Romans Chapter One

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Oh, good morning.
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We are going to begin this morning a new study, a new series.
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We are going to be going through the book of Romans and we're going to be going one chapter a week, Lord willing.
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We'll try to make it through the whole chapter.
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We might not always get all the way through, but if we do one chapter a week, that means we'll have 16 weeks of study.
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Now, for many of you, that's that, you know, you're going to miss some because some of you go out on work blessings, some of you know, things like that.
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So hopefully you'll be here for most of it, but some of it you may miss.
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So those times that you miss, you know, I'll try to review what we've talked about the week before.
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And that way people can try to keep up as best as possible.
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Now, my reason for wanting to go through the book of Romans is for a long time, I did a systematic theology course here at set free.
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I did that for a while and it was 12 weeks on systematic theology.
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And it just got to the point where I was, I felt like I wanted to go back and teach the book when I first started.
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I've been doing this, I guess, for about four years.
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When I first started teaching, I used to teach through books.
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I've taught through the book of James, through Galatians, through other books.
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And then I did the systematic theology.
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And I said, you know what? A good balance between the two would be to study Romans, because Romans is the closest thing that we have in the New Testament to a systematic theology, even though it's not a systematic theology.
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It's the closest thing we have.
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It's the most articulate letter that Paul wrote in regard to expressing his understanding of his own theology.
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And so by studying Romans, we're studying the theology of Paul.
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And we're studying ultimately, the theology of the New Covenant and what it means to be a believer in Jesus Christ.
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So we're going to begin with prayer, then we're going to read the first seven verses.
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And I'm going to just I'm going to begin to break it down and read through as we go.
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There's five parts to this opening.
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Actually, four parts, excuse me, I'm going to write them on the board.
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If anybody's interested in taking notes, you'll have it up on the board and then we'll walk through it.
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So let's go ahead and begin with prayer.
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Father, I thank you for the opportunity to be here today with these men.
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I pray that you would bless this time of study to be an encouragement to them.
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Lord, I pray that if there are questions that those questions would be answered.
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I pray that if there are if there is confusion, that that confusion would be cleared.
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And I pray, Lord, that you would again keep me from error as I teach as I am a fallible man and capable of preaching error.
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So, Lord, I pray that you would keep me in the center of your truth, tie me to the post of your word, speak through me by the power of your Holy Spirit and may your Holy Spirit be the one who teaches these men.
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For the believer, I pray for edification.
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For the unbeliever, I pray for terror or that they would be terrified under, Lord, the fear of knowing not Christ.
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And I pray that in Jesus name.
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Amen.
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The the New Testament is broken down into different parts.
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We have the first four books are called what? The Gospels.
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Then we have the book of Acts.
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Then we have the epistles, which are broken down into two parts.
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We have the Pauline epistles, those which are written by Paul.
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There are 13 of those.
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Then we have the general epistles, which begin with the book of Hebrews all the way down to the book of Jude.
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And then, of course, we have the book of Revelation.
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And so that breaks down the New Testament into its basic structure.
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And the four gospels, we call them the gospel of Jesus, right? The gospel of Jesus Christ.
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It has been said that the book of Acts could be called the gospel of the Holy Spirit because the book of Acts is where the spirit comes and goes out and and begins to build the church on what Christ has done.
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Well, if the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, are the gospels of Jesus and the book of Acts is the gospel of the Holy Spirit, then Romans has been sometimes referred to by scholars as the gospel of God.
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In fact, if you look at verse one, it actually says, Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the euangelion.
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And that is in the genitive in the Greek.
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And that simply means that it is in the possessive.
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It is the gospel of God.
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And so when you see that phrase, that is what Paul is talking about.
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He's he's called apart to something he set apart as an apostle.
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He is he is an apostle for something.
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And that's something that he is an apostle for is the gospel.
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And he calls it the gospel of God.
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Now, he goes on, he says in the first seven verses, I'm going to give you the outline.
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The first seven verses, I call it to the Romans.
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This is his prescript.
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And all ancient letters had a prescript.
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Most of the letters from the ancient world, the prescript was very simple.
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It would be to from I, Paul writing to the Romans, and it would be something simple like that.
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And we see that in other books where Paul identifies himself, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ to the Corinthians or Paul to the Ephesians or whatever.
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This is called a prescript.
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And so like we do our letters today, we'll say like, dear, Jenny, you know, and we write the letter and we say, love, Keith, you know, that's my wife's name, Jenny.
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So I write a letter to her, dear, Jenny.
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At the end, I put the my name sincerely or with love, Keith.
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And that's how we form letters.
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Well, the way that letters are formed in the ancient world was they would have at the beginning the from whom and to whom are at the beginning.
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And that's the prescript.
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So it's going from Paul to the Romans.
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And this is a rather long prescript because Paul is identifying himself to the Romans and he's telling about who he is and what he's called to do.
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Let's just read verses one to seven.
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It says, Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets and the holy scriptures concerning his son, who was descended from David, according to the flesh and was declared to be the son of God and power according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead.
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Jesus Christ, our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, to all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints.
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Grace to you and peace from God, our father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Now, Paul identifies himself and he identifies his gospel.
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He calls it the gospel of God.
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He says God promised it beforehand through the prophets and the scriptures.
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It concerns his son, who is Jesus Christ, who is the son of David, according to the flesh.
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And he has been declared to be the son of God by the power that he showed that he did by the power of the spirit and being raised from the dead.
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And Paul is identifying himself as an apostle of this person, Jesus Christ, an apostle is one who is sent by someone else.
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The apostle simply means a sent one.
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And so Paul is identifying himself as being sent by Jesus Christ.
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And the reason why this prescript is as long as it is, is because Paul has not been to Rome.
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So this isn't like Corinth where Paul planted the church there and then he writes a letter.
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They know who he is or Ephesus or any of the other churches that Paul was a part of starting.
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This is a church to which Paul has never been.
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So Paul is writing to the Roman church, which was founded through someone else's ministry.
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And Paul is writing to them.
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We learn this later in the book, in the latter part of the book, we learn that he's writing from Corinth.
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This is probably on his third missionary journey.
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Remember, Paul had his first missionary journey was in the southern region of Asia Minor, which would be the modern area of Turkey.
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And then the second missionary journey went further up and through Asia Minor.
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And then his third missionary journey is when he goes into Macedonia and Greece and all of that, where he's able to go into Corinth and Philippi and all those places there.
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And so this would have been the third missionary journey.
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He's in Corinth and he's writing to Rome.
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So someone else has made it to Rome, has planted a church.
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The church is flourishing there in Rome.
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And Paul is sending a letter to them, identifying himself.
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Later, we'll see that he's actually invoking their help in raising money for the Jerusalem church, which is hurting.
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Of course, they are in need.
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So he's actually not only is he writing them a letter about theology, but he's writing them a letter of support, trying to get support for another church.
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And so there's more to this letter than just theology.
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This is a correspondence with a church that he's never been to.
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And he's saying, I hope to come to you.
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I hope to be able to to be there.
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But I haven't been there yet.
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And so that gives us a reason for this longer introduction, this longer prescript, because he wants them to know for certain who he is.
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You might say, well, who in the world wouldn't know who the Apostle Paul is? Well, this is the first century, guys.
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This isn't like today.
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Today, everybody knows who Paul is.
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You talk about St.
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Paul, people know who that is.
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I mean, we have hospitals named after him, buildings named after him, churches named after him.
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We know who St.
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Paul is.
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But back then, it's not as clear.
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And remember how St.
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Paul began.
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He didn't begin as St.
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Paul.
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He began as a man who was persecuting the church.
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He began as a man who was going about having Christians imprisoned.
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And some even think that he was part of the killing of Christians.
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We know at least that he stood and watched as Stephen was stoned, the first Christian martyr who was stoned for his faith in the book of Acts.
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Paul stood and watched him be murdered, stoned to death.
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And he held the clothes of those who did it.
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He held their cloaks.
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So giving his approval to the fact that they were killing this man, Stephen.
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So there's a lot of questions in the minds of the early church.
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Who is this guy, Paul? How has he gone from being a hater of the church to now being one of its most powerful missionaries? Well, that's the power of God, right? God can take a man from the very depths of sin and he can lift him up to the heavenly places with Christ.
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That's the promise of Ephesians 2, right? You were dead in your trespasses and sins, but God, being rich in mercy with the love of which he loved us, and by grace we've been saved, right? He reached down into the muck and mire of our sin.
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He lifted us up.
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He seated us in heavenly places with Christ.
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That's what Christ is able to do.
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And that's what Christ has done with Paul.
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Christ has taken Paul, the rebel, Paul, the hater of Christ, Paul, the hater of Christians, and he's made him the most powerful, the most influential, and the most far-reaching missionary of the early church.
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So Paul is identifying himself there in verses 1 to 7.
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Now we come to part 2, and this is the thanksgiving, and this is where Paul gives thanks to God for the Romans.
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I'll give you the verses.
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This takes us from verse 8 to verse 15.
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The prescript is 1 through 7.
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Verses 8 to 15 says this, First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed in all the world.
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For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I mention you always in my prayers, asking that somehow by God's will I may at least, excuse me, I may at last succeed in coming to you.
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See, he hasn't been there yet.
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I want to come to you.
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For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you, that is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith, both yours and mine.
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I want to come there.
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I want to experience your faith, and I want you to experience my faith.
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I do not want you to be ignorant or unaware, brothers, that I have often intended to come to you, but thus far have been prevented, in order that I may reap some harvest among you as well as among the rest of the Gentiles.
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I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish.
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I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome.
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So he's saying, I'm thankful for your faith, and your faith is being talked about all around the world.
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For God is my witness.
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I want to come to you.
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I want to share my gifts with you.
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I want to experience your gifts shared with me.
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I want to be a mutual encouragement, and I do not want you to be ignorant that I have wanted to come, but I just have not been able.
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And it says here that he's been prevented.
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Now, we don't know what has prevented him.
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We could discuss various ideas of what could have prevented him from being able to go, but he says he has been prevented, and he says he wants to reap a harvest among them as he has with the rest of the Gentiles.
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One of the things we know about Paul, based upon his writings in other books, Galatians and others, is that Paul specifically had a ministry to the Gentiles.
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Peter is identified as specifically having a ministry to the Jews.
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Paul even makes that reference.
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He says Peter has a specific ministry to the Jews, and I have a specific ministry to the Gentiles.
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Now, that does not mean that Paul didn't preach to the Jews.
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Paul did preach to the Jews.
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Every time he would go into a city, he would go to the synagogue, and he would reason with them from their own scriptures.
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But Paul also had a call to go to the Gentiles.
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And as I look around the room, I think we should all be fairly thankful for that.
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I don't see many of you who look like you have much of a Jewish heritage.
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Maybe you do.
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Maybe you're Jew.
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But likely most of you guys are Gentiles.
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And by the way, a Gentile is simply anyone who is not a Jew.
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And so, if you're not a Jew, then you should be thankful.
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One, for the new covenant, because the new covenant opened the door for Jew and Gentile to have no dividing wall.
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We're told that in Ephesians chapter 2.
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There's no dividing wall between Jew or Greek anymore.
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In fact, Galatians says that in Christ, there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, but all are one in Christ Jesus, right? So, there's an important distinction that is made between the old covenant and the new covenant.
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Within the new covenant, there is no more nationality or racial borders.
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There are no more distinctions.
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We stand before the cross, every one of us equal at the foot of the cross.
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And that's why Paul says here, he says, I'm under obligations both to Greeks and to barbarians.
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It's interesting that he uses the word barbarian here.
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The word barbaros or barbarios is the idea of a person who is a, um, well, the word barbarian, the word, excuse me, the word barbarian comes from the idea of bar bar.
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And the reason they were called that is because they were considered to be ignorant.
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And it was like, every time you speak, all I hear is bar bar bar, right? It's just a bar bar bar.
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That's the way your language sounds.
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And that was the idea of calling someone a barbarian was calling them ignorant, calling them, you know, maybe lower social class, maybe someone who just wasn't very intelligent.
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Right.
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And so the idea of a barbarian is we think of like Conan, the barbarian, you know, somebody who goes around with a sword and a staff.
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That's not the idea.
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The idea was of those who were not among the societally elite.
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Those who were not among the intelligentsia, those who were among the ignorant are the barbarians.
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And Paul says, I'm I'm I am obligated to the Greeks and even to the ignorant.
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I'm obligated to everyone to do something.
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And that is to preach the gospel.
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And I preach the gospel to everyone.
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That's why it says there's a little bit of a parallelism.
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He says, I'm under obligation to the Greeks and the barbarians, the wise and the foolish.
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See, that's a parallel.
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He's saying the Greeks would be considered themselves wise, the barbarians they would consider foolish.
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He says, I'm under obligation to everybody to do that thing which I've been called to do, and that is to preach the gospel.
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Now, verse 16 and 17 brings us to what's called what I call the thesis of the book.
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The thesis is the big idea, the big idea.
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Now, I want to make a point.
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This verse, verse 16 and 17, this verse has been used by God to change the world.
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And I don't mean that hyperbolically.
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I mean, literally, this verse has been used to change the world.
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In the 16th century, there was a man who was a monk and his name was Martin Luther.
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Martin Luther was a Augustinian monk.
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He lived in a monastery.
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And he did so because when he was a younger man, he was caught in a lightning storm and he thought he was going to die.
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And as the lightning popped around him, he cried out, Saint Anne, because he was Roman Catholic, Saint Anne, if you save me, I will become a monk.
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That was the promise of Luther, even though his father had sent him to university to become a lawyer.
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Martin Luther was trained as a lawyer, trained in the university.
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He was on his way home, actually, from the university when he was caught in the lightning storm.
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And he said, Saint Anne, if I survive this, I will become a monk.
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Well, he survived.
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And true to his word, he became a monk in the Augustinian order, much to his father's disappointment, because his father sent him to school to be a lawyer, because in that time, your children were responsible to take care of you when you went into old age.
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They didn't have Medicare, Medicaid.
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They didn't have retirements.
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They had children.
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That's how they had their retirement, was your child takes care of you when you get older.
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And Martin Luther, now he's taking a vow of celibacy, that means no children.
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He's taking a vow of poverty, which means no money.
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So his father's quite disappointed that his son has become a monk.
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Well, Martin Luther became not only a monk, but he became a man that would change the world.
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And here's what happened.
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Martin Luther could not understand how God could save him.
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In fact, there was a certain point in Martin Luther's life where he even said, when his superiors were saying, love God, he says, love God, I can't, I hate him.
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Because all he does is condemn me.
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Everything I do is sin.
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And all I have before God is sin.
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And all I am going to get from him is wrath.
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How can I love him? I hate him.
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Right? That was Luther's own words.
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How can I love God in there and his superiors trying to deal with his soul, did all kinds of things to try to complete his soul, give him complacency.
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They sent him to Rome.
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Well, when he went to Rome, it wasn't a good thing.
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Because when he got there, he started noticing all of the sin that was happening, even in the holiest place in the world.
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There were priests visiting prostitutes.
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And there were all kinds of people who were selling indulgences and relics and having all kinds of religious things happening that had nothing to do with the gospel or with Jesus.
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There was a set of steps in Rome that are supposed to be the steps that Jesus walked up when he went to see Pontius Pilate.
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Apparently, during the Crusades, they took the steps apart and brought them back to Rome and reconstructed them in Rome.
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And these are supposed to be the same steps Jesus walked up when he walked up to Pontius.
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It's probably not, but that's the idea.
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The tradition was these are the holy steps.
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And you're supposed to go up those steps.
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They're still there today.
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So to go up these steps on your knees, kissing each step as you go, praying a prayer every time you go when you reach the top, you're supposed to receive some form of penitence or some some form of blessing.
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Well, he gets all the way to the top.
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He does all the prayers.
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And he asked this.
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I think I'm saying this right.
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I'm doing this from memory, guys.
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So forgive me.
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But Luther's one of my favorite historical characters.
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But he gets to the top and he goes, how can I know this is true? How can I know it's true that I'm really going to be blessed or that I'm really going to be saved by having done this? And from what I've read, what broke the camel's back was he actually saw the pope and the pope was dressed in armor.
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And he said, how is the man of God dressed as a soldier in battle riding through the town on a horse when the king rode in a donkey? You know, this idea, these ideas of all the problems came into his mind.
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And when he went back, he went back as a man on a mission.
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Something's wrong.
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And he began to study the writings of St.
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Paul and he began to study particularly Romans and Galatians.
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And you'll by the way, you'll notice there's a parallel between those two books.
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Galatians is the earliest book of Paul, and it's very early in his theology.
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And he's arguing against the Judaizers, the people who are trying to enforce Jewish custom among Gentiles.
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And he argues against that in the book of Galatians.
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But in Romans, it's much more elaborate.
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It's much more articulate and it's a fuller treatment of what he starts in Galatians.
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So the proper order would be to read Galatians, then read Romans.
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In fact, if you want some homework, I know you already have homework, but before the next time we meet, read through Galatians.
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It's only a few chapters.
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It's the prelude to this book.
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And so he studies Galatians, he studies Romans, but when he comes to Romans 1 verses 16 and 17, he says it was as if the heavens were opened and the gates were flung wide and he was finally able to understand what he had missed.
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And it's right here in verse 16 and 17.
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He says, Paul says this, 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.
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For in it, that is in the Gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the just shall live by faith.
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And again, that phrase, which is a quote from Habakkuk chapter two, verse four, Luther said it was like the scales fell off of his eyes.
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And finally, he realized that all of these things that the religion of Rome had tried to force upon him, all of these relics and all of these these exercises and all of these requirements, all of these things were not what would save.
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But what would save is faith alone in Christ alone, because it says from faith.
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Now, I do know that it says for faith, but I want to just point this out because I think this is important.
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In the original Greek, it says pisteos eis piston.
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And the idea there, it can be from faith for faith, but I prefer the translation from faith to faith.
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Because the idea is the idea is you are saved by faith first to last, from faith to faith, you don't go from faith to something else.
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You start with faith, you end with faith.
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And that is how a man is made right before Almighty God.
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That is the gospel, that salvation is from faith to faith and nothing else.
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Now, that doesn't mean it's not going to change your life.
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That doesn't mean you aren't going to live differently.
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That doesn't mean you aren't going to be practically righteous.
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That doesn't mean you aren't going to do good works.
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We know that's true.
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But your salvation will never be dependent upon what you do.
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But your salvation will always be dependent upon faith in what Christ has done.
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That's what finally Luther was able to come to.
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That was what Luther finally understood.
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And he said it changed his life.
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But it didn't just change his life.
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It changed the course of Western history.
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I get excited because when Luther came against the church at Rome, he could have easily been squashed.
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The church could have sent men with a sword and chopped off his head.
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They could have sent men with a pyre and burned him at the stake.
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They could have sent men with a stone and tied it around his neck and drowned him in the nearby spring.
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But God protected him and raised him up.
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And from him raised up other men like John Calvin and Jule Rick Zwingli and others, which that's a little anachronistic because Jule Rick Zwingli was actually was preaching at the same time as Luther.
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God had other men is my point.
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In fact, Zwingli argues he came before Luther.
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Historically, he always sort of argued he was there first.
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Luther was just louder.
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And that's true.
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He was a German loud mouth.
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Another reason why I kind of like him.
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Had a loud mouth too.
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Luther had a big mouth and he wasn't afraid to say what had to be said, even if it meant his own life.
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The Pope wrote an edict against him, sent it out among the people.
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When Luther got it, he burned it in the city square.
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It was a papal bull which demanded that he stop preaching what he was preaching.
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He burned it in front of the people.
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So Luther was a man that was willing to stand for the truth.
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Again, I don't have time to go through his whole history, but this passage, if you're if you underline your Bible, underline verse 16 and 17, if you if you if you if you memorize Scripture, which everyone should, the Bible says, hide the word in your heart so you don't sin against God.
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Memorizing verse 16 and 17 is good.
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And that becomes the thesis of the book, because again, the thesis of the book is this is the gospel of God.
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And what is the gospel of God? God is righteous and the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith because the righteousness that belongs to God, the righteousness that is in him is shown to us and given to us by faith in Jesus Christ.
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How are you made righteous with God? By faith, by faith alone.
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Yeah, we are not made righteous with God by what we do.
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We are made righteous with God by what he has done.
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Now, when we get to verse 18, Paul begins a new section of the letter.
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And it actually goes from 118 all the way to three, chapter three, verse, I think it's verse 26.
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And what this entire section is going to be on is man's dilemma or what what what we could call and this is I try to keep I like the whole everything starts with a T thing.
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So I call this the terrible exchange.
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So we have the introduction, which is to the Romans Thanksgiving thesis.
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And now we have verses 18 to 32, which is the terrible exchange.
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This is going to take us to the end.
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Because Paul has just told us that the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written, the just shall live by faith.
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That's the thesis of the book.
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But now he's going to take a step back and he's going to begin to talk about why we are unrighteous.
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Because here's the thing.
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You may understand that righteousness comes from Christ, but that won't matter to you.
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If you don't understand that you are unrighteous and needing the righteousness of God.
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How many people think themselves to be righteous? Well, the Bible says almost everyone will proclaim his own goodness.
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And if you want to know that that's true, just go out and talk to people.
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Ask, do you think you're a good person? I don't care if the guy's a gangbanger, pedophile, whatever.
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He'll say, yeah, I'm a good person.
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There are a lot of people worse than me.
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You know, that's the way people are, right? We all proclaim our own goodness because we all justify ourselves in our own mind.
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We're right about everything, no matter how wrong we are.
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So Paul begins in 1.18 to describe the condition of man.
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And from 1.18 to 32, he's going to describe the condition of the natural man.
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The natural man does not seek God, but rather he seeks that he would be his own God.
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He seeks idols of wood and stone that he can control, rather than the God who is over him and over all of creation.
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So he exchanges the truth of God for a lie.
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Now, next time I come, we'll go to chapter 2, and we're going to see that in chapter 2, Paul continues the theme of sin, the theme of what causes people to be sinners.
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And in chapter 2, he deals specifically with those who think that they are righteous because of the law, specifically the Jews.
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But chapters 1.18 to 32 deal specifically, I would argue, with man in general, where chapter 2 speaks about men specifically regarding those who have the law.
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So chapter 1.18 to 32 is speaking of man in general, and this is what it says.
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For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
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For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them.
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For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made.
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So they are without excuse.
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For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts was darkened.
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Claiming to be wise, they became fools and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resulting or resembling mortal men and birds and animals and creeping things.
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Verse 24.
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Therefore, God gave them up and the lust of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and they worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who was blessed forever.
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Amen.
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For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions, for their women exchanged the natural relations for those that are contrary to nature.
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And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another.
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Men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
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Verse 28.
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And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.
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And they were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice.
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They are full of evil, excuse me, envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness.
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They are gossips, slanders, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
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Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but they give approval to those who practice them.
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That was a long section.
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But I want to ask you this.
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Did you notice a phrase that kept coming up? There was a phrase that was used three times in that section.
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God gave them up.
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So beginning in verse 18, it says the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
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So what is Paul doing here? Paul is beginning an argument and his argument is simple.
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Sin has consequences and we see those consequences on display all around us.
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The most important consequence that we need to understand when it comes to sin is the consequence of divine wrath.
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Gentlemen, I don't know what faith tradition you come from.
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I don't know what you believe.
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But please hear me when I say this.
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The Bible is so clear that hell is real.
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And I know that Rob Bell says it ain't.
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And I know that there are many preachers who say it ain't.
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And I know the universalists say it ain't.
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And I know the Jehovah Witnesses say it ain't.
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And I could go down the list.
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But Jesus Christ was emphatic.
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And no one spoke more about hell than did He.
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And He talks about the place where the fire is not quenched and the worm never dies.
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And every day people enter into hell.
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According to the latest statistics, the average death toll in any given day is 250,000 people.
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That's how many people die every day.
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I mean, in a world of 8 billion people, that makes sense.
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You don't really think about how from million to billion, you don't think about the difference in that.
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But I'll give you a little thought.
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If you think about time, right? And you think about a million seconds.
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A million seconds is 11 days.
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What's a billion seconds? 33 years.
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So a million seconds is 11 days, but a billion seconds is 33 years.
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That's how expansive, exponential those numbers are.
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So when people start talking about our money being trillions of dollars in debt, trillion is like 30,000 years.
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When you think of it in seconds.
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Those numbers are astronomical.
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But now think about it from a human perspective.
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There's 8 billion people on this little rock we call Earth.
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That's a lot of folk.
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8 billion people.
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Now, is it surprising that every day 250,000 people die? No, because actually more than that are born.
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That's why the number always goes up.
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When I was a kid, it was more like 6 billion.
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Now it's up to 8 billion.
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I mean, it's literally in 40 years, it's gone up exponentially.
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Because the birth rate increases and the death rate decreases because we're able to keep people alive longer.
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Back in the time of the Puritans and stuff like that, people lived at 30, 40, maybe 50.
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Now people are living to 70, 80.
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In fact, it's going so high now with the average death, there ain't no way they're going to let me retire at 65 because they're going to have to push it back because we're living so long.
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And so we've got longer lives and more people.
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There's 8 billion people here.
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250,000 people die every day.
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Of those 250,000 people, the majority of them do not know Jesus Christ.
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You have no idea how absolutely blessed you are to be under the preaching of God's Word.
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Now whatever got you here may not have been a blessing, but the fact that you are here is a blessing.
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Because you could have died in your sin and you could have been one of those 250,000 that go to hell.
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Any one of us.
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I could have died on the way here today.
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I didn't get saved until I was 19.
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That means I spent almost 20 years of my life where at any moment my heart could have stopped, I could have run into a tree, I could have gotten eaten by an animal.
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I mean, anything could have happened.
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I say that last one kind of weird.
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I live in Callahan.
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I mean, there were snakes and dogs and everything else.
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I mean, I had a redneck, you know.
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And so anything could have happened.
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I had a friend, Michael.
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I was six years old.
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He played in a dirty ditch.
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He was just playing.
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He got an infection in his foot.
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He got blood poisoning.
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And he died, six years old.
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You never know if you've got another day.
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You never know what's coming, right? So when it says the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men, what is the most clear way we see the wrath of God? Death.
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Death is the enemy, according to Scripture.
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Death is a disease that was put into the creation.
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Not what creation was created for, but it was a disease that was entered in because of sin.
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The Bible tells us that death entered the world because of sin.
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If you want to prove that, just go to Romans chapter 5.
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By one man sin entered the world and death through sin and death spread to all men because all sinned.
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Romans 5 verse 12.
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So we know that death is a result of sin.
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We know that wrath of God is being revealed every day.
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And Paul says that men know that's true.
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And yet they suppress that truth and unrighteousness.
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I think of it like this.
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I think as we grow from child to adolescence, we begin to get a consciousness of our own sin.
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But what do we begin to do when we start recognizing our sin? We start finding ways to suppress that knowledge.
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Whether it is through sex, alcohol, drugs, carousing, right? More sin, right? It's like a spring.
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It's like we have our conscience.
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There's like a spring that pushes up.
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Don't do that.
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Don't do that.
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And we just keep putting stuff on top of it, pushing the spring down until eventually the spring wears out.
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Yeah, it's not pushing up anymore.
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We're doing what we want to do.
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We're suppressing the spring.
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We're suppressing the truth in what? In unrighteousness.
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That's what Paul says.
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He says, by their unrighteousness they suppress the truth.
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And here's the shame.
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It says, what can be known about God is plain to them, for God has shown it to them.
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You say, how has God shown it to them? You walk out into that field right there.
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You look up at a tree.
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You look up at the sky and you know that Psalms 19 tells you that the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament His majesty.
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And you walk around and you look at the order of the world and the order that's even within your own body and the very cells within your body and the DNA within those cells.
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And you see the order of God in you and you know that you are not just the product of some evolutionary accident or some cosmic belt.
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But that you are actually created by an almighty God who made you.
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And you begin to realize there's a God.
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But what do you do? Do you worship that God? No, Paul says what we do is we replace that God with an idol.
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We worship the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever.
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Amen, Paul says.
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And that's what men do.
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They worship idols.
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John Calvin said the mind is a factory of idols.
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Always making new things to worship so that we don't have to worship God.
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And therefore, God gave them up.
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When we turn our back against Him and we suppress His truth and we reject His knowledge and we reject who He is and the impulses of our own conscience which He placed there and we suppress that spring.
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The Bible says God gave them up.
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And the three ways He gives them up.
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Number one, we see in verse 24, He gives them up to lust.
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Now last time I was here I talked about this a little bit.
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So I'm not going to rehearse everything I said.
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But what we see here is we see first He gives them up to the lust of their hearts to do what ought not to be done.
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The dishonoring of their bodies.
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What did I just say? What's the first thing that happens when we hit teenage years? We start lusting and we start wanting to fulfill those lusts.
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Whether it's lust for sex, lust for money, lust for power, lust for influence, lust for social position, whatever.
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We're willing to do whatever it takes to fulfill those lusts.
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So we see that in verse 24.
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But then He shows us something else in verses 26 and 27.
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He says not only do we see a desire to fulfill the lust, but we also see a desire for an exchanging of the natural for the unnatural.
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The example He gives us is the example of the homosexual relationship.
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It's interesting that He mentions it here.
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Because He says that women will leave men for the natural use and do unnatural things with women.
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And men will leave the natural use of the woman and burn in their desire for men.
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And that exchange, and again that's the whole idea.
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We're exchanging God for an idol.
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We're exchanging truth for a lie.
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And now exchanging the natural for the unnatural.
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That's the point.
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We exchange God for an idol.
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We exchange truth for a lie.
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We exchange the natural for the unnatural.
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And what happens as a result? Beginning at verse 28.
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It says, And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.
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They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness.
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And He lists all kinds of unrighteousness.
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I do like to point out one thing.
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If you think that gossip and slander is not that big of a deal, it's right next to hatred of God.
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He says, He starts listing sins.
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He lists unrighteousness, evil, covetous, malice, envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness.
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Gossips, slanders, haters of God.
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I always like to tell that to the little old ladies at church who like to sit around and talk to people.
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I say, if you think you're sitting around having your coffee and you're wearing other people out with your words, and you're cackling like a group of hens, wearing out people with your words, understand this, that the sin that you're engaging in is just as heinous as hating God.
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They don't like that.
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But that is the truth.
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It's sin.
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And it's the expression of the exchange, the terrible exchange, of exchanging what is right for what is wrong.
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Think about the book of Isaiah.
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The book of Isaiah says this, Woe to the one who calls good evil and evil good.
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Woe to the one who calls light darkness and darkness light.
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Let me ask you a question.
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I don't know how many of y'all, I know many of y'all don't have access to phones or internets right now, but you've all seen it for the last few years.
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You've all seen in our world the absolute willingness to exchange good for evil and evil for good.
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We exalt the villain, and we hate the hero.
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We exalt the evil, and we hate the good.
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We got men dressed as flamboyant women reading books to our children in our public libraries because we have to be all kinds of tolerant, and not only tolerant, but glorifying of this idea of transgenderism.
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Even though the Bible says a man shouldn't dress like a woman, a woman shouldn't dress like a man.
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By the way, the Bible does say that.
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And yet, we glorify in it.
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We glorify in abortion, calling it pro-choice, when what it is is the murder of an image-bearer of God, and we call it good.
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And that is the exchange, the terrible exchange.
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We exchange goodness for evil, righteousness for wickedness.
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And brothers, that's where we would all be if it was not for Jesus Christ.
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The one power in this world that has the ability to fight this battle on any front of success is not the White House, and it's not the State House, it is the Church House.
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Because the only place where this battle is being fought correctly is in the pulpits and in the pews.
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The Bible says, Jesus says, I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.
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He doesn't say, I will build my government.
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He doesn't say, I'll build my state.
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He says, I'll build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail.
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This is why Paul identifies us as soldiers in the army of Christ.
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We are in a battle, and not a battle of flesh and blood, but a battle against the spiritual things, Ephesians 6 says, right? Which is why we don't take up swords and tanks, but we take up the armor of God, the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the helmet of salvation, the shoes of the gospel of peace, the shield of the Spirit, and the sword, the only sword we have, the only offensive weapon, is the Word of God.
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This is a battle.
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It's a battle for what's right.
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And notice the last verse.
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I'm going to end with this.
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Notice the last verse.
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It says, there are people who know the righteous decrees of God that the ones who practice these sins should die.
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They not only do them, but they give approval to those who practice them.
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See, not only do they do evil, but they call evil good.
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This is a picture of the sinfulness of man, the terrible exchange, exchanging God for an idol, exchanging truth for a lie, exchanging right for wrong.
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And this is Paul's concern.
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He's saying, this is where man is without Christ.
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Beloved, understand that.
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Chapter 1 does not end on a high note.
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Chapter 2 does not end on a high note.
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It's only until chapter 3 that we finally hear those blessed words that we are saved from this, justified by faith.
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But he's going to kick us in the teeth for three chapters.
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From chapter 1, verse 18, to chapter 3, verse 26.
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He's going to steady show us.
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It all culminates in chapter 3, 9-18 where he says, there is none righteous, no not one, none who understands, none who seeks after God.
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Because he's trying to prove the point.
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If you think you don't need Jesus, you don't know yourself.
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Because if you think you don't need Jesus, you don't understand how sinful you are.
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And here's a picture of how sinful we are without Christ.
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So gentlemen, that's my time for today.
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I'm going to end with that.
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Let's have a word of prayer.
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Father, I thank You for Your Word.
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I pray that Your Word would do what only it can do, and that is go out and change lives.
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Lord, Your Word tells us that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of Christ.
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Lord, help us to hear Christ today in Jesus' name, Amen.