Keep sharing good news without ads.
No description available
They say when you preach, you're supposed to get people's attention. I've been studying now for three and a half years on my doctorate in preaching, the longest three decades of my life.
Lord willing, I'll graduate in May of next year. And they say when you start a sermon, you're supposed to grab people's attention and you're supposed to secure interest.
So how's this for an interest grabber? Last Thursday, I lied. Everyone listening now, you wanna know the circumstances?
I've both gotten your attention and I've secured your interest. Last Thursday, to the
Bible Institute class on hermeneutics, how to study the Bible, I said to them that I will attempt to preach through this passage today in only one week, no matter what.
I lied. I'm gonna try to do it in two weeks. This is my favorite book of the
Bible to preach from. Why zoom through? This is a book that one man called the greatest book in the
Bible. Another man said, this is the most profound of all the epistles and perhaps the most important book in the
Bible. Luther said it was the chief book of the New Testament. It deserves to be known by heart, word for word by every
Christian. C .A. Fox said, unquestionably the fullest, deepest, compendium of all sacred foundational truths.
Gordon Clark said, quote, if any minister wants to strengthen his people, he can hardly do better than to give them a massive dose of Romans.
And so this week and next week, I'm going to attempt to preach the entire book of Romans in two weeks.
16 chapters. Be out of town in a couple weeks and then when
I return, Lord willing, we'll start the Sermon on the Mount series, but I'm kind of stalling to get there because I wanna just start right off and then not go out of town the next week.
Romans is one of these books that is so crucial because it helps us in lots of ways. It helps us to understand the gospel.
What is the gospel? It encourages us to remember what God has done for us. It helps us to be better evangelists.
I had a friend who wrote a long gospel tract and someone said, nobody will ever read that, it's too long.
Our retort back was, the best gospel tract that was ever written, the book of Romans is pretty long too and if the spirit of God is compelling them to read it, in fact, won't they?
This is a book that will whet your appetite. As one man said, it's almost like a vitamin dose for those that need better health.
So whether you're a Christian or whether you're an unbeliever, and I think we have many unbelievers here, this is a good reminder of the grace of God extended through him granting us what we couldn't deserve or earn, his very own righteousness.
This is a wonderful book and I love this about F .F. Bruce when he said, there is no telling what may happen when people begin to study the epistle to the
Romans. You never know what's going to happen. People, John Wesley got saved when he read
Luther's introduction to the book of Romans, which contained gospel truth of the book of Romans.
You never know what's going to happen. I wonder if the God of the word will turn your life upside down as we look through 16 chapters of the book of Romans.
Now for the visitors today, I typically take one or two verses and preach on those for about 19 weeks and then move on to the next two verses.
So instead of going piece by piece, word by word, that will be different today. And today we'll look at the broad sweep of something because I do want to whet your appetite.
I want you to have a little salt on your taste buds that you may say, that was a good cursory overview.
I understand the jet tour view, but now I want to get down into the trenches and in between the mountain peaks to study this book that will transform your life or remind you about the life that God has transformed.
So if you turn your Bibles to the book of Romans, that would be helpful. If you do not have a Bible, there's a
Black Pew Bible in front of you and you can turn to the table of contents and see where the book of Romans is found in the
New Testament, because you'll need your Bibles. Over and over and over people tell me the sermon that was 50 or 55 minutes went quickly because A, I'm thinking and B, I had my
Bible open. If you don't have your Bibles open, it's going to be a long 55 minutes. Here we come to Paul's magnum opus.
And I like it because he's almost kind of the debater and he asks questions and even gives his own answers.
It's a lively book. 16 chapters can just zoom by. Logical, systematic.
I could even say it's theologically logical as well. And I have only three words to prepare us for beginning to study this book.
Start your engines. Ready? Let's look at the introduction.
Just to give us an introduction, Paul wrote Romans when he was at Corinth and it was towards the end of his third missionary journey.
And he was almost writing it for preventative maintenance. He was not trying to solve a problem. He was not trying to correct a situation like at Corinth or at the
Church of Galatia. He wanted them to be prepared so when he visited them, they'd be ready.
Romans 15, I'll just read it. Verses 22 through 24. For this reason, I have often been prevented from coming to you.
But now with no further place for me in these regions, and since I have had for many years a longing to come to see you, whenever I go to Spain, for I hope to see you in passing and to be helped on my way there by you when
I have first enjoyed your company for a while. I want to build up your faith. I want to encourage you. I'm on my way to see you.
Here's a letter in advance almost. We won't look at every verse because we don't have time, but let's look at selected verses.
Romans chapter one, verse one. There's a whole sermon right here. Paul, a bondservant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God.
And as town criers and heralds would trumpet forth the truth from the
Roman emperor, this is the dictates of the emperor. This is what the emperor wants you to know. Paul too is set apart not to give emperor's commands, but God's command.
He's called apart for the gospel of God himself. Which is not plan
B, by the way, if you look at verse two, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in his holy scriptures concerning his son, who was born of a descendant of David according to the flesh.
God promised this before he time began according to Titus chapter one. And he talked about this man who was fully man, the
Messiah who was everything a man was to be. He was fully human. Verse four, who was declared or made obvious or made plain.
When you look at the horizon, you see the demarcation line between sky and land. This word here is horizon.
This word is Jesus is the clear demarcating line between God and humans.
He was declared and made obvious as the son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, according to the spirit of holiness,
Jesus Christ, our Lord. So in verse three, he's fully man without sin.
Verse four, he is fully God. He is the God man. He is the Messiah. And he must be the
God man because we'll see soon enough that Jesus had to be fully human to be our representative.
Speaking in tongues up here. He had to be fully human to be our representative to identify with us.
He had to be fully human to die in our place. He had to be made like us, except he didn't have any sin.
But he also had to be God because he had to have enough righteousness, an infinite amount as God, to give that righteousness to all those who would ever believe.
Abraham, Moses, Jacob, you, me, if the Lord cherishes people in 5 ,000
AD. So he had to be fully man and fully God. And Paul says, I am here to proclaim this truth to you.
The best news of all, the good news. And then if you go down to verse 16, we come to the heart of the letter.
If you'd like to know the theme of the book of Romans, this is the theme. This is the heart of it. That salvation is by faith alone.
And that salvation is to men without distinction, Jew and Gentile. Paul said,
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. This powerful gospel has enough strength and might to overcome all who sin, any kind of sin, the degree of sin, the nature of sin,
God is able to have through this gospel preached, people turn from sinners into saints.
One man said, quote, regarding being ashamed here, Paul said, I'm not ashamed. He had been in prison in Philippi, chased out of Thessalonica, smuggled out of Berea, laughed at at Athens, regarded as a fool in Corinth, stoned in Galatia, but Paul remained eager to preach the gospel in Rome.
Isn't that rich? That is so good. Paul said, I'm here to preach the gospel. You might not want it, but you need it.
And then we come to verse 17, the verse that haunted Luther for many years as he was an unbeliever.
For in it, in this gospel that can transform your mind, will, emotions, heart, sentiment, in this gospel, in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith for as it stands and always will stand as written, the righteous man shall live by faith.
That's the theme of the book of Romans. If you wanna just write off to the side of your Bibles there in the margin, the theme of the book of Romans, the purpose of Romans, the righteousness of God revealed
God's righteous revelation of God in the gospel. And here he says, the just shall live by faith.
Abraham was saved by faith. Moses would say by faith. Cornelius was saved by faith. Sarah was saved by faith.
Everyone has been saved by faith. And yet when Luther, the unbeliever looked at this verse, he could not stand it.
He told Duke George of Saxony, looking back at his life as an unbeliever, examining this verse, quote,
I was indeed a pious monk and follow the rules of my order more strictly than I can express.
If ever a monk could obtain heaven by his monkish works, I should certainly have been entitled to it.
Of all this, of all the friars who have known me can testify. He used to have confession times of six hours and they would say, quit confessing, go home.
You've confessed enough. If I had continued much longer, I should have carried my self -denials even to my death by means of my watchings, prayers, readings and other labors.
And he almost killed himself in the monastery trying to make himself right with God. And he knew looking at this verse, if God's righteousness, if God's goodness is revealed, there is trouble.
If his holy standard and his holy nature and character is shown against the backdrop of sinful humanity, there's a difference.
And so Paul, excuse me, Luther, he said, love God at this time. I didn't love
God, I hated him because God's righteousness is revealed. And Luther knew if this is
God's righteousness, here's his righteousness actually negative if this is ground zero. He knew he had an unrighteousness and God was righteous.
How can this gulf ever be met? Luther said, we fled from Christ as from the devil.
And we ran to the Virgin Mary and St. Barbara for we were taught that everyone must appear before the judgment seat of Christ with his works.
Often I was horrified at the name of Jesus. And when I thought about him on the cross, it was as if I had been struck by lightning.
When I heard his name mentioned, Jesus, I would have rather heard the name of the devil for I believe that I must by my own good works make
Christ my gracious friend. Here's God, here's me. And Luther said, I don't even want to know about that.
I want to just kind of anesthetize my mind through other means because I realize here's
God and I have fallen short of his glory. His mentor,
Stoppage said, why torture yourself? You need to look to Christ, don't look at yourself. Luther said,
I cannot and dare not come to God till I'm a better man. I have not yet repented sufficiently.
God won't save you till you're better. And Stoppage was right, you'll never be better. So look to the one who is the best, who's righteous.
Your salvation is found in another. The just shall live by faith is shorthand. The people that want to be just in God's eyes need to live by faith in another,
Christ Jesus, who is the perfect God and perfect man. Stoppage said, Christ came to not save good men, but sinners.
Then Luther almost died. And there was one verse that kept coming to his mind. The just shall live by faith. The just shall live by faith.
The just shall live by faith. He could not get over it. He knew he was a sinner and he knew God was angry with sinners.
One day though, of course, he read Psalm 22 and my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And Luther realized like a sunbeam pierced the dark mist of a forest.
He realized that God, the son was forsaken by God, the father. And if God, the son was punished by the father, then
God, the father would not punish Luther. Now for the outline of the book of Romans.
It's very easy to outline. And when I first was taught this by George Zemeck, I thought I never want to forget that as long as I live.
It's easy, it's theological. And let me just give you the outline first, since we'll never make it through the whole thing today.
I have been told by approximately eight people in the last three months that they would like it if I would just preach for two hours, to just preach more.
The ones that are going like this, they're not the people that said that. I can guarantee you that.
So if you want two hours of preaching, come back tonight. The outline of chapters one, two, and three is sin.
This is a generic basic outline. It all starts with S. So in perfect Baptistic alliteration form,
S for sin, chapters one, two, and three A, if you will. If you don't get these, we'll catch up as we go.
Chapters three, B through five, salvation, sin, salvation. It's logical. First we see our sin, then we see our savior.
Chapter six and seven, after you become saved, you need to be sanctified or be made more holy and righteous in your walk.
Your walk becomes more of who you are, as it were. Sin, savior, salvation, sorry, sin, salvation, sanctification.
Chapter eight, security, you are secure in Christ. Even though we sin, God will never forsake us because he forsook that one on Calvary.
Chapters nine through 11, sovereignty. How can our salvation be sure if Israel seemingly was not?
God is sovereign over that Jewish Gentile issue. Chapters 12 through 15, service.
If God has saved you and you reflect on the mercies of God in your life, you will want to serve him. Chapters 12, 13, 14, 15.
And then chapter 16, salutation, if you will. Just some extra stuff that's there. Sin, salvation, sanctification, security, sovereignty, service, and salutation.
And that is the book of Romans. That is God's gospel, the greatest gospel tract ever written,
I would argue. So let's go to the first one. The bad news comes before the good news. Chapter 118 through 320, the issue of sin.
All men are under the power of sin, are sinners by nature and deed. All men have no righteousness of their own and no person who's ever been born will be justified by their own good deeds.
I read about a man who was a wealthy contractor who had finished building the Tombs Prison in New York long time ago.
He was then found guilty of forgery and sentenced to several years in the prison he had built.
As he was escorted into a cell of his own making, the contractor said, I never dreamed when
I built this prison that I would be an inmate one day. And we have all sinned in Adam.
Adam was our representative. And we now have been entombed, encased, sealed by our own sin, as it were, and we cannot puncture the bag to get out.
We are helpless and we can't get out. Both Gentile and Jew. First look at the Gentiles, verse 18.
As the righteousness of God was revealed in verse 17, here the wrath of God is revealed with the exact same
Greek word. Righteousness of God is revealed and now wrath of God is revealed, verse 18.
The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness, everything that's not like God.
God does things, that's godly. We do things that aren't like God, that's ungodly. And unrighteousness of men,
God is righteous, we do things opposite, it's unrighteousness. Who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.
So we have Gentiles that he's talking about here and they purposely kind of hold under the truth because it is no fun to just sin when you have the word of God assaulting your conscience and you look up and you see the sky and the moon and the sun and the stars and you realize there's a
God who made you as creator and therefore he's your judge to then engage in sinful activities. So what the humans do, the
Gentiles especially, they suppress the truth of God and they just say, I have to forget about it. I have to assuage my conscience somehow with drink, with activities, with self -satisfaction, with hedonism.
I just don't wanna think about that now. Maybe Eastern Christmas but I have to just push that down kind of like a buoy in the middle of the ocean and you can only hold it down for so long before it kind of rears its ugly head as it were.
What truth do they suppress? Verse 19, because that which is known about God is evident within them.
Everyone believes in God. They might suppress that truth but there are no atheists.
For God made it evident to them. They've got a conscience. For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen.
Not only has God given a conscience of a man because he's been made in his image and likeness but also
God shows by natural creation. You look out there and you think, wow, wisdom, power.
Only God could create something like that. And it says here, being understood through what has been made so that they are without excuse.
God is faithful in creation. God is obviously powerful but we don't wanna deal with that because that will remind us that if he's creator, he will be judged and so they suppress that truth.
Verse 21, for even though they knew God, they did not honor him as God. This is the resume of an unbeliever really are give thanks.
They became futile in their speculations and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools.
It is sinful to deny that God exists and the fool has said in his heart, what? There is no
God. What are the consequences of the sinful rebellion? Thankfully, God doesn't wipe people out the second they disobey.
But there are consequences and many times these consequences are in a way that we wouldn't do it. God has a way of dealing with sinful rebellion and sometimes here's what he does.
If you like that sin so much, here's how I will judge you. I will give you over and let you gorge yourself on your own sin.
God judicially hardens and he turns his back as it were with divine abandonment and says, if you'd like to sin, then
I'd like to let you come to the end of your wits of sin and just he turns his back and if you see the same refrain in Romans 1 .24,
over and over and over, God gave them over.
Verse 26, God gave them over. Verse 28,
God gave them over to a depraved mind. Depraved means a mind that was originally created by God to worship him.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Now that mind is so bent and warped that that mind just says, you know,
I've been made for a reason and I don't even worship God that any way. I don't worship
God that way at all. And God just says, if you're gonna act like there's no God, you wanna be crazy?
It is crazy to stand and look at a baby being born and say, well, that's amazing to see how that DNA has all come together and isn't evolution grand.
When my children were born, I wasn't smart enough to do it for the first two, but the second two with Maddie and Gracie in Worcester, one at St.
Vincent's, the old one, one at St. Vincent's, the new one and out came that baby. I almost said out popped the baby, but Kim would correct me.
Out came that baby with all kinds of repercussions of Adam and Eve's fall back in the garden.
I had one guy tell me, don't give your wife any anesthesia because you want her to feel the full effects of the fall.
You have to go to work and you have to make, you have to work by the sweat of your brow so my wife doesn't get any anesthesia.
I just thought, let us bow in prayer. I mean, come on, what are you doing?
I didn't know what to say. Have you ever been told something where you just don't know what to say? Thank you.
The babies came out and I said, isn't evolution grand? God says, if you think this has all evolved, it's an insidious plot that you've created in your own mind.
You've taken my own wisdom of making your mind rational and intellectual and you have an
IQ and you have logic and you've so twisted that in any way, shape or form so you can feel good about your sin.
We don't all see that just in evolution. We see that in abortion today as well. We've got to so contort everything because we don't want it to be killing.
We were so much on our own choice. We don't care about the baby and things just get twisted around in such a way.
Is there any hope for humankind? Is there any hope for anybody to be saved with this kind of stuff going on?
This is in -your -face rebellion. They know, look down at verse 32. After all that resume of how bad the
Gentiles were, verse 32, it says, and although they knew the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only did the same or do the same, but they also gave hearty approval to those that practice them.
My old pastor and professor used to say, that's the Donahue show. That's Jerry Springer.
You bring up the aberration and just go, wow, they're a lot worse than I am, I'm okay. That's what people do.
Why do we expect two presidents to go when the integrity of a president is fallen?
Why doesn't the whole congregation of the Americans, the citizenship, say that is horrible? Moreover, they don't do that.
They just clap and say, yes, that's good because if he can do it, then I can do it. It makes me feel better even about myself.
Ex -US Senator Patrick Moynihan wrote an article called
Defining Deviancy Down in the New Republic. November 22nd, way back in the old days when he was still a senator.
And Krauthammer said this about Moynihan. Moynihan's powerful point is that with the moral deregulation of the 60s, we have had an explosion of deviancy in family life, criminal behavior, and public displays of psychosis.
And we have dealt with it the only way possible by redefining deviancy down so as to explain away and make normal what a more civilized, ordered, and healthy society, and I might put in godly, would have labeled a long time ago deviant, and I might say sinful.
And even Moynihan knew, and I don't know if he even professes Christ or professed Christ, it is all the dumbing down, and God is saying in Romans chapter one, you might be dumbed down in comparison to other people, but when you stand before me and my holiness, there's no excuse for you, and you stand as sinful and condemned and in the need of a savior.
And this is the love of God, beloved. It is the love of God to say, this is who you are, and there's only one way out.
But if you want to have Jesus plus all your sin, that's not offered to you that way.
You need to be at the end of yourself. You need to be, as Jesus said in Luke, you need to be tired of yourself and sick of yourself because of who you are.
And it's not, I guess it's perceived as unloving, but it is the most loving thing you can ever tell someone, and therefore
God in love through Paul, illumined by the spirit, tells us we stand under the condemnation of God, needy for his righteousness, for his salvation.
The Jews were no better if you look at verse five of chapter two. There were some Jews that didn't have any righteousness and they were kind of critical and they were moralizers and verse five of chapter two said, but because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart, you critical moralizing
Jews are storing up, are heaping up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and the revelation of the righteous judgment of God.
The word stubbornness means a hardening, sclerosis, hardening of the arteries, your conscience is so hardened.
And sadly, this righteous judgment from God will come verse six of the same chapter, will render to every man according to his deeds.
Verse 11, there's no partiality with God. If you're a Jew who's very moral and upright, don't go pointing your finger to the
Romans one Gentile saying, look at how bad they are, look at how good we are because of our clean lifestyles and our long marriages and everything else.
No, we have the Bible, we have the Torah. There's no partiality. Verse 13 of the same chapter, verse two, for it is not the hearers of the law, which those moralizing
Jews were, who are just before God, but the doers of the law will be justified. Kind of reminds me of the old
ABC evening news report in 1982, it's old, but boy, it makes a good point.
There was a piece of art, a modern art, and it was a chair affixed to a shotgun. It was to be viewed by sitting in the chair and looking directly into the gun barrel.
The gun was loaded and set on a timer to fire at an undetermined moment within the next 100 years.
And people sat and looked into the gun barrel. It's insane. One minute you'd have to sit and look into the gun barrel, ignoring the risk of possible self -destruction.
And here are these Jews and Gentiles together putting off the worship of Jesus Christ, the
Son, the beloved one. It's just like looking down that gun barrel. It's Russian roulette, as it were, shotgun roulette, and that thing will go off one day, and we all will stand before God.
Paul gives a conclusion in chapter three, verses nine, and following verse nine of chapter three. What then?
Are we better than they? Are we better than Gentiles? Are we better than moralizing Jews? Are we better than the well -taught
Jews in the end of chapter two, who boast in the law yet break it? Are we better than them?
What does Paul say? Not at all, for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin, under means dominated, enslaved by, captured by, ensnared by.
It's like the animal that goes through the woods and steps on that trap, and the trap snaps shut, and it snaps shut on Jew, Gentile, free, bondslave, woman, man, child, everyone.
We're snapped on there, and we don't even have the resources to eat our own foot off. Less than a
Christian theologian, but a theologian nonetheless, G .K. Chesterton once said, when asked, what is wrong with the world, said,
I am. I am. And if you look at verse 10 of chapter three, quoting from all kinds of different Psalms in the
Old Testament, there is none righteous. What about me? Remember, I was good. Not even one.
There is none who understands. There is none who seeks after God. Verse 12, all have turned aside.
Together they have become useless. There is none who does good. What about me? I did some good things.
There is not even one. Everyone is going in the wrong direction, and they don't even know it.
Everyone is going AWOL from God. And it shows in the way words come out of our mouth.
You wanna know someone's heart? Look at how they speak. Verse 13, their throats, excuse me, their throat is an open grave.
I wonder what that smells like, by the way. Day one, day two, day five, day six, day seven.
With their tongues, they keep deceiving. The poison of asps is under their lips. Verse 14, their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.
And we know it. I know how to do this. I was not saved till I was 29 years old. We could put the thin veneer of sophistication, and most of us here are from America.
We live in America, and we kind of know how to act and talk. And we realize here's where the people who go to prison, they're put over there, but we're different.
And it's kind of a, it's not really veneer, though. It's kind of a nasty kind of old shellac. I always notice the difference between a thin, nice veneer and kind of the old shellac, and you'd shellac a chair and put it out in the sun.
At least there's shellac back in Nebraska days of the 60s. And all of a sudden, it kind of turned yellow and just kind of icky.
We are sophisticated compared to others, but not before God. What are we gonna do? Is there any hope for us?
It's like Oscar Wilde, the picture of Dorian Gray. The picture that he painted was really of him, and it was all disordered.
Paul just tells it like it is. Look at verse 19. Now, we know whatever the law says, it speaks to us as those who are under the law, that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God.
Here's what Paul wants to do. Paul wants to create the gospel need in your life.
And if there's one moment of, yes, I know I'm a sinner, but then no time for chapter three, verses 20 and following.
He wants people to be shut up to their own need of the gospel. You need to repent and believe.
Well, but I've been baptized. Then Paul just will say, keep giving them the law. Go back and read chapter one, two, and three.
And by the way, beloved, as we preach the gospel to people, there is no reason to tell them about Christ's death at Calvary for sinners and his resurrection until people are shut up to their own excuses from the law saying, you need a savior.
Because if they say, yes, I know I'm a bad person, but you should just keep giving them more that God has a standard.
And that standard is perfection at birth to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, to love your neighbor as yourselves.
And if they wanna wiggle out of that, we just keep pushing them back to God's standards because they don't need a savior if they're saying, well,
I'll just take Jesus. Isn't it nice? That's exactly what I did for my whole life. I realized that God was angry with the wicked every day.
As the Psalmist said, I realized that he still loved sinners and that he said, if you call on Jesus, there's salvation for you.
And here's how I called on Jesus. Jesus, I call on you because I really don't like hell. I don't know much about hell and I haven't read
Dante's Inferno. And if that's true, what he says about purgatory, which isn't true, is even halfway true. I don't wanna go to hell.
What rational person would want to? So Jesus, I'll just take you. And here's how we say it today. I'll accept you in my heart.
I'll make you savior kind of thing. I accept you as savior. I'll take those kinds of things, but I will live the way
I please. I will be in charge. I will tell you what I will do, what I don't do, the stuff that I wanna do,
I will. And I, the whole time was so deceived because Jesus is not made
Lord. Jesus is Lord. And here, Paul, as it were, is saying, here is the lordship of Christ.
And until you're ready to bow your knee to God's lordship, there's no reason to try to cling to his salvation because Jesus is
Lord and savior. Paul doesn't want an excuse. He wants no defense. He wants no exonerations told.
He wants no advocate to somehow say, but you don't understand, sir, no spin control, mincing of words.
And when we look at this today, we just go, how unloving is that? Come on, you gotta be nicer. Paul, you were unloving.
That's what people do today. If they don't like the truth, then they attack the character. Moody Monthly said, what is sin?
Man calls it an accident. God calls it abomination. Man calls it a defect.
God calls it a disease. Man calls it an error. God calls it enmity. Man calls it liberty.
God calls it lawlessness. Men call it a trifle. God calls it a tragedy. Man calls it a mistake.
God calls it madness. Man calls it weakness. God calls it willfulness. And it's all summed up in verse 20 of Romans 3.
See there in your own Bibles? Because by the works of the law, that means anything you can do to please
God will be justified in his sight. No flesh will be justified in his sight. Nothing you can do.
For through the law comes the knowledge of sin. You can't keep the law to get to heaven. The law was made so you realize you can't get there.
Do you notice those three words? Right, stuck in the middle of chapter three, verse 20. In his sight.
Did you get that? In other people's sight, the community's sight, your friend's sight, your mom's sight, your brother's sight.
In their sight, you might be good and you might be righteous and I might be an upstanding citizen. But in God's sight, we have a need.
No bell curve with God. We must be born again. We can't please
God. We can't come to him. Our hearts are loving ourselves. And how,
I propose to you this morning, does a dead man get new life? How does a fallen sinner receive grace from God?
By cooperation. God, you do this part, I'll do that part. By baptism. It starts off with men who say,
Romans chapter one, two, and three are true. God, I stand there with the Jews and the
Gentiles and everyone else. And as it were, that tax man who stood before God and said,
God have mercy upon me, the sinner. I'm the only one that exists in the universe. There's not any kind of comparison.
There are no bell curves. There's nobody else. I stand here before you naked and ashamed. God, what am
I going to do? Because you're holy, you made me. I'm supposed to worship you and I've fallen short and I am by nature wrong.
So how can I give you good gifts out of my bad nature? I can't. God have mercy on me. I need someone else's righteousness.
And what does God do? God does what he did to the angels. And one third of those angels fell.
And God said, there is no redemption for you. Is that what happened? Aren't you glad there's plan
B? Well, it's not plan B in our eyes. No, God had always planned that. God planned to save sinners.
And so we have a God who says, I know you're like that, but I get great glory and honor for taking somebody in chapters one, two, and three
A, and then making them into people who are in chapter six and seven and eight. And that is my nature to save.
Why did Paul tell Timothy and Titus over and over and over in the pastoral epistles that God is a savior?
Why? That's important for people in pastoral ministry to know. When you deal with people like you all day, every day, you hope
God can save people like you. By the way, I'm the chief of all you sinners. And so I need to know that God can continue to sanctify me.
God is a savior. If all sin is mortal, we need a savior who can save us from all kinds of sin.
Is sin so bad in chapters one, two, and three that it will destroy God's righteousness, that cannot yield salvation?
The angels fell, no salvation. God was still just. We fell,
God says, I long and love to save. And I'm gonna save people so much that the angels are gonna stand over here in 1
Peter 1, verse 12 going, wow, I'm longing to look to that. How does God do that?
And now we come to the good news. The bad news is chapters one, two, and three B. Now we come to the great news.
If the first point was sin, the second point is salvation. God justifies people and makes them right in his own eyes by faith.
God takes sinners and gives them credits to them, imputes to their own selves with accounting terminology, his own son's very obedience and righteousness.
God does through Christ what sinful men could not do for himself. Look at how he describes this justification by faith in chapter three, verse 21.
Oh, this is just gonna shine forth like a beautiful diamond now and all that black muck and mire and just kind of gross bog kind of stuff there.
Now we come to just wonder the real wonder of it all, how great this is.
But now, but now here comes that light. But now apart from the law, well, if you can't get saved by the law, we have to do something apart from the law.
So apart from the law, the righteousness of God, God's own holiness and righteousness and his own standards has been manifested.
Well, where might that be? If I'm a sinner without righteousness and God has shown and revealed his own righteousness,
I need to look for that righteousness. In this particular case, it's found in a person, witnessed in that person by the law and the prophets.
Here we come, God to the rescue. Here comes the answer to Wilberforce's prayer.
God deliver me from myself. Isn't that good? God deliver me.
And God answered that. And now God is going to show that even though man can't satisfy the righteous demands of God on his own,
God will satisfy those righteous demands by his own self. And what's so good about this?
I don't care how bad of a sinner you were or how bad of a sinner you are. Is the grace of God and Christ's death in the place of sinners like you good enough to save any sinner in this entire congregation?
If God can save Paul, the killer who wrote these words, he can save anyone because Christ's death was so great and Christ's obedience was so perfect.
And here we'll realize in these chapters, God doesn't just say kind of like a grandpa. I told you the old story. I guess my grandmother was really in charge,
Grandma Anderson, my mom's mom. She would stay at home and babysit me while my mother went to work.
And where do you typically work when you live in Omaha? Well, you work at the only place that's in Omaha that you can work and that's
Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. Now she worked at Mutual of Omaha Insurance. So dad would be at the phone company.
Mom would go to the insurance company when we were little. And I'd be taken to Grandma's house. And I called the one grandparents,
Grandma and Grandpa Ebenroth, the other grandparents, Grandma and Grandpa up the hill because they lived up this big hill.
So I would go up there. So I'd go to Grandma and Grandpa's up the hill. The Ebenroths, they were Germans and your train was expected to arrive on time.
But Grandma and Grandpa up the hill, Grandpa was out working. He'd usually just be drunk all day and Grandma would have to go find him and stuff.
But Grandma Nona, she'd pretty much raised me. And I loved her, dear
Catholic lady. And she loved me and she tried to get me to eat certain kinds of things.
And she tried to get me to eat scrambled eggs, by the way. And I hated scrambled eggs. And so she said, well, you know that kind of fake
Tarzan character, Bamba in the 60s, Tarzan guy. This is what Bamba eats.
These are Bamba eggs. She'd always tell me, if you don't obey me, that yardstick's right over there and that yardstick's gonna go in your bottom.
Oh, that's nice. Noted. So one day
I did something really bad. Grandpa's out doing what Grandpa does. He's out getting drunk. My dad's out at the phone company doing what he does.
My mom's out at Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom doing what she does. And all of a sudden, I did what I do by nature, sin.
And Grandma said, then you're gonna go get that thing and you bring it back and you're gonna get that on your bottom. I walked over and grabbed that yardstick, broke it over my knee, handed it to her and said, go ahead and spank me.
Don't laugh, Luke. That was my son laughing. And you know what
Grandma did? She overlooked it. Maybe she told my mom or dad,
I don't know. But as a grandfather or as a grandmother would do, somehow thinking that was kindness and love and just kind of overlooking and certainly it is a glory to overlook transgressions.
God never overlooks any sin. Every sin that has ever been done by men and women on earth, everyone starting back in the garden will be punished by God because God is holy in his justice.
And God will either punish his son for our sins or he will punish the people in hell for their sins.
But every sin will be punished. And so as grandmother thought she was showing love,
God has more characteristics than just love. And he has characteristics of righteousness, doing right and justice, always making sure that the punishment fits the crime.
And the crime in that case was insubordination and disrespect and I should have been punished. But God has more characteristics than just love.
He has justice and righteousness. And so we are going to find out in Romans 3 that God saves sinners, but not by overlooking like a grandfather or a grandmother, but rather by satisfying his own demands for us through his son,
Jesus Christ. And he does it in such a way as one man said, only God can change our high opinions of ourselves.
It has to be a work of God, John 6, God drawing us. And here is the chief point of what
Roman called the epistle that expands chapter one, verse 16. Verse 22, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe there's no distinction for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
The righteousness of God appears not through the law. It appears apart from the law.
In one way we'd say it appears because Jesus Christ fulfilled that law. And it goes to not just Jews, but Gentiles as well, because all have sinned in the past and keep on sinning even now.
And look at some of the words that are described to talk about our great salvation. You see those three key words, justified, redeemed and propitiated.
Look at verse 24. How does God save? How does God be loving and just and righteous and not compromise any of those attributes or any of his other attributes?
How does he show a love that's not at the expense of those? Being justified as a gift by his grace.
Justification, that's the first big word that God really wants us to know in this passage. Here is a courtroom term.
Have you ever seen a judge with a gavel? I was watching last night to the trial of Nuremberg with Spencer Tracy and Richard Widmark.
And Spencer Tracy was the main judge. And he called the court to session and he took that gavel and he smashed that gavel down.
I said to Kim, I'd love to be kind of a judge to just smash that, just that pleasure of just hitting that gavel, you know, having the power of that courtroom.
That what he said didn't change anything. If he were to say not guilty, that person still might be guilty, but in the court's eyes, in the state's eyes, at those powers invested at Nuremberg trial, in their eyes, not guilty or guilty, whether they really were guilty or not, the power of that.
And as God does it in a holy way, God says, based on my son's death, he perfectly bore the sins of all those who would ever believe.
And then he absorbed the wrath that was due those sins. He also lived a perfect life. He obeyed his parents.
He honored the Torah. He fulfilled the Old Testament completely. He obeyed perfectly. And so now
I'm gonna look at this person over here, me, you, any sinner. I'm gonna look at over that person who deserves to be thrown in hell, deserves to be thrown in jail, who deserves to be said not guilty, excuse me, guilty.
I'm gonna say not guilty over there. How? Because if all of the sin needs to be punished,
I'll punish this person instead. You get to go free. I'll punish my son on your behalf.
You get to go free. And so God uses this word justified to declare sinners as righteous, even though they aren't.
God gives us positive righteousness from his son. God takes our negative sin and gives that to his son.
And the great exchange happens where God's righteousness is substituted for our sin.
And we even sing a song about that. That's justification. Justification is not just as if we'd never sin.
Justification is God treats us as just based on the character, nature, and obedience of his own son, so much so that even if we do sin in the future, a million, billion, trillion times,
God still says you are based, I've cleared your name because Jesus not only paid for sin's past and present, but he also paid for sin's future, just as if we've never sinned and just as if we perfectly obeyed the law.
And we stand acquitted. It's amazing. And then you see the next word, redemption. We better wrap this up.
Let's see, 16 chapters. We're at chapter three. Close. I think
I can do it next week. The little train that could. It's just so good.
What else? The Patriots? The Red Sox? What'd you say,
Bob Jones University? This is it.
And it's not good enough to just say, well, I love Jesus. Yeah, I'm a Christian and everything. I love Jesus. Christians love to look at the face of their beloved savior in the pages of scripture and to realize what a great salvation it is.
Look at the second word, justified, and now redeemed. We are justified as a gift by his grace.
The gift cancels out the lost stuff. We couldn't do it, earn it. Through the redemption, which is in Christ Jesus.
We are redeemed. Redeemed means we were in the slave pit of sin and God redeemed us by paying a price.
There's always ransom with redemption. And that ransom happened to be Christ's death. So the payment for the ransom was
Christ's death. And then he redeemed us out of the slave pit of sin. We couldn't break out. And then the last word, and we'll close here.
Propitiation. Look at verse 25. Whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation.
As the Old Testament sacrifices, you have some things in the tabernacle and in the temple, it was behind the scenes and it's in the
Holy of Holies and it's all back there. Here, it's not behind the veil. It's not behind the new temple's veil, which was 70 foot up this big veil and you'd have to go into the
Holy of Holies. Now it's publicly, it's for everyone to see. Here's how God once and for all deals with sin.
And he deals with all the sin of all those who would ever believe Jew or Gentile are in between.
God displayed publicly as a propitiation in his blood through faith. This was to demonstrate his righteousness because in the forbearance of God, he passed over the sins previously committed.
God could have said, you know, you've sinned and I'm gonna judge it right now. But many times God just passed over those sins and he said, here's the culmination.
God is angry with sin and sinners. God not only hates the sin, but he hates the sinner.
How can he be made to love them and to be gracious to them and everything else because he's just?
And the answer is as God looks down on top of the mercy seat of the Old Testament and there's blood on top of that where the angels would be and inside the law of God is there.
God kind of can't see through the blood to see the law. So he can't tell which things you've transgressed because he doesn't see the law.
Now, of course, God can see through all that, but the point being this, Christ's blood assuaged
God's wrath. So he didn't even look to the law of the sins you've committed. He just looked to the law of what
Christ did and how he perfectly fulfilled that. And so what's our response?
Verse 27, where then is boasting? God, as my brother would say, when you get to heaven, you're gonna say this when you get there and you see
God. We did it. Where then is boasting?
It's excluded. By what kind of law? Did you get to heaven by keeping the law? No. Did you get to heaven by works?
No, but by a law of faith. I'm trusting in the work of another. I can't do it myself. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.
And next week we'll see an example of that very thing. Christianity is not just Jesus saves.
Christianity is Jesus saves sinners. That's Christianity.
And Romans is a book that if you wanna study how great your salvation is, this is the book. If you wanna study a book so you can evangelize better, this is the book.
If you wanna have more gratitude in your life, this is the book. This is a book that turns your mind from ourselves to God.
And as C .S. Lewis used to say, amiable agnostics will cheerfully talk about man's search for God.
To me, as I then was, they might as well have talked about the mouse's search for the cat.
And we realize there's a God who seeks and saves sinners for his glory. And many, if not most of us, have been recipients of his grace.
And our response to that is the depth and riches. Oh God, you're so great.
That's Revelation, excuse me, Romans 11. My homework assignment, beloved, for you this week is to read through Romans three times.
Won't take you long at all. Read first eight chapters. First day, second eight chapters. Go back to the first, go through.
And if you read through Romans eight times, okay, read through it eight times. Three times, you're gonna come back next week thinking, this is my all -time favorite book.
The book of Romans, God saves sinners. Let's pray.
Lord, thank you for our day today. What a blessing it is to look in your word. Lord, I haven't thought about for the last hour any of my own trials.
I haven't thought about my backache. I haven't thought about financial issues. I haven't thought about school issues. I haven't thought about church issues, sheep issues.
Lord, I haven't thought about anything except I was such a great sinner and yet you saved me.
Lord, I haven't thought about anything except Jesus Christ can save the worst. Lord, thank you for saving us.
And Lord, I know there are people in this congregation who need salvation. Lord, I pray that you'd grant them humility.
And I pray that you'd grant them saving faith today that they might believe in the one who so did such a great job at Calvary that you were pleased and you vindicated his work by raising him from the dead.
Lord, help them to believe in the risen savior today. And Lord, help us as Christians not to find solace other places, but under the wings of the
Lord. And as we sing, a mighty fortress is our God. Lord, thank you for being that for us.