The Power Of God - [Romans 1:16-23]

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I would invite you to open your Bibles to Romans chapter 1. We'll get back to the Gospel of John next week.
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But I've just been, and I use this word advisedly, I have been brooding over Romans 1 and meditating on it and just really focused on this, and so I thought
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I might speak on it this morning. At this Ligonier conference that Jen and I went to, one of the speakers asked this.
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He said, you know, what if in a Rip Van Winkle kind of oddity, you were in a prolonged sleep and you'd been asleep for say five years, and then you woke up and you looked around at the world, would you, do you think you'd be surprised?
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I think you might be surprised at who's president. I thought he had that TV show.
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What if it was 10 years? What if it was 15 years? The number of things that have changed in our society.
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If your Facebook feed is anything like mine, you've seen the stories of a 50 -something year old man who identifies as a six -year -old girl.
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And worse than that, he's found a family that will let him live like a six -year -old girl.
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Or what about the 20 -something year old woman who lives in Europe and identifies as a cat, dresses up as a cat, walks around the street and hisses at dogs?
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Now, it used to be, in fact, I would dare say 30 years ago when
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I was actually working a patrol car, we would find somebody like that, we would transport them to the mental hospital where they would be subdued and medicated until they came to their senses.
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But now it's acceptable. In fact, if you criticize somebody who thinks they're a cat, you're judgmental.
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You're unkind. You're unloving. If you went into a deep sleep 20 years ago and you woke up and you found out that homosexual marriage is the law of the land, you might find yourself saying, what is homosexual marriage exactly?
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What does that even mean? And of course, if you ask that question now, you hate homosexuals.
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And you should be shunned. What was once unthinkable has become a social norm.
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And I'll tell you what, if I'd been asleep for the last 5, 10, 15, 20 years, I might want to go right back to sleep.
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Hope that when I woke up, things were better. What can we do in light of social change?
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How do we stop the slide of our society? How do we adapt the fact that behavior that was once considered abnormal or once would have resulted in some kind of mental hold being placed on a person is now applauded or accepted at least, and sometimes even awarded for courage, for bravery.
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You're a brave person for declaring that you are now a woman. Does the
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Bible say anything that would help us? More importantly, and maybe closer to home, as you look at your relationships with your spouse, with your children, with your parents, and you struggle in those relationships, you think,
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I would like to see my parents get saved. I would like to see my children get saved. I wish my spouse were
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Christ -like. Is there hope? And I think this morning's passage gives us that hope.
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Let me read it. I'm going to start reading in verse six, as Paul writes his epic epistles, epistle to the
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Romans. I want to give us a little context, so I'm going to start in verse six.
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First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being proclaimed in all the world.
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For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his son, that without ceasing
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I mention you always in my prayers, asking that somehow, by God's will,
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I may now at last succeed in coming to you. For I long to see you that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you.
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That is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith, both yours and mine.
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I want you to know, brothers, that I have often intended to come to you, but thus far have been prevented, in order that I may reap some harvest among you, as well as among the rest of the
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Gentiles. I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish, so I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome.
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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
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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. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
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For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.
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For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made.
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So they are without excuse. For although they knew
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God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened.
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Now the book of Romans is kind of a desert island book. It's one of those books that you could just read and read and read and really never grow tired of.
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It's kind of one of the Mount Rushmore sort of books.
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It is a singularly exhaustive explanation of the gospel and its implications. That's the focus of all 16 chapters.
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What is the gospel and then what impact should that have on how we live? And in chapter 1, where we are this morning, we see both the heart of man, unsaved man, and the heart of God, the rebellion of man and the resolve of God to punish that rebellion.
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And a word that I'm going to use a lot this morning, in fact, I would encourage the children here to count how many times
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I said, because I don't even know, could be, well, it won't be innumerable.
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There is a number, but the word is gospel. Why? Because the gospel is our hope and it's not our hope only for the next life.
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It is also our hope in this life. It is what will see us through this life. And I have three points this morning to kind of underscore that hope.
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We must trust in the power of God, in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Our first point, and by the way, I decided as I was meditating on this and focusing on it,
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I thought, you know what I'm going to do? And you're going to go, this guy's crazy. I'm going to work backwards.
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I'm going to work backwards. So I'm going to start in verse 20, and then I'm going to work my way back to verse 16.
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And I hope it will make sense by the time we're done. You be the judge of that. Our first point is
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God defied, God defied. Now, on judgment day, all of humanity, every single person will stand before their creator and they will have absolutely no excuse for their rebellion.
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It's clear in verse 20, for his invisible attributes, that is to say the invisible attributes of God, namely his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made.
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So they are without excuse. No excuse.
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No one will be able to say, you know, echoing kind of Adam and Eve standing before God and just say, you know what,
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God, I did those things because you made me this way. How many times do we hear that today?
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God made me this way. If there is a God, God made me this way, and therefore I have no choice but to act this way.
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It's God's fault. The creature says it's the creator's fault that the creature acts this way.
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The mere display of the power of God and the nature of God are sufficient to put every man and woman under the just condemnation of God.
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They know that he's a God of order. They know that he didn't create a woman who is actually a cat.
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He did not create a man who is actually a woman. He did not create people who don't know what their gender is.
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But it's more than that. Because of the sins of mankind, because they refuse to worship
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God, he gives them over to their desires. He gives them up, the
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ESV says, to their desires. In fact, it would be right to say that as people sin,
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God says, you know what? You want to sin? I'll give you over to another level of depravity.
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I'll harden your heart so that you will rebel even more. And as a society, we see that.
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More as we become, as we, as a society, have become more and more tolerant of immorality and idolatry, the slide of wickedness has quickened.
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I mean, it has been not just a slippery slope. It's hard to even see the slope. Just a few years ago, no politician from either major party would have supported homosexual marriage.
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And I can show you that. In fact, the very idea sounds like nonsense because it is nonsense.
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Marriage is between one man and one woman. Biblically, that has always been the case. Historically, it's generally been the case.
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There have been some exceptions. But that is the norm. But we've reached a point in human history, in human development, in which we are, as a society, too smart for our own good.
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Look at verse 22. I'm going to read a little further. Claiming to be wise, that is to say, mankind, our society.
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I mean, tell me this isn't today. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal
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God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
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You want to know what people worship today? They worship themselves. They used to at least have the sense to find another object to worship.
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Now they worship themselves. Verse 24. Therefore, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever.
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Amen. For this reason, again, God gave them up to dishonorable passions for their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature.
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And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
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And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.
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There were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice.
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They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. There are gossips, slanders, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, and ruthless.
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Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things, listen, deserve to die.
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They not only do them, but give hearty approval to those who practice them.
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They give them awards. They applaud them. They put them on magazine covers. They name them man and woman of the year.
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Again, see how verse 32 says that they deserve to die. It's interesting.
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A few weeks ago, I was privileged to be the speaker at the Iwana banquet.
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And as I try to do, especially with younger ones, I was trying to engage them and ask them questions to keep them kind of listening to me, like I do sometimes with you.
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So I said, I said to the audience there, I said, what is sin? And some hands went up and I picked this child in front of me.
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I don't really remember what that child said. It was probably right. But the next day
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I was in trouble. Big trouble. My granddaughter approached me and she said,
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Grandpa, why didn't you pick me last night? Mea culpa.
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I'm guilty. You know, to be honest, I was kind of looking here and I didn't see you over there.
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You know, she says. I knew the answer.
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Well, you know, as a grandpa, you have to be fast on your feet because I had no idea. I said, what was the question?
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You know? Oh, yeah. What was the, what was the question I asked again? You know, can you fill me in?
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She goes, you asked, what was sin? And I said, oh, yeah, I remember that.
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What was your answer? You know what she said? She didn't give any of the answers we typically give, you know, not missing the mark.
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It's not doing what God forbids or failing to do what God commands.
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She says. I said, what is sin? And she said, death, death.
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And I thought, you know what? That's right. The wages of sin is death.
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Look what he said again. They deserve to die.
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Every sin earns the death penalty. We don't like to think of that.
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We have gradations of sin. Every sin deserves death.
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And it's not talking about physical death. I couldn't help. I mean, I was seriously,
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I was tearing up during the hymn this morning because this one verse is new in 278.
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Where it says the shadow of an awful grave that gapes both deep and wide. And there between us stands the cross, two arms outstretched to save.
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Every sin would set us on a path for that eternal grave. And Jesus Christ alone can stop us from that.
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Look at verse 21. Again, talking about this accountability, this judgment that we all deserve.
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For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him. But they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened.
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All this, all this fuzzy thinking, all this foolishness, all the sinfulness.
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Leads to ever deepening rebellion against God to the point that our society has collectively kind of lost its capacity to condemn even the most ungodly activity.
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And I'll tell you one thing, things are only going to get worse. If you read Romans 1, it's kind of a spiraling down of our society.
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It's only going to get worse. We know that from scripture. Things are not going to get better. This is what happens when
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God is defied. Our second point is
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God's patience tried. God's patience tried. As I've said that there are sins worthy of the ultimate penalty, and they're now applauded because of the collective depravity of our society.
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And in verse 18, Paul says that the wrath of God is revealed. The wrath of God is revealed.
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And I'm going to tell you something. We ought to be thankful that the wrath of God is revealed.
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Why? First of all, I'm glad it's
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God's wrath. I'm glad it's God who is wrathful rather than somebody else.
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We were talking about it this morning, the impassibility of God. That is to say that he doesn't suffer human emotions.
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Why is that important when it comes to the wrath of God? Because if wrath meant just vengeful anger, if God was so angry like you or I might get angry, then what?
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As soon as the first sin was committed, as it were, he'd just take his hands, smoosh it up, throw it away, destroy it all.
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Maybe create it again. Maybe not. But that's not the wrath of God. It's not instant obliteration, instant annihilation.
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God's wrath is not an emotion. It is a determination to see his holiness upheld, his righteousness upheld, and his justice executed.
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Nevertheless, because he is loving, he patiently waits to judge mankind. And as he's waiting to judge mankind, he saves many from his own wrath.
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For thousands of years, God has suffered the indignation of having his creation defy his will.
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He upholds creation. By the way, he created it with a word, but he upholds it. He keeps it, and it keeps defying him.
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It keeps rebelling against him. One day, maybe even today, he will wait no longer.
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And his wrath, now revealed in part by the hardening of the hearts of mankind, will be revealed in full.
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And that wrath, the wrath of God, is partially revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.
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And again, we get back to this truth. All ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.
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Not some. Not the only really bad ones. There are no small, insignificant sins.
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There are no venial sins, if I may say. If you want to use the word venial sin and just kind of joke about it, fine.
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But just understand that there are no traffic tickets.
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There are no jaywalking tickets with God. There are no minor fines. Every sin is a sin against his holiness and his righteousness.
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Here's a simple one. Have God's standards changed? No. He set the rules.
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His character does not change. His standards have not changed. His law has not changed.
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I mean, there are people now that say, well, wait a minute. You know, that book was completed almost 2 ,000 years ago.
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What can it tell us about today? You know, we now understand that some people are just this way. Or we now understand that this isn't that big of a deal.
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Or, you know, it's the law of the land. People are going to do what they're going to do. Well, that's true. But God condemns what society approves.
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And he's done that forever. Listen, society got together and did what? They built the Tower of Babel. Society got together and they rejected
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Noah and the Ark. Society is, generally speaking, wrong.
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Why? Because there are a bunch of unbelievers doing what unbelievers do. God's patience is also tried by attempts to suppress the truth.
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That is to say, to deflect the truth. To deny the truth.
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To steer people away from the truth. And by the way, that's not a commentary about freedom of the press or fake news.
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But we live in a time of where extraordinary measures, extraordinary and elaborate theories are concocted to explain why what is evident all around us isn't real.
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It isn't the truth. I actually googled this. I did use Google one time.
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Well, this is true. No one can explain to you where the material that supposedly came together and, you know, blew up and caused the
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Big Bang. Nobody can explain to you where that matter went. There are a lot of different theories and all that, but they'll just readily admit that they can't explain it.
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And if you think, well, if they can't explain that, then how can they possibly believe this and say that it's true?
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Because they have to suppress the truth and unrighteousness. They have to look at God's creation and say
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God didn't create that. If they looked at the evidence and looked at it with a logical, clear mind, they would come to this singular conclusion that God exists, that he is an all -powerful
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God, and that he ought to be worshipped. And that fact alone spawns a lot of issues.
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For example, what is God, you know, just imagine you didn't have the Bible and you knew that there was a God, because this is true of many people, or they have never read the book.
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Well, what does this God want us to do? Why did he create us? What happens after we die?
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These are all things that people want to know. And instead, they just say, this is an accident.
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It was created in a manner that we can't really explain, and you ought to believe that. Why? Because if you don't believe it, then you'll believe the truth.
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The answers for these questions, what does God want us to do? Why did he create us? What happens to us after we die?
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They're only found in scripture. Everything else is what
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Paul writes about in verse 21, futile thinking. That is to say, there's no purpose in it.
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It's just vain speculation. God was under no obligation to his creation.
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He could have just set the world in motion and done nothing. But he chose to reveal himself to mankind.
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It's what we call general revelation. We can look around and we can see that there is a God. General revelation,
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Psalm 19 tells us basically screams that there is a God and tells us about who he is.
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Those truths must be suppressed in order for people to act like they do. So we've seen
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God defied, God's patience tried, and now point three,
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God's power applied. God's power applied. My purpose in kind of moving backwards is there are so many daily issues, so many moral questions facing us, so many actions and attitudes around us that really vex us, that irritate us, that bother us, that concern us, and sometimes even depress us.
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People get overwhelmed by what they see going on around them and they get overwhelmed by their own personal circumstances, the relationships that are falling apart in their lives.
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I want to encourage you. We have a weapon at our disposal, sufficient for storming the greatest strongholds, capable of confounding the most brilliant human minds.
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And by the way, of saving the most wayward souls, that weapon is the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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Paul said he's not ashamed of the gospel. Well, why would he be? Why are we?
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Because it's not sophisticated. People can explain or prattle on about the
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Big Bang Theory and about all the myriad of stars and galaxies that we've discovered.
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And you just sit there and you go, yes, but you're a sinner in need of a savior.
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And you feel kind of weak with regards to the gospel.
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Is it true or not true that a child can recite it? Jesus loves me, this
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I know. Yet it is the most profound truth in the universe.
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The same God who has a determination to bring justice upon those who mock Him and disregard
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Him and rebel against Him offers a means of escaping the penalty due every sinner.
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Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. Trust in His perfect life, in His death and His resurrection.
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And you will be saved from the punishment you deserve. Trust that He paid the penalty in your place.
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Everyone sins and everyone deserves death. And that is eternity facing the just wrath of God in hell.
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That's what death is. It's not the physical death.
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We're talking about spiritual death. Paul says the gospel of which he's not ashamed is the power of God.
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The power of God. You wield the power of God. How? Let me take a step back.
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Do you have loved ones who don't know Christ? Do you pray for them? And do you pray in this way, kind of like in a forlorn sort of manner that, you know, it's just hopeless that there's no way that this person could be saved?
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You know, just kind of throwing it up there. Just like, well, you know, old
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Joe, nobody's going to do anything for him. And boy, what a lost cause he is.
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We ought not to pray that way. The Holy Spirit has a message for those who would pray such prayers.
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To quote Bob Newhart, stop it. God's arm is not short.
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He's able to save anyone at any time. And we ought to pray and think like that. We ought to be people of hope.
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As long as there is the breath of life in someone, as long as there's a brainwave, as long as they have the capacity to hear, there is hope of salvation.
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Because the very power of God is contained in the gospel. This isn't your wisdom.
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This isn't something you've concocted. It's not some theory. This is the power of God. Set it free.
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Let it loose. See what God will do. We're always concerned about how we're going to appear if we preach the gospel to somebody and they reject it.
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If they laugh at us, if they mock us. It is the power of God.
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Turn it loose on your spouse, on your parents. On your children, on your neighbors.
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The word of God says the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. The gospel alone can save.
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No one can be saved apart from believing it. It is, as we often say here, the most loving thing you can do is to tell somebody the truth.
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This is the most powerful truth there is. I can't think of anything else in the
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Bible that is called a message that is called the power of God.
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And yet, what do we see in many churches today? They're fleeing from the gospel.
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It's too confrontational. It's too unsophisticated. It offends people who don't want to be told that they're sinners.
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It doesn't help people solve their daily problems. It's not practical. And let's be serious.
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Nobody wants to come in every single week and hear the gospel preached. We have to meet people where they are.
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We have to go after their needs. We have to solve their problems. Well, the
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Bible says that people face one problem. And that problem is the guilt that we all bear and will have to account for one day before a holy
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God. What did Paul say in 2
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Corinthians 5? He said, the love of God constrains us. What do you mean?
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He meant because he loves God, because God loved him, because God loves us.
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We have to proclaim freely the gospel, the good news that God saves sinners through the finished work of Jesus.
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What sort of love is it when people say they're a loving, welcoming congregation? What sort of love is it when they won't give them the one thing that will save their souls?
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What sort of love is that? And imagine the frightful judgment awaiting those who operate such churches.
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And week after week, they seek to improve the lives of those who listen to them, but they never move them one inch closer to the truth that would save their souls, the very power of God.
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James 3 .1 says that there's a stricter judgment for teachers. And I would not want to be a teacher who did not proclaim the truth of the saving gospel.
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A church that fails to proclaim the only means of salvation is no church.
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A pastor who fails to give his flock the transforming power of the gospel is no shepherd.
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He is a wolf. The power of the gospel, that is to say, the power of God is universal.
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It is available to everyone who believes, Paul writes. The gospel came to the
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Jews first, and I don't think he's done with the Jews. He's not done with the physical descendants of Abraham.
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And thanks be to God, he did not limit his saving work to the Israelites. Imagine that if the
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Bible told us that only Israelites could be saved, but the Greeks, the
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Gentiles are also grafted in so that every single person can theoretically be engrafted into the family of God, be one of the chosen of God.
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God is no respecter of nationality or ethnicity. The gospel, the power of God is effective because it is divinely given, not because it is designed for any particular people group.
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The need is universal. The need of salvation is universal. And so is the answer to that need, the gospel.
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And just as we saw that the wrath of God was revealed in verse 18. So now we see that his righteousness is revealed in verse 17, and it is revealed in the gospel.
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The righteousness of God is shown to us in the gospel. When we understand the gospel for the first time, what's one of the first things that we,
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I'll use the word, we feel. When you actually hear the gospel and you understand it, the first thing you want to feel is fear.
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Why? Because you've understood the righteousness of God. And as you contemplate the righteousness of God, that he's high and lifted up, and that there's no way for you to approach him because you are a sinner, there's helplessness.
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And if that's all there was to the gospel, then we'd have no hope at all. We would be undone.
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But there needs to be that sort of, I'm calling it fear, that sort of awe, that sort of reverence.
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When you think of Isaiah and the vision he saw, Ezekiel and the vision he saw, or Peter on the
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Mount of Transfiguration, their immediate response to the glory of God, to the holiness of God, to the righteousness of God wasn't, well, hey, that's pretty cool.
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It was they were dumbstruck. They were awestruck. They were terrified. But God in his graciousness does not leave us to despair.
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As we are convicted of our sin, we are then comforted by the knowledge that we have a savior who has bled and died for us if we will but believe.
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When we think of Calvary, when we think of the cross, that's the righteousness of God on full display.
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The full weight of the sin of everyone who would ever believe placed on the human frame of Jesus Christ.
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His soul agonizes, why? Because he is suffering the wrath of God in our place.
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In our place condemned he stood. In fact, we see in verse 17 that the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith.
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The gospel is from beginning to end about faith. It's about belief.
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It's revealed to us by faith with the purpose that we would continue to grow in faith.
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In other words, we can't grasp it until God has granted us faith. We can't grasp it until the
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Holy Spirit has caused us to be born again. We can't grasp it until the father has drawn us.
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We can't grasp it until we've seen Jesus Christ high and lifted up. But those who have been washed clean by the
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Holy Spirit, those who have been regenerated, those who have been declared righteous by God, what shall live by faith?
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What does it mean to live by faith? What does it mean to live by faith?
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It means that our thinking, our lives, our emotions should not be dependent upon circumstances.
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Should not be dependent on feelings. Should not be dependent on science or archaeology.
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And here's a key. Our lives and our feelings and our emotions and our outlook on life should not depend on our own faithfulness.
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If I live my life on the basis of how I feel about how I'm doing in terms of my own righteousness,
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I'm going to be depressed a lot. Why? Because I sin a lot.
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I fail to do the things I ought to do. And I do things that I ought not to do.
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My hope, my outlook on life is not based on my performance.
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It's based on the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith says,
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I believe God. Faith says, I believe in God because God granted me faith.
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And will hold me fast by his power, by his faithfulness, not by mine.
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That's the hope. That's the sure hope of the gospel. That's the power of God.
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So as we see society crashing around us, as we see it accepting and embracing abnormal norms, we can say to ourselves, what am
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I going to do to stop that? Or we can understand that it is the power of God at work that he has turned them over to their own desires.
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We can't stop society and we ought not try to stop society. Our focus has to be on individuals.
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On a personal level, again, as we have unsaved loved ones, as we see people sick and dying around us, as we're suffering through difficult relationships, difficult times in our lives, what is the answer?
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What can give us hope? How should we frame our thinking? And our focus should be on the gospel.
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It is the power of God. It changes people and it should change our thinking.
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Paul said in verse 15 that he was eager to preach the gospel. Who was he eager to preach the gospel to?
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He didn't say pack an arena with unbelievers and I will come to Rome. He wanted to preach the gospel to the saints, to the believers.
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Why? That he'd have fruit among them. The gospel is fruitful for you.
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The gospel is helpful to you. Why? Because it is the power of God unto salvation.
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I pray that we may never grow weary of proclaiming it here at Bethlehem Bible Church or of hearing it.
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It is the power of God unto salvation. It is the power of God that transforms the unsaved to the saved and it transforms our thinking.
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Even as we grow in sanctification and as we grow in godliness, we do so by the power of God in Christ Jesus and in his gospel.
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Let's pray. Father, we are so often given to our own methods and our own solutions and our own answers.
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Remind us that the power of God is not in our wisdom.
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It's not in our compelling speech. It's not in our creativity.
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The power of God is in full display in the gospel.
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We need nothing else. You have granted us everything pertaining to life and godliness.
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You have shown us your love, your compassion, your forgiveness.
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You have told us to go and to teach these things, to make disciples.
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Lord, we don't have to be learned scholars, pastors, elders, experts in evangelism, apologetics.
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If a child can understand the gospel, if a child can explain the gospel, we are without excuse for not giving the gospel.
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Father, encourage us to live in light of the gospel, to think in light of the gospel, and to understand that our neighbors, our friends, our loved ones need to be exposed to the power of God for salvation.