Righteousness And Wrath Revealed - [Roman 1]

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Prepare to have your life changed. Please turn your
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Bibles to Romans chapter 1. I pulled up a few introductory quotes from men of God about the book of Romans, some of which say the most profound of all the epistles, and perhaps the most important book in the
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Bible. The profoundest piece of writing in existence.
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If any minister wants to strengthen his people, he can hardly do better than to give them a massive dose of Romans.
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No man can verily read it too oft, or study it too well. For the more it is studied, the easier it is.
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The more it is chewed, the pleasanter it is. Romans is not only worthy for every
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Christian to know it word by word, by heart, but occupy himself with it every day as the daily bread of the soul.
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Romans can never be read or pondered too much. And the more it is dealt with, the more precious it becomes, and the better it tastes.
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From Martin Luther to Tyndale to modern scholars, they all realize that the grand book of the
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New Testament for appalling epistles is the book of Romans. And so here's what we're going to do.
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We're going to do the next 16 weeks, 16 chapters of Romans. One chapter per week.
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And I know I'm already getting some looks over there. I'd call out Barry and Steve by name, but they got here at 8 .30,
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so they have a little bit of earned superarrogated merit.
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The goal is, with this overview, is to do that very thing. I can't get into every detail, but we'll go through almost every verse so you get a handle on this great book.
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It will strengthen your faith, and we'll see today that that's one of the reasons why it was written, to strengthen, where we get the
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Greek word steroids, to give you a boost. One man said you need a special vitamin boost to cure modern -day rickets, and the
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Romans epistle does that. I think when you know this book better, you'll be a better evangelist.
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You'll be more thankful to understand that you have no righteousness, and God gave you
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Christ's righteousness, and you'll be thankful for that. How many people have been attending BBC for one year or less?
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Please raise your hand. One of the reasons why I'd like to preach through this book is because we have lots of visitors.
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We have lots of new people who haven't been at the church for a long time, and this is a good overview of the central tenets of the
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Christian faith. How many people here have been saved out of the Roman Catholic Church? Raise your hand. This is also a good book for you, because you'll understand the difference between righteousness that is credited to someone at count, the book of Romans, and then righteousness which would be infused.
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The system that you came out of teaches that very thing. I love this book because it's logical, it's systematic, it answers all kinds of questions, and here's what we'll do today.
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I'm going to give you the overview and then chapter one. I was wanting the whole church to hear this, and so last week when we had the huge snowstorm,
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I said, well, I'll do James chapter two, because I didn't want to do Romans one. Then I wake up this morning to another kind of blizzard, and I thought,
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Romans must be taught today. I cannot be deferred, detracted, demonic providence, it can't work.
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Let me give you an easy outline, and then we'll move into the book. Here's the easy outline.
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Chapters one, two, and three A, it deals with sin. Chapter three,
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B, four, and five, it deals with salvation. You can just think logically.
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I need to know I'm a sinner before I want salvation. Chapters six and seven, sanctification, growth for a
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Christian. You get saved out of sin and then you grow. That's six and seven, sanctification.
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Chapter eight, security, the security of a Christian. Nine, 10, and 11, sovereignty,
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God's sovereign over Israel, the Gentiles. Chapter 12 through 15, service.
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Since we are saved, how do we serve others? How do we serve the Lord? How do we serve in light of the government?
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And then chapter 16, salutations. Some people say stuff. So sin, salvation, sanctification, security, sovereignty, service, salutation.
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It just flows very logically. It just progresses very nicely. If you want kind of a different look at it, you could say chapters one through 11 talk about the mercies of God in Christ Jesus who grants us righteousness.
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And then chapter 12 through 16, how do we act in light of that? So you've got doctrine, chapters one through 11, and then you've got duty, 12 to 16.
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Or creed, one to 11, and conduct, 12 to 16. That's another good way to look at the book of Romans.
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If you want one word to describe the book of Romans, it would be this. Righteousness.
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God's righteousness. We don't have it, and we need it. God's righteousness.
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Paul writes this book from Corinth, of all places, near the end of his third missionary journey.
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He dictated it to a secretary, chapter 16 tells us, Tertitus. And he is not dealing with a doctrinal problem to correct.
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He wants to give them the doctrine of the Christian faith to strengthen them, most likely, so if he doesn't make it to Rome, they'll have the
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Christian doctrine that they need. If he does make it to Rome, once he gets there, he'll have a good base of operations because they'll understand the righteousness of God and how it's applied.
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Chapter 1, this morning, simply breaks out into three divisions.
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Verses 1 through 15, introduction. Verses 16 and 17, the theme of the letter.
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And verses 18 through 32, how Gentiles, our pagans, don't have any righteousness of their own.
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Start your engines. Chapter 1, verse 1. Here's the introduction.
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Paul, a servant. By the way, this is the doulats. This is a slave, a slave having no rights.
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Everything that he has belongs to the one who has called him into this slavery.
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A servant of Messiah Jesus, Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle.
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And what does God do? He carves him out of being a man who is angry at Christians, imprisoning
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Christians, standing there at the feet of the death of Stephen. Yes, that's right. And he calls him out of sin.
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Unto what? Set apart for the gospel of God. Now, lots of times when that word gospel was used, it was used of the emperor.
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The emperor's been born. The emperor has a son. I have good news. That was kind of like the email
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I got from Ezra. Levi has been born. It's an announcement that makes you want to smile, to say things, to shout out loudly.
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As I've said before, S. Lewis Johnson used to say, here's a good illustration of the gospel.
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Ronald Reagan has been elected. The town herald makes a proclamation, but here you notice the passage, the gospel of God.
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This is God himself who's going to tell about his wonderful righteousness in the work and person of his
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Son, available to all who will believe. This is Paul's calling.
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And then he tells us a little bit about this gospel, how it's not unanticipated.
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It's Old Testament, which he promised before, verse 2, through his prophets in the
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Holy Scriptures. The promise of the Savior in the Old Testament concerning his Son, the eternal
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Son, who was descended from David. He's got the right lineage according to the flesh.
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In other words, Jesus Christ is fully man.
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He's fully man. Of course, he's fully God as well, but right here, he's fully man.
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The divine nature was united to the human nature. The Word of God became what?
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Flesh and dwelt among us. He was revealed in the flesh, 1 Timothy 3. He was born of a woman,
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Galatians 4. But not only was he fully man, he's fully God, verse 4. And he was declared to be the
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Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead,
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Jesus Christ our Lord. Now that word declared there is one of my all -time favorite
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Greek words because it's easy for me to get. When you look out over the ocean and you see there's some sea and some sky and then the demarcating line, the line that's in the middle that separates the sky from the sea is called the what?
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Horizon. That's the Greek word here. What sets him apart from everything else, the dividing line of all humanity, is this very thing.
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Declared to be the Son of God by what? The resurrection. He can defeat death and rise again.
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Can any human do that? Can any human conquer death? I love the story of the
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French Revolution. And there was a man named Lavier and he wanted to start a new religion.
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Oh, I just can't wait to start a new religion. And so he thought, you know what, it's got to be better than Christianity though.
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And he was having a hard time getting converts and people who were helping him weren't very helpful.
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So he asked a diplomat once. And so here's what the diplomat said for his advice to start a new religion.
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To ensure success for your new religion, all you need to do is to have yourself crucified and then rise from the dead on the third day.
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Verse 5, Through whom we the apostles have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith.
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Not a faith that obeys, but a faith that first believes in the Gospel. Apostles say believe in the
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Lord Jesus Christ. And there's the obedience of faith, the first time belief. That's what he's after here for the sake of His name.
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It's all about the name of God and to be honored and to be glorified among all the nations.
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Including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ. Not just the
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Jews in Jerusalem, not just the dispersion, but even people in Rome. Verse 7,
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To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints. And then he gives both the
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Greek and the Hebrew introduction. Grace to you, demerited favor from God.
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And the equivalent of the Hebrew, Shalom. Not just an absence of anxiety, but the fullness of God's blessing.
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Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. And then now he gets a little more personal.
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He has a really wonderful concern for the welfare of the people. First, I thank my
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God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed in all the world. For God is my witness, whom
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I serve with my spirit in the Gospel of His Son. And without ceasing, 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's why he's writing, because he wants to give them the Gospel of Christ Jesus according to Romans, if you will, 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 to write so you are strengthened by the truths contained in the book of Romans.
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This word means if something kind of teeters, if you take a chair that's got four legs and you cut one a little short and it just kind of rocks.
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You ever sit at a table at a restaurant and the table doesn't really work right when you elbow, put your elbow on it, it leans and you have to take your hundred dollar bill and your billfold and put it underneath that one little end of the table?
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That's what Pastor Steve does. I don't know. Give stability so it doesn't totter.
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If I was talking to kids 20 years ago, I'd say, Weebles what? See, you guys just buy into all kinds of marketing, don't you?
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It's just this tottering thing, because you know what? Just like today, the winds of, can you really trust the
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Bible? What do you mean Jesus is the only way? Who are you? A bunch of hypocritical Christians.
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Don't you know manuscript evidence? This is a new day and this is an early faith that these folks have and they're tottering.
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And so he says, Let me give you this protein drink. Let me give you this protein drink so you can just guzzle it down and so you're standing firm for the faith, in the faith, and for Christ Jesus.
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That's why I want to write to you. It's easy for me to declare this congregation.
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If you would like to be strengthened in your Christian walk, read the book of Romans. Of course, the
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Bible, but if you really want to be strengthened, Lord, I fall easily into temptation.
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Lord, I don't confess my sins as fast as I should. Lord, my love for the law seems to be waning.
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Lord, working unto you for my boss is hard to do and I seem to be failing.
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Romans is a book for you. Now, when Paul wanted to say something important, he often said the next phrase in verse 13.
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I do not want you to be unaware, brothers. This is important. 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'm under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, all kinds of Gentiles, both to wise and to foolish.
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And if you think I'm not coming to you because I'm afraid of the gospel and I'm a coward regarding the gospel and I'm not sure the gospel will work in Rome, not sure really the gospel if we go to Harvard would work, take the gospel to New York City, ah, maybe it just doesn't work, go to the capital of the world, maybe this hayseed, hick religion from Galilee won't work.
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Paul said, if you think that's what I'm doing by not coming to Rome, he says,
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I'm eager to preach the good news or the gospel to you also who are in Rome.
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Paul was an apostle, he had a duty, but then that duty was not only a duty theology, it was
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I can't wait to preach it. That's the introduction. Verses 16 and 17 give us the theme of the letter of Romans.
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The theme of the letter is the righteousness from God. Your text might say righteousness of God in verse 17, but this is the theme.
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God's righteousness is given through faith alone. The theme of the letter, verse 16 and 17, for I'm 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 gospel, the righteousness of or from God is revealed from faith for faith as it is written.
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The righteous shall live by faith. The theme of the book of Romans is righteousness from God.
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Paul said, I'm not ashamed of the gospel. Why? Because it's powerful and it can save people.
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And it reveals the righteousness from God. Now, for some of you who know some grammar, taking hermeneutics classes, verse 16 is what we call, regarding a figure of speech, elitetes,
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L -I -T -O -T -E -S, L -I -T -O -T -E -S. And it pushes a positive idea cloaked in kind of negative language.
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It expresses the opposite. So Paul says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel. Why would he say that?
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It's a figure of speech to mean this. I love the gospel. I'm encouraged by the gospel.
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I don't have any suppression because I'm a coward, because people don't like it. I'm a people pleaser. I have a reluctance because I'm afraid to be humiliated.
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No, elitetes means, I'm going to say something in a negative way to stress the positive. I'm not ashamed of the gospel.
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Remember back in these days, they thought Christians were cannibals because they couldn't quite get the Lord's Supper. Eat His flesh and drink
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His blood. You don't have any part in Him. And Paul's like, I'm not afraid of that. And even today, you look at your culture and you'll say that the gospel is a stumbling block to Jews and is foolishness to the
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Gentiles. I don't know about you, but I want to be strengthened so I'm like Paul.
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If there's ever a time where people these days are afraid of the gospel and ashamed of the gospel, you're watching it right now.
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And we'll get more into this later, but you see the crushing secularism that is in the culture with the homosexual agenda.
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This is going to be a day where you're going to see some very major people in evangelicalism sadly be ashamed of the gospel.
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I don't want to be ashamed of the gospel. When people say that I'm not loving, I'm a bigot, I'm too narrow,
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I'm not tolerant, I'm not kind enough, I'm homophobic, I don't want to kind of respond with mumbling and stammering and I'm going to back up into a corner.
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That's not what Paul was doing. Paul said, I have good news for the culture. I have wonderful news.
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And the news is not do this and live. The news is
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Jesus has done everything, Calvary. Think about how silly this is.
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If you were to never know about the gospel and someone were to tell you, you know you grew up in some island someplace, you never heard about Christianity.
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Yeah, there's this Jew 2 ,000 years ago and he died on a cross, naked, tortured, and then he wasn't in his tomb anymore and if you believe all that, that he died for your sins, you get to go to heaven forever.
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It sounds pretty weird. A slave, well, he wasn't a slave, but he was treated like a slave on the cross.
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Believe in him and you get everlasting life. You know what's a lot better than that? I'll tell you something that's not absurd.
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It's nice to be nice. I'm okay.
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But I'm okay, you're okay doesn't have the power. Notice the text. It's the power of the gospel.
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Here's this powerful, sovereign instrument called the gospel that God uses to change people.
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Whether you like the idea of substitutionary atonement or not, this is God's way. The power of the gospel.
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I love Spurgeon. On days like these, remember Spurgeon couldn't go to his regular church
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I think at 18 years old, so he goes to another church in a snowstorm and the pastor's up there preaching and Spurgeon gets converted.
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Well, later Spurgeon told the story of a man who got converted by preaching, but it was the pastor who was preaching and he got converted by his own preaching.
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Mr. Haslam. He was preaching a sermon and he didn't really understand it, but it was from the text about salvation.
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He gets saved while he's preaching, Spurgeon said. And it says, according to Spurgeon, he so spoke that a
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Methodist in the congregation called out, this is when Methodists were evangelical, the parson is converted.
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And Spurgeon said, and so the parson was. He owned it and praised
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God for it and then all the people sang, praise God from whom all blessings flow. Can you imagine?
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Don't try this here for right now. People worshiping
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Diana for how many generations? And then the Gospel comes along and it's powerful enough to stop
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Diana worship. It's a powerful Gospel. You can be in a straight jacket of Rome, not
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Romance, but the Roman Catholic Church for 15 generations and then when the power of the
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Gospel comes, it can save people. Whatever you're enslaved to, it can save.
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And it's through faith alone. Faith that has knowledge, assent and trust. And then Paul says in verse 17, for in it, the righteousness from God.
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What you need to stand before God when you die, a right standing with righteousness.
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What you need to stand before God, God gives you. It's God's doing.
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The righteousness of God is revealed in this Gospel preaching from faith for faith.
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Charles Hodge said, the righteousness for which we are justified is neither anything done by us or wrought in us, but it is something done for us and imputed to us, credited to us.
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It is the work of Christ, what He did and suffered to satisfy the demands of the law.
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And it's from faith to faith. What does that mean? Some people think from faith in the law to faith in the
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Gospel. No. From faith of the preacher to the faith of the hearer. No. For the Methodist, from the faith of the congregation to the faith of the preacher.
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No. It just means this. It's a rhetorical device that means it's nothing but faith.
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It only has to do with faith. What puts you in the right relationship with God is
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Christ's work. And then you read about that in the Word and then you take God at His Word. Faith.
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Now this verse right here quotes Habakkuk 2, verse 4, the just shall live by faith and talks about the righteousness from God.
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And Luther was haunted by these verses. You know the story probably. He said, I was indeed a pious monk and followed the rules of my order more strictly than I can express.
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If ever a monk could obtain heaven by his monkish works,
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I should certainly have been entitled to it. Of this, all the friars who know me can testify.
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If I had continued much longer, I should have carried my self -denials even to death. And so he talks to his friend
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Stoppitz. And he says, I'm terrified by my sins and the holiness of God.
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Luther said, we fled from Christ as from the devil and ran to the Virgin Mary and St.
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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
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I thought about Him on the cross, it was as if I had been struck by lightning. When I heard
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His name mentioned, I would rather have heard the name of the devil for I believe that I must by my good works make
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Christ my gracious friend and thereby reconcile an angry God.
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So Stoppitz was smart and said to Luther, why do you torture yourself with these thoughts?
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Look at the wounds of Christ. Look at the blood of Christ shed for you. It is there the grace of God will appear.
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Luther, I cannot and dare not come to God till I'm a better man. I have not yet repented sufficiently.
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And then Stoppitz said, a better man? Christ came to save not good men but sinners.
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And now Paul is going to make sure everyone knows that they're sinful so that they want to go to the
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Savior by faith alone. The first 15 verses are the introduction. 16 and 17 give us the theme of the book, the gospel of God's righteousness imputed to our account through Christ.
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Substitutionary death confirmed by the resurrection through faith alone. And now comes the indictment.
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Now it goes all the way through 320, chapter 3, verse 20, but today we're only going to get through chapter 1.
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And so here Paul is going to show us that the irreligious people don't have any righteousness.
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Pagans, Gentiles. No one will be justified by the works of the law.
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Everyone stands before God and you need His righteousness. I think we can learn something, congregation, from Paul's magnum opus and it's this.
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If you offer Jesus too soon when you evangelize, people don't know why they need
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Jesus. We talk about sin first and holiness and God's law and what
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He requires. So then you know you need a Savior. When people lie on the
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TV and tell you, you know what, we don't talk about sin on this show because people already know they're a sinner.
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That's not how Paul did it. Everyone needs righteousness that is from God.
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So while we look at this here church, I think the majority of you are
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Christian people. And so if you're a Christian, this is good to remember that you were saved from this.
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This is so you look back and you go, Lord, but for the grace of God there would I be. I would be enslaved to that.
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I thought about that about two days ago. I thought, where would I be without the grace of God in my life through salvation?
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I was probably, I don't know, I was 25 years old and I thought, am I going to be getting high from drugs every single day when
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I'm 50? What would I be doing when I'm 50? Where's the drug dealer at 50 years old? I just kept thinking to myself, what am
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I doing and I can't get out of me because I am the problem. So here as we look at this passage, you look back and you go, thank you,
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Lord. But also if you're a Christian and you see these verses, it should remind you,
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I ought to be preaching sin before I preach about the Savior. And if you're not a
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Christian, I want to show you that you are insane to believe that if you die today without believing on Jesus, you have any hope to stand before God and say, you know what?
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I'm good enough. I've earned it. I have my own righteousness. These verses are very, very difficult.
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And they remind me of that wealthy contractor who built the tombs prison in New York and later he was found guilty of forgery and then sentenced to the very prison that he had built, a cell of his own making.
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He said, I never dreamed when I built this prison that I would be an inmate one day. God has made us.
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He made Adam and Eve upright, but then there was the fall, the sinfulness of man to awaken him from the fact, to the fact, rather, that he needs a
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Savior. Verses 18 through 32, the sinfulness of pagans or Gentiles.
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Pastor Luthi in Switzerland said, and the words that we have just read are, for us, we will read.
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We are told the whole truth about our condition. There may be well people among us who cannot bear to hear the truth and would like to creep quietly out of this church.
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Let them do so if they wish. If you are a painter, this canvas is going to be dark, foreboding, terrifying, frightening.
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Filled with flashes of sin, wrath, judgment.
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God has reason to judge. Indictment number one, people suppress the truth, verse 18.
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God's just not up there throwing flamethrowers for no reason. God does things for a reason. And it says in verse 18, people suppress the truth.
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For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness, not just a little bit of ungodliness, but all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
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We are now talking about God's temporal judgment. This isn't hell. Hell is in chapter 2.
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God is judging now people on the earth. His righteousness was revealed in verse 17 and now
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His wrath is revealed. And it's revealed on ungodliness and on unrighteousness and if the greatest commandment in the world is love the
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Lord with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, then the worst sin must be not doing that. And since God is holy,
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He's therefore wrathful. And that word wrath is orge in the
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Greek. It means to swell. It means to teem. It just means if you take a balloon and start blowing it up, it gets to be that point where it just has to pop.
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That's orge. Indignation. Eternal detestation of all unrighteousness, one man said.
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Pastor Steve prayed. He's kind. He's slow to anger. But one day there was the flood.
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And wrath really is holiness in action. And it's not passive.
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Take a look at the text. Wrath of God is revealed from where? Heaven from God Himself.
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Talk about not being a nice evangelical today. It's a taboo in Christian circles to talk about the wrath of God.
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He's not passive in the face of sin. People run around and just throw things out.
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I don't know why they throw them out. We just assume they're Christian. God hates a sin but loves a sinner. That's a bald -faced lie.
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It should be abandoned in light of Romans chapter 1 verse 18. Does He love them as a creator?
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Yes. But somehow that sin is outside of the people, separated from a sinner, the sinner has the sin, the sinner is the sin.
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And here God is, with holy hatred, judging the sin. All of it. Because people do what?
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It's not like they're just living their life. What does the text say? They suppress. They hold down. They quash it.
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And it's an ongoing thing. A deliberate restraining. We will not let this truth rise up.
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This means if you could just take all your weight on something and hold it down. When I was younger
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I used to think about holding my sister down in the pool or something and you'd have to have all your weight on it.
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And I hate to even mention it because it's kind of funny to think of that but here it's people going, you know what? Here's the truth of God.
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God created you. You are to honor His name. You are to worship Him. You are to esteem
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Him. You are to honor His Son and love Him. And you're just like, I will not let that up. It's deliberate.
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A choice of the will. You watch our culture do this too. The truth comes up.
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Homosexuality is a forgivable sin. I've got to hold down that truth. God isn't just love.
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He's a God of righteousness. I've got to hold that truth down, society says. And it's the truth about God that sets people free.
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They've got to squash it. Quash it. God also judges them because they ignore things willfully.
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Verse 19. This is the truth they suppress and they know it.
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It's another indictment. They just willfully ignore it. For what can be known about God is what?
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Hidden in the stars? No, it's plain to them. Natural revelation is plain.
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You look outside and you see the handiwork of God. Because God has shown it to them.
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No one can say, I didn't know about God. I didn't have the facts about God. I'm not sure. Technically, no one's an atheist.
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I'm sometimes interested in what pagans say when they die. Especially pagans who hate
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God with their words and with their actions. William Pope was a well -known infidel.
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He died in 1797. One of his favorite things to do with his buddies was to get a
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Bible in the middle of the floor. You can imagine the Juana circle and you play, not kick the can. Play kick the
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Bible. Because if you kick it just right, you can get the pages to just rip. But then his same friends who liked to play kick the
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Bible with him showed up in his death chamber. And he said, I have no contrition. I cannot repent.
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God will damn me. I know the day of grace has passed. You see the one who is damned forever.
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Oh, eternity, eternity. Nothing for me but hell. Come eternal torments.
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I hate everything God has made. Only I have no hatred for the devil. I wish to be with him. I long to be in hell.
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Do you not see? Do you not see him? He is coming for me. Everyone believes.
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The substantiation is found in verse 20 for his invisible attributes. It's not that they just know there's a
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God. They know about this God. Details about the God. Namely, his eternal power and divine nature having been clearly perceived.
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Clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world. In the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
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They are without apology. No defense.
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No legal defense. Trying to make some blame for something. And Paul goes on to indict them with something else.
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They pervert God's glory. Verse 21. They don't just suppress it. They don't just ignore it.
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They pervert it. And again, we're reading, if we're Christians, this was our resume.
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When you realize how black sin was, you realize how great grace was. Grace greater than all our sin.
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How could a God save me as I suppressed these things? Ignored, perverted. For although they knew
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God, they did not honor him. When you see creation out there, there's a response that you should give.
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Here's a response. God, I honor you. Or, give him thanks.
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God, thank you for the rain and for the sun and for the moon. When you see natural revelation, what's the response?
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Honor. Thanks. Because, mark this, beloved, revelation requires a response.
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When you see God unveil himself and gets to show you who he is, the response is, fear the
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Lord's beginning of the wisdom. Praise. Singing. Honor. Glory. Service.
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Revelation requires a response. But when people don't respond rightly, what happens?
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But they became futile in their thinking. And their foolish hearts were darkened.
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I was thinking the other day about evolution. No one to thank, no one to honor.
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Become futile in their thinking. God -hating philosopher
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Rousseau said, No man can come to the throne of God and say, I'm a better man than Rousseau.
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But now he's about ready to die. Ah, how happy a thing it is to die. When one has no reason for remorse or self -reproach.
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He prayed, Eternal being, the soul that I'm going to give thee back is as pure at this moment as it was when it proceeded from thee.
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Render it a partaker of thy felicity. My only comment for Rousseau there is verse 22.
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Claiming to be wise, they became fools. If you're here today and you think you can hide from such a
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God, somehow you're safe from a holy God, there's no safety for you.
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You're a fool to think that. Your only refuge is found in Christ Jesus. It's a hallucination to somehow think that you can get away with it.
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Voltaire, he said, I'll show you how just one Frenchman can destroy Christianity within 50 years.
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In 20 years Christianity will be no more. My single hand shall destroy the edifice it took the 12 apostles to rear.
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Before he died, he said, I wish I'd never been born. I'm abandoned by God and man.
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I will give you half of what I'm worth if you'll give me six months life, doctor. You cannot live six weeks.
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Then I shall go to hell and you shall go with me. His last words were,
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I am abandoned by God and man. I shall go to hell, oh Jesus Christ. And the nurse that watched him die said, for all the wealth in Europe I would not see another infidel die.
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The story goes that Peter McKenzie was a preacher and he went to the Wax Museum in London and he came to a place where the guide said, this is the chair in which
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Voltaire sat and wrote his atheistic blasphemies. And so Peter McKenzie sat down without permission and sang this song,
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Jesus shall reign wherever the sun doth his successive journeys run.
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His kingdom shall stretch from shore to shore till moons shall wax and wane no more. And the insanity of sin, verse 23, perverts the truth of God.
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And what does it do? This is a gross substitution. Replacing God with false idols deliberately and exchange 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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The downward slope. You can read about bird worshippers, scarab beetle worshippers. And when a society does that, what does
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God do? Verses 24 through 32, he gives them over.
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Judicial abandonment. This is probably the most frightening kind of judgment ever.
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Active outpouring of displeasure. Verse 24, God gave them. Highlight on God gave.
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Verse 26, God gave them. 28, God gave them.
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God gave them over. God gave them over. God gave them over. What a horrible refrain that is.
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Look at verse 24. Therefore, logical order, you reject divine revelation.
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God actively, not passively, gives people up. This is judgment.
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This is our society today. We don't want to have anything to do with God. Okay? And God gives them up.
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This is not, well, let nature take its course. This is not, well, God's hand is kind of slowing everything down and he takes his hand away.
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No, this is full on active judicial judgment. This is taking somebody, not holding them back from going down the hill.
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You don't want a kid to go down a hill too fast in the wheelbarrow or the little cart, so you kind of slow them a little bit or hold them from behind.
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This is God saying, when you don't honor me, when you don't give me thanks, he's at the top of the hill and he's pushing the society downhill.
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Forcefully gave them up. No wonder someone said this is the most frightening verse in all the Bible. You want to know what the culture is doing today?
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Moral depravity. It is a result of God's judgment, which is a result of people saying,
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I won't honor God or believe in him. You turn on Jerry Springer and you go, how can all this happen?
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Back up, friends. This is the divine judgment of God because when society suppresses and ignores and perverts, then
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God pushes down the hill. And then you look at the effects and you go, yes, all this talk about, well, God's going to judge
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America if this doesn't happen. Friends, we are in the middle of divine judgment in America today.
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Depravity is a result of judgment here. This abandoning kind of depravity. It's not passively permitting people to fall.
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It's not withdrawing a hand of grace that's restraining. As Lewis Johnson said, the meaning is not simply that God withdrew from the wicked the restraining force of his providence, although that privative sense is included, but that he positively gave men over to the judgment of more intensified and aggravated cultivation of lusts in their hearts.
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They reject the truth about God. They turn away and God gives them immorality. God punishes sin by giving people over to more sin.
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I think of Nebuchadnezzar. I think of false teachers. I think of Israel's same judicial abandonment, verse 25, because they exchanged, this is the unholy substitution again, the truth about God for literally in the
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Greek, the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator.
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Paul can't stand it. Who's blessed forever? Amen. When you see creation, you should respond with the psalmist.
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Blessed be his glorious name forever, and may the whole earth be filled with his glory. Psalm 72, amen and amen.
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Psalm 145, I will extol thee, my God and king. I will bless thy name forever and ever. That's the right response.
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But when the response is, this isn't true, it's a lie, evolution reigns, then the bell tolls too.
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God gave them over, verse 26. For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions.
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And now, Paul has as a centerpiece of a society's moral degradation, homosexuality.
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Is homosexuality a forgivable sin? Yes. But it also tells you a society is ultra -judged when this happens.
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It's at the top of the list, centerpiece, showcase. For their women, women usually hold out longer than the men do in terms of just who they are and their countenance and how
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God has made them in propriety. And so when the women are at the top of the list with lesbianism, it's really bad.
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For the women exchange the natural relations for those contrary to nature.
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The Bible says this is degrading. It's dishonorable.
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It means absolutely no honor. Out of the 23 sins that are listed, homosexuality is at the top.
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The Greek word means it's base. It's low. And the men likewise, verse 27, gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another.
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You look at society and you'll see consumed. Men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
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The temporal penalty they receive. Pritchard said homosexuality is first tolerated, then accepted, then praised, and finally enshrined as the ultimate freedom.
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Welcome to the United States of America. Paul knew what he was talking about.
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He wrote from Corinth. They worshiped all kinds of things there, including sexual immorality and homosexuality.
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And this is only temporal judgment. Just think of eternal judgment for those that don't repent. Thomas Watson said,
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Eternity is a sea without bottom and banks. After millions of years, there is not one minute in eternity of hell wasted, and the dam must be ever burning but never consuming, always dying but never dead.
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The fire of hell is such, as multitude of tears will not quench it, length of time will not finish it, the vial of God's wrath will be always dropping upon a sinner.
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As long as God is eternal, he lives to be avenged upon the wicked.
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Oh, eternity, who can fathom it? If the body of earth and sea were turned to sand, and all the air up to the starry heaven were nothing but sand, and a little bird should come every thousand years and fetch away in her bill but a tenth part of the grain of all that heap of sand, what numberless years would be spent before that vast heap of sand would be fetched away?
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Yet, if at the end of all that time the sinner might come out of hell, there would still be some hope, but that word ever breaks the heart.
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Verse 28 of Romans 1, And since they did not see fit to acknowledge
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God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.
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Debased there means worthless, means disapproved. It was used of a cowardly soldier.
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Disapproved. The Greek word is adakimasu. Adakimasu.
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It was used of a counterfeit coin. And it was also used by stonemasons when they found a stone for construction that didn't fit for some reason or wasn't right and couldn't bear a load.
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They wrote A on it. Adakimasu. And for these people here, if they don't repent,
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Romans 1, the eternal A written on their forehead, adakimasu.
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And now their minds can't even work. So great is the fall, so great now is the depravity and the judgment of God and the wrath of God, they can't think straight.
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Don't you want to just argue with people and convince them and debate and logic?
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Well, they can't think because their moral thinking has gone. And so what happens?
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Now the sluice gates just go. They were filled, 29, with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice.
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They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness, gossips, slanders, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, and ruthless.
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Verse 32, if it couldn't get any worse, people cheer him on.
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For though they knew the righteous decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die, people know that.
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They do not only do them, but they give hearty approval to those who practice them.
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Hearty approval. It wasn't that long ago when
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Harvard sociologist Sorokin wrote a book called Crisis of Our Age.
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Then he wrote another book called The American Sex Revolution and basically said sex -anarchy leads to mental breakdown.
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Kind of different than Freud, who taught the exact opposite. The retributive justice of God is a society that's run amok with sexual rebellion.
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Running to help so fast they can hardly stop to take their breath. And the saddest thing of all, even though this is such a horrible judgment, this is only temporal judgment in chapter one.
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Now I have to say this because we can't stay 15 more hours for me to finish the rest of Romans, but Romans has some good news in it in chapter 13.
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For the foolish out here, and the insolent, and the disobedient, and the sexual sinner, this book,
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The Gospel of Jesus Christ According to Paul's Pen, called Romans, it offers forgiveness for all kinds of sinners, including you, including sexual sinners, homosexual sinners, men that have forced their partners to have abortions, women who have had abortions, because God offers to the unrighteous
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Christ's perfect righteousness. Just imagine. I said to someone yesterday when I was preaching the gospel, why did
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Jesus live such a full life? Because when
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God said, do this and live, He knew we couldn't do it. So out of His mercy and love, and He demonstrated
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His kindness towards humanity, He sent His Son to go live the life. You don't see
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Jesus in that list, because He's the exact opposite. Because He is righteousness. He is godliness.
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And so when the sinner who's enslaved to these sins and more looks to Jesus Christ by faith, can you imagine?
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If hell's so bad, heaven's so great. It would be an awful, awful, it's a nightmare for me and the elders, that for some of you, week in and week out, you hear the good news.
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The gospel of grace for you, through faith alone, to believe on Christ Jesus, the representative for mankind, the substitutionary debt has been paid for all those who will look by faith, believe for you to sit here week after week after week after week.
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Perhaps you persuade me to be a Christian. May I implore you today, you must believe.
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This isn't games. This isn't pressure. This is eternity. And for me, when
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I look at this list, forget speaking in tongues as a second blessing.
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I get to go to heaven. You get to go to heaven. If God has granted you faith and you believe in the
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Lord Jesus Christ, we get heaven. And you know what? Instead of looking here, because Romans 2 is going to do this to us, these people are bad.
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Look at how bad they are. Romans 1 is me. But maybe worse.
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I might be worse. And I get to go to heaven. How can a scallywag like Mike Avendron go to heaven?
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By baptizing me? By me being good? I mean, I don't know.
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What? Could there be anything that I could do? No. I just have to look to the cross and say,
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Lord, I believe what you say. I'm a rotten sinner. But I believe your love for me and your grace for me and your mercy for me way outweighs my sin.
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Because when you save people, you even get more glory than you do when you make a volcano or a sun or a moon.
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Because you show people a little bit what it's like in the eternal decrees of God in eternity past that the sun would go rescue people.
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And then he'd take those people, and then he would transform them by his grace, and then he would make them look more like Christ, and then he would hand them back to the
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Father and say, I rescued them for your sake so you would look good. And he did that for every
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Christian here. Let's pray.
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Father, my prayer for Bethlehem Bible Church would be that you would help us to be eager to preach the gospel because it's all about you.
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Father, forever rid from our evangelism, somehow going to tell people they can have a better marriage or better work or more money if they believe.
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Father, help us to talk about the good news, the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes.
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Father, help us to speak well of Christ. He must be a great Savior if He can save these kind of sinners.
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And if we were filled with all kinds of unrighteousness, Christ Jesus always had perfect righteousness.
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And if we were evil, He was good. If we were covetousness, He was a giving
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God. He laid down His life for us to show how much He loved us. Behold what manner of love the
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Son. So, Father, we pray that you'd help us not to be hypocritical, not to be judgmental, but to be thankful people, to give you honor.
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And to be so thankful we'd be joyful people. Joy of the Lord is our strength that we might tell other people who are enslaved to unrighteousness in this
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God -judged world that there's a
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Savior. And the Savior's not just for the
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South, not just for country churches, but for Harvard, for Boston, for New York City, for Rome.