redemption in the work of Jesus the Christ. Praise God for the book of Ruth. But as last week, what we did, as we have not come to a conclusion on where we're going to be going through as the next book decides, or as the next book is decided, we were last week in Colossians chapter two, verses 13 through 14, and we got to see the very wonderfulness that is that gospel exhortation that is in there, that when we were dead and uncircumcised, that God, as we looked in Ephesians, but God being rich in mercy, all our sins were nailed to the cross with Christ, and there's no way that we can be held accountable, or we can't be held guilty of the violation of His law any longer because Christ paid it all.
We just sung it in Christ alone, it is beautiful. And so we got to see that there in Colossians chapter two. And so today, what we're gonna be doing, as we discussed last week, we looked at Colossians and the sister book to Colossians, the book that was written at the same time was Ephesians.
What we're now gonna do is look at another type of sister book, which is the book of Romans and Galatians. Romans and Galatians were written at the same time by Paul in the same circumstance, and so we're gonna be in the book of Romans today.
So I would encourage you to please open up to Romans chapter one, verses 14 through 17. Verses 14 through 17, Romans chapter one. This is some very powerful verses that we see in here. As I hope that we take that gospel message that we heard last week, and we can now apply it looking at these verses this week.
So before we read this, let's just go ahead and pray over the text. Lord God, I just thank you, Lord, for your love. And Lord, I thank you for your care. And Lord, I just pray that we would be able to mirror these attributes of you to one another, and that you would strengthen our body here today through the preaching and teaching of your word, Lord, and our personal and private study as well, Lord.
Let us be refined, let us be reformed to what your word has spoken. And Lord God, let us always seek to give you the glory in all things. And so Lord, upon that, I just say these things in your holy name, Jesus the Christ, the one who lived that life we could not live.
Amen. So let us go ahead and read verses 14 through 17, and then we'll say another prayer, and we'll talk a little bit about the context. As this is a topical message, we're jumping in the middle of a text to just talk about how we need to apply the gospel in our lives properly.
Verses 14 through 17 are a powerhouse of text, so let us read this. Paul says in here, in this letter, I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish. Thus, for my part, I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome.
Thus, for my part, I am eager to preach the gospel to you who are also in Rome. That is wonderful, I am eager to do this. Verse 16, 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 to the Greek.
For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written, but the righteous man shall live by faith. Let us go ahead and pray. Lord God, I thank you for this portion of text here, Lord.
Though it be short in its wording, Lord, the depth of theology is one that we could ponder the rest of our lives on just in these few verses. And so Lord, I know that this will only be a scratching of the service today as we look at these things, but Lord, I just pray that the scratching thereof would just bless and edify each one of us, Lord, and that we too would apply these words properly in our own lives and that we would be more and more and more like you today from it.
Lord, let us take the gospel to the world, even in the hard times, even it is to mention who you are to our friends, our loved ones, our neighbors, our family, Lord. God, let us never hesitate, never be ashamed, and see that we are under obligation to preach the gospel.
So Lord, we just say these things in your name, Jesus the Christ, amen. So just for some just really rough context of what this book has been written for, this book of Romans, if you've been a Christian for any amount of time and have read through the book of Romans, you would understand why this is often said, that many scholars think that this book is the most profound work there has ever been in the whole world, that the book of Romans has in it the most profound doctrine in theology.
And you can see that right off the guard, right off the start, even with these verses itself, that there is deep theology here. Paul is going about this in supernatural ways, explaining who God is, because he was inspired by the Holy Spirit to do so.
But yes, this book is known as the most profound work in existence. The book of Romans was written by Paul as the author, and it was written to the Christians in Rome. And one of the major themes, and I think we'll see this today, is if we went through the entirety of the book, one of the major themes that we'd see that's written and woven into this text is equality, is equality.
And what do I mean by that? Romans 3, all, none are righteous, no, not one. That's equality. All fall short of the glory of God, that's equality. That's equality. We'd even see that here in chapter, I won't turn to it right now because I don't have it written down, of course, but we would see that it uses that there is no distinction between Jew or Gentile, equality, that we're one in Christ, equality, that we're adopted sons and daughters, equality.
That's a major theme here in the whole book of Romans, and I think we're going to see that here in this text. But there will be a plethora of scripture that I hope that you can take from and apply to yourselves in the proper way.
But just know that if you wanted to read the whole book of this today, it would be helpful to read the entirety of the book of Galatians as well. As I said, these are sister books. They really go hand in hand.
There's a lot of theology that's repeated in these ways. There's a lot of things that play into each other in this way, so when you open up the book of Romans, it's helpful to have open the book of Galatians at the same time.
But what we're gonna do is let's start in verse 14 here. Paul writes here to the Roman Christian. He says, I am under obligation, both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish.
Now, what is this getting at? That Paul here sees himself as under an obligation, underneath the yoke, meeting and expressing that he must tell both the Greek and the barbarian about this gospel. What does that mean that he's under obligation?
Well, many people, a lot of times, and I think that this is sometimes done somewhat wrongfully, many times will say that, well, Peter was sent exclusively to the Jews, and Paul was sent exclusively to the Gentiles.
That's not true. The reality of this is that, yes, they did have perculiars that they were called to in a way that they could express the gospel to those individuals, just like if I had a rancher that wanted to know the gospel, I'm gonna probably send some people in the back row here on the left-hand side to go and talk to that rancher, right, because I probably can't relate to them that well.
If we have an LDS person in here today, I hope everybody in here would be like, hey, talk to that guy, because I have some history with them. We all have certain ways that we can express the gospel better to different individuals, and that is truly something that is a blessing that I hope that you guys utilize.
However, if you do not have Jace next to you and you run into a rancher, and he wants to know the gospel, I hope none of you say, well, I'm not sent to you, I don't know anything about your life, I'm not gonna tell you about the gospel.
That's not how Paul was sent to the Gentiles. That's a wrong way of thinking about this. In fact, let's go ahead and read real fast under Acts 9, verse 15, as this is the charge from God to Paul, the apostle, whom, like I said, many people say he was sent exclusively to the Gentiles.
That's not right. Acts 9, verse 15 actually tells us to whom Paul was sent, whom he was charged to be sent to. Verse 15 says, but the Lord said to him, go therefore, for he is my chosen instrument. This is Jesus speaking.
Go therefore, for he is my chosen instrument of mine to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings and sons of Israel. In fact, majority, I'm just pausing there in that text, the majority of these, there's a plethora of text here in the epistles that Paul writes that he's directly addressing the converted Jewish person that is now a Christian.
And so he is sent to everybody, essentially, that he is under obligation to preach the gospel to everybody. He does absolutely have some particulars and some particulars about how he can present the gospel to Gentiles, as we would see in the book of Galatians talking about that he was sent to the Gentiles.
That is true, he was sent to them, but he is not sent only to Gentiles. That would be in violation of the text. So when we look at this, Paul has been charged, he's under obligation, he's underneath this yoke, he's underneath, he's a detour in this way to Greeks and to barbarians.
Why is it that Paul sees himself as under obligation to the Greeks and the barbarians? This is something I was thinking through today and this week very much so. I think that truly what we would see is that Paul is first, and this is an application for us to preach the gospel to everybody right here, that first, Paul is under obligation to whom?
The very first one that we must make mention of is God and God himself. We would see that as the call, or the elders verse that we just read, that the very first command is to love God. Now, if we are to love God and we are to preach the gospel to our neighbors, the very first reason that you should preach the gospel to your neighbors is because you love God.
God is deserving of worship, God is deserving of adoration, God is deserving of these things, and therefore, if you love God, you should want your neighbor to love him too. That is factual, that is a takeaway from this text.
Paul, you, and myself are under obligation to tell your neighbors about whom God is because you are to love God. The second reason is, again, from that elder verse that we just read just a little while ago, you love your neighbor.
It would be not loving if you didn't tell them about who Jesus Christ was. It would be not loving to tell them about salvation. It would actually be quite hateful. There's a famous atheist that says, and this is gonna butcher that quote, but this famous atheist says that the Christian is the most hateful human being if he really believes in what he believes in and he doesn't tell his neighbor about it.
And to that, I say, amen, I completely agree. As Christians, it is hateful to not tell somebody about Jesus Christ because that is what you have salvation is. That is the greatest gift that you've ever received.
How spiteful and wrong is it to not share that with your neighbor? Now, so when we see this, that Paul's under obligation, I hope that you see that as yourself as well. We've been given the great commission in Matthew chapter 28, verses 18 through 20, that says, for all authority has been given to me under heaven and on earth.
Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even until the end of the age.
You, church, have been given this great commission. And so you are absolutely under obligation to preach the gospel. You are under obligation to take this message forward. Do not think that this is to be put upon the shoulders of missionaries or the soldiers of a pastor or the shoulders of anybody other.
It's on your shoulder as well. Don't, do not forego telling somebody about the gospel. And so he says in here, he's under obligation to these Greeks and to the barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish.
And so now we see why he says the Greeks and barbarians. He's sending this letter to the Romans here, and the Romans are influenced very, very much by Greek culture and philosophy. And the reason that he says Greek and barbarians is that the learned people would look at other people that didn't know Greek and didn't know the ins and outs of philosophy in those days, and they would call them barbarians.
They would call them foolish. And so Paul is saying that this message is one, he's under an equality way of obligation, both to those that think themselves to be wise and those that are unlearned in this way.
The same gospel is the same gospel that saves the professor, the doctor, the mechanic. It's the same one that saves them as well as the person that, like myself, is a fireman and never graduated from high school.
It saves the wise and it saves the foolish. It's equality in this text again. And so we then see Paul here now talk about how he goes about preaching the gospel. In verse 15, it says, thus for my part, the way that my part in this is gospel is the thing, this issue of the gospel, this topic of the gospel, for my part in it is I am to be eager.
I am eager to preach the gospel. I am excited. I am happy. It's a joyful thing to do. Now, that is quite interesting coming from Paul. If you know anything about the life of Paul and the times he went to prison and the way that he died and the persecutions that he had, even upon his very body, he suffered the marks of Christ.
Paul still saw it as joy to suffer for Christ. He still saw it as joy to preach the gospel. He still saw it as, he was going to be eager to preach the gospel regardless of his situation. This, again, is I think so important for us to apply to our own lives.
I hope that each one of us in this room have had the experience of I have my dear friend or I have this group of people that I know, my family, whatever your situation is, and I just want to tell them the gospel.
And immediately when you start to step forward to tell them it, you start getting the butterflies. You start second guessing about how you're gonna do this. You start thinking, is this the right time?
And it's hard. And then you tell them it and you're thankful that you told them it. And I hope we've all had that experience. I stand, and I don't wanna make this about me by any means, but just to apply this something to my own life here, I've had the opportunity to stand before crowds.
I've had the opportunity to stand before people that hated me. I've had the opportunity to do these things. And every single time I do it, it's difficult to open your mouth. It doesn't go away. There's a factor of hardship it takes to just utter the name of Jesus Christ before somebody.
I would encourage you though, to make sure to seek that you are doing this because you see it as an eagerness in your life. You ought to be doing this quickly. Do not tarry a day longer. If there's a person in the back of your mind that you're like, I should've told them the gospel last week.
I should've told them about Jesus Christ. Today after this service, you better call them on the phone. Be eager to share with them the gospel. Be eager about it. Now this opens up to even what the gospel is, right?
Because now we have a mention of the gospel, let's talk about what the gospel is. As we made mention of last week, as this is very clear, and for us that weren't able to be here last week, the gospel message in a very clear depiction is found in Colossians chapter two, 13 through 14.
So if you would like to know a little bit more about the gospel, I would encourage you to write those verses down, study them later today or even right now as the gospel is important. But if we could talk about the gospel for a moment, the gospel in a very short way to explain it is that you and I are dead in our sins and trespasses.
We are not righteous and we have broken the law of God. That's the bad news. That's not even the gospel portion, but it doesn't make sense unless we make a mention of this. But God, being rich in mercy, became flesh, Jesus the Christ, who is fully God and fully man, who in his active obedience lived the perfect life that you and I are unable to do as he was the sinless sacrifice.
He's our prophet, priest, and king, deserved full adoration, but only heard the cries of crucify, crucify. And in his active obedience, he became passively obedient and walked the hill of Calvary that you and I deserve, and he paid the just payment, that which we are debtors of, the wrath of God.
He suffered in our place, thus paying that debt that you and I owe. He was buried and rose again on the third day in great victory. And as Ephesians would say, when he rose, he sat us in the heavenly places with him.
There's a lot of different ways that you can go about explaining the gospel, but we need to mention Jesus Christ and what he has done for us. That is truly what it is, as we would see the shortest summation of it in 1 Corinthians 15, one through four, the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.
But we need to not be ashamed of this. We need to be eager to tell people about that message. It's the message of peace. It's the message of salvation. It's the very thing, the very reason that you and I are here today in this room worshiping God is because of that gospel, and we need to be eager about it.
We ought not to be ashamed. We ought not to be timid. We ought not to be shy. We need to be bold in these ways. Now, let us read verse 16. This is, again, an equality text. For I am not ashamed of the gospel.
Again, what is that gospel? We just talked about it. Jesus' life, death, burial, and resurrection. I am not ashamed of the gospel, the good news. I am not ashamed of it. I wish that I could always say that I was like Paul in this way.
There's times that I forego telling my friends about the gospel, and shame on me for doing so. Paul says in here that he is not ashamed to tell somebody about the only way to salvation. He's not ashamed of that.
That's not something to be embarrassed about. It's the very power of God. When we think about the crucifixion of Christ, we need to not be thinking about it always as this shepherd that was there in a very weak way.
He was meek, not weak, right? He was meek and humble in what he did. But we need to see it as the very power of God itself. That was the arm of God that saved you and I. That was the power of God that saves us, the sinner.
Now, when we think about this, and we understand that it is the power of God, we only understand that it is the power of God if we have an understanding of how dead in our sins we are, and how evil and rotten and awful it is to sin against God's holy law.
When we understand how evil, how ingrained, and how in this terribleness that is sin, how in depth we are therein, we understand the power of God that it took to save us from it. We understand from scripture that we can't save ourselves.
Romans 3, 28, for we maintain a man is justified through faith apart from works of the law. We understand we can't save ourselves. As we read last week, we are dead in our sins and uncircumcised of our flesh.
We are dead. There's nothing we can do about it. And so we see it is the very power of God that brings us the gospel, brings about our salvation, brings about the payment that was done on our behalf. Brothers and sisters, this phrase, not ashamed, I think that the application that each one of us must make from this is that Christians are not to behave as shy and weak bystanders, but we ought to act as strong, bold, and courageous soldiers engaged in gospel warfare because we are not ashamed of it.
We are ready to tell the world that hates us about the love that is in us. We should be ready to do those things. And I hope that you're engaging on the daily in this way, preaching the gospel to yourselves, your loved ones, and also to the world as well.
Just think about this for a moment. How many of you would drive to Boise today to go and talk to these people at the Pride Festival? It's the very power of God. It's the very power of God is the gospel.
I hope that you could stand before a group of people that hated you, that wanted you to die, that told you to leave, and you could tell them, no, it is important for me to worship God by preaching Him crucified and telling you about the love that is found in God because I love you.
And we could look at that in a multitude of ways in this awful world that we are in. Be ready to tell people about the gospel. Do not forgo it. It is the very means by which we ought to be approaching this world.
It is the power of God. The gospel is the power of God for salvation. We must recognize Jesus as our humble, conquering King. Why do I say that? Why, what does that mean there? Well, again, Romans chapter five, verse 10, it says, for we were saved when we were enemies of God.
Enemies of God. We were at war with Him. We hated Him. We despised Him. We crucified Him. Yet why we were enemies of God, Christ died for us. He saved us. If you don't see that Christ is that conquering King upon the cross, the seed and descendant of David himself, you are misunderstanding the way that God has gone about saving you because you were enemies of His.
He has conquered you. You are the spoils of the war in that sense. You are the spoils of His victory over sin and death. Colossians chapter one, verse 13. This was a text I was actually thinking about preaching on today, but Colossians 1 .13 says this, for He delivered us, that's you and I and every other believer, He delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son.
You were at war with God and a part of the kingdom and the dominion of darkness. You've been made subject under His feet through the piercing of His wounds. You have been healed and you've been transferred to the dominion and the kingdom of His beloved Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Praise to His name forever and ever. Now we also must take notice here in Romans chapter one, verse 16. It says to the Jew first and also to the Greek. Again, this salvation is one of equality. It's not one where one stands up and says, better at the table next to the other.
It's one that we are all equally dead in our sins and trespasses, yet we are equally saved by the very same love of God. John chapter 10, verse 15 through 16 says, even as I know the Father, or even as the Father knows me and I know the Father and I lay down my life for the sheep and I have other sheep which are not of this fold, I must bring them also and they shall hear my voice and they shall become one flock with one shepherd.
Equality, equality in this way. For in it, the righteousness, Romans 1, 17. Now this text, if you've done any church history study, Romans 1, 17 is one of very much importance for every Protestant church since the 1500s.
This text, it says, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written, but the righteous man shall live by faith. Now we will only scratch the surface of these things, but like I said, in church history, there was a man named Martin Luther who in his grief and in his suffering of trying to atone for his own sins and hearing the messages of indulgences and sacraments and ordinances in the Roman Catholic Church that was saying that you must do these things in order to make yourself righteous, that this is a righteousness that you can bring about yourself.
Martin Luther was terribly burdened with this charge of trying to make himself righteous. And so one day, this Catholic monk is reading Romans 1, 17 here. And he reads in here, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written, but the righteous man shall live by faith.
Now again, we are only scratching the surface of this, but that word righteous that is used in here in the Latin, in the Latin, carries the weight when it was written in Latin, carries the weight that it was your righteousness, that you were making yourself righteous.
And so therefore, you have the Roman Catholic Church teaching through indulgences, teaching through sacraments, all these different ways that you could be justified. It wasn't only, and so it was only until Martin Luther opened up another beloved church father, Augustine, and read his church notes, his recorded notes on this text itself, and he opened up to the very Greek itself, that he realized that the Latin did not do this text properly.
As that word righteous in here carries the weight of it, it is not your righteousness. It is actually the righteousness of another that is being declared and imputed unto you. That's the very, we have a catechism question that's going to be asked to the kids one day, what is justification?
And the answer to that is being declared legally righteous before God. That's what this word righteous is, is that it's the very righteousness of Christ, that act of life that he lived that is imputed unto your account.
So therefore, you are in Christ. He has made you to be the righteousness of God in him because he became sin on your behalf. Martin Luther reads this, and he realizes that the Catholic Church has been taking people astray from the gospel in this text.
And it's said that he says that after he read this in those notes from Augustine from the 300 AD period, he says, I was born again, and the doors to paradise swung open, and I walked in. This was the text that started the Protestant Reformation.
He no longer looked to the Roman Catholic Church as a means of salvation, or the ordinances and sacraments therein as a means of righteousness. He looked only to Jesus Christ alone as his righteousness, Jesus Christ alone as his salvation.
And as he said, that very day he was born again. And we today in the United States, in Hagerman, Idaho, are still a part of that Protestant Reformation. We are still refining and reforming ourselves to what the word of God says, as it is the word itself that reforms us to it.
But just notice in here that the righteousness of God that is given to us is through faith alone, that we are saved in Christ alone, because he gives us his grace alone as a means of salvation. There is no other intercessor or intermediator between us and God, it is Christ alone.
And so on this, let us just pray over this text. Lord God, I thank you for this wonderful text that is Romans 1, 14 through 17. God, I pray that each one of us would see it our duty, as the Great Commission has told us, that we are under obligation to our fellow countrymen, our fellow citizens, our neighbors, our beloved ones that live with us even more, that we are under obligation to them, to tell them about the gospel that has saved us.
And Lord, I pray that if any of us have come here today not knowing this gospel, Lord, I pray that we would look to Jesus Christ today, and that as Luther said, that we'd be born again, and that the doors of paradise would swing open for us, Lord.
God, according to John chapter 10, you've told us that we can go in and out and find pastor. And so Lord God, I thank you for your grace. I thank you for your salvation, Lord. And I just pray that we would be eager to tell the world and not ashamed of the gospel.
And I just say these things in your name, Jesus the Christ. Amen. Brothers and sisters, what we will go ahead and do now is I would invite you to please stand as we sing our final song today. This song is, and this is going to be biased, so don't take it as gospel.
This is my favorite song. I think it's the greatest song that's ever been written. I'm just kidding. It's Praise to the Christ. It's a beautiful song. Please sing it with joy and happiness as we praise the Christ who has given us that God.