This morning we want to continue our study through the book of Romans. And so if you have your Bibles this morning, and will turn with me to the book of Romans. And we’re still in Romans chapter 1. And I’d like to begin where we left off last week, by sharing once again the theme of the Gospel, or the theme of this book that Paul has written to the Roman Church.
Begin at verses 16 and 17, and then go on to verse 22.
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. 17 For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; 19 because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. 20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: 21 because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, 23 and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Romans 1:16-23
Let’s just bow in prayer. Heavenly Fathers, we come before you this morning. Lord, I pray that you just speak to us through your word.
Lord, help us to understand the great spiritual battle to steal men’s hearts, and how our bent towards sinning takes us down a road of rebellion against you. Lord, help us to see the great gospel message that was proclaimed and fulfilled through the coming of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And Lord, help us to understand the great spiritual battle that we are engaged in, and how that each one of us is called to be like Paul, to share that message.
Speak to us this morning through your word, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen. It’s very interesting.
As you look at really the theme of this book, which is the gospel, Paul is writing to the church at Rome that they may have a deeper understanding of what Jesus has called them out of and into. A lot of times I don’t think we as Christians understand what Jesus has called us out of and what He’s called us into. Often times when people read the book of Romans, I think we skip over verses 16 and 17 and just read them quickly by and don’t understand the significance and the intent of why Paul put them at the beginning of the book.
And right before he explains man’s great issue and problem, and that is his great depravity and sinfulness and his rebellious heart, he wanted us to focus on the solution to the problem, and then he’s going to introduce the problem. Unfortunately, much of the church today is not focusing on the solution, and really has become part of the problem. As we look at these verses, we talked a little bit at the end of last week’s message about what it is to be ashamed of the gospel.
The world wants us to be ashamed. Satan wants us to be ashamed. They want us to think that that’s for old women and people that don’t have a brain.
But Jesus said, it’s for every man and woman that’s ever been born, this gospel has been given and needs to be shared. When Jesus came, He stated that He came that the whole world could be redeemed. He didn’t put contingencies on it.
Well, I’m going to have a certain type of person, a certain color of skin, a certain nationality, a certain ethnic group, a certain societal station. They are the ones that I’m going to redeem. And we said the whole world was His goal of redemption.
But I want you to know that today the church has abandoned this gospel to a large extent. False teaching is coming into the church today where they want to take away the gospel of Jesus Christ. They basically say God has preordained and pre-elected who’s going to go to heaven and who’s going to go to hell.
And what you decide makes no difference. As a matter of fact, you can’t decide because God already ordained that that’s where you’re going. That flies in the face of the whole gospel of John and all that Jesus said and shared with Nicodemus when Nicodemus came to Him in the night that he might find out about why Jesus came and is He the Messiah and what was the purpose of His coming.
And as Nicodemus was told by Jesus, You must be born again. Nicodemus didn’t understand what was Jesus’ comment to him. You are one of the elders of Israel and you do not understand? There are people that are in the church today and do not understand the gospel.
And they would abandon the truth of the gospel and embrace a lie of Satan that number one, prevents people from ever having a desire to share because why do you share if somebody’s already ordained to go to heaven or hell? What difference does it make if you share the truth with them? Because they can’t choose anyway. That’s not the truth. It’s a lie.
Last week I was listening to a Christian lawyer. He’s a very interesting guy. I think he also is a preacher.
And he gives these little five minute clips of experiences that he’s had in his life. And he said that he was asked to come and preach at this church and they were holding evangelistic services. And he said, this man walked in, a rough looking guy, really rough.
Scars on his face, tattoos, just looked rough. He walked in and he sat down. The message was given.
The invitation was shared. And this man walked down crying to the front of the church and gave his heart to Jesus. This man that made the video said he turned to the pastor because he looked out over the congregation and most of the congregation was weeping.
He said to the pastor, are they weeping because this man who looks so rough came forward and gave his heart to Christ? And they said, no. They’re weeping for his mother. She has been praying for her son, that man that came down and gave his heart to Christ.
For 30 years she’s been praying that he would give his heart to Christ. And he did it tonight. And there are joys, there are tears of joy as they see that God hears and answers prayers in even hard cases.
But the church is embracing replacement theology. It’s embracing Calvinism. It’s embracing the fact that God has preordained all who should go to heaven and hell and abandoning prayers for the lost in the Gospel.
Paul wanted them to understand the importance of the Gospel of Jesus Christ so he put it at the beginning of this letter. He says, For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth. He didn’t say to just those that God preordained and had already made up their mind for.
No, to every one that believeth and it reveals the power of God. Now Paul is going to, in just a couple of verses, begin to talk about why there are many people that reject the Gospel and the things that you and I have to overcome and we share the Gospel with a world that wants to deny that God exists. And it’s not because they don’t know that He does.
But Paul tells them, Unto salvation for every one that believeth. And then I want you to see an interesting thing because this is the second thing that the church is doing today. They are totally abandoning the Jewish people.
They are abandoning the nation of Israel to a large extent. Less and less churches are supportive of Israel. Less and less churches are supportive of Jewish people.
More and more churches are becoming anti-Semitic in their attitudes. Paul says, where’s the Gospel to go first? To the Jew. Why does the Gospel go to the Jew first? Because they are unsaved.
Unless they know Jesus Christ is their Savior, they need to hear the Gospel. There’s a well-known pastor. He’s got international ministry.
And he is telling a lie in that he says the Jews are saved by a different means than the Gentiles. And so you don’t have to share the Gospel with the Jews, even though he supports Israel and he sends money to Israel, but he doesn’t share the Gospel with Israel and the Jewish people. Paul says, where’s the Gospel to go? First to the Jews.
Now, why does it go to the Jews? Well, they should know who God is. We read Psalm 78 this morning, which was their whole history. Well, not their whole history, but a lot of the biblical history.
It talked about what happened in Egypt, how God delivered them out of Egypt with the ten miracles. There were ten plagues against the Egyptians, the miracles that allowed Pharaoh to let the Israelites go. It talked about the miracles that God had performed for the Jewish people when they were wandering in the desert.
He brought water out of rocks. He brought manna down from heaven. They complained, we want meat.
He brought partridges and brought them so many that they were filled. And as it says in the Psalm, the meat was still in their mouth when they started complaining again. Is it enough to reveal a miracle for someone to get saved? A lot of people say today, well, the only way people are going to get saved is if God starts performing miracles again.
Oh, He performed all kinds of miracles for those that were wandering, the Jewish people that were wandering in the desert. Yet, the vast majority of them rebelled against God. The song that we sang right before the message was written by Mr. Peterson.
And the song talked about, I believe in miracles. And he said the greatest miracle of all was the transformation of the human heart. The transformation of a person’s life from darkness into light, from believing in this world system as having the answers, into believing in Jesus Christ and trusting in Him.
Greatest miracle of all. That is the miracle that the Jew needs to see. That is the miracle that the Gentile needs to see.
And the thing is, what Paul is saying, it is to be taken, the gospel is to be taken to the Jew first, because they have been given all these promises, yet they have been looking for the miracle, when it has been all right in front of them the whole time. And God said, I haven’t forgotten you. Even though they made Him filled with anger on numerous occasions because of their disobedience, their stiff-necked hard-heartedness.
Yet Paul says, take the gospel to the Jew first. Do you know how many churches in America find a burden to take the gospel to the Jewish people? Very few. And becoming less all the time.
But to the Jew first, and then the Gentile. That is exactly the fulfillment and the order in which Jesus gave to the disciples on how they were to take the gospel and fulfill His great commission. To go to Jerusalem, the Jewish people.
Then Judea, the Jewish people. Samaria, the Jewish people. And then the uttermost parts of the earth.
Yet today, much of the church, in the name of Christ, is rejecting Israel and rejecting the Jews. And if you look at those people and their vision of the gospel, you will see it is a defective vision. One of the interesting things is many churches today have mission trips.
And I believe in going out and helping people. I think it is what we are called to do. But if you go out to just physically build wells, dig wells, build buildings, without sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ, it is no mission trip.
It is a helping trip. One of the great mission organizations that was started out really well, but it has ended up really bad. World Vision.
World Vision, when they first started, their vision was to take the gospel throughout the whole world. To take it to the peoples of the world that had no opportunity to hear it. And that is what they did.
But it has morphed into something that is totally different. Today it has become a sociological gospel. The true gospel isn’t even preached in most cases.
And instead they get money to dig wells and build buildings. And don’t preach the gospel. Paul says the most important thing of this book of Romans is preaching the gospel.
You will not understand any of the rest of this book if you do not understand the significance and the importance of preaching the gospel and of presenting to men a means by which they can be delivered from their sin and a world system that Satan has built to enslave them to it. And the only means by which they can be delivered and set free is through the gospel of Jesus Christ. So Paul tells us, For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
For therein is righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith. You want to see the righteousness of God. You want to see justice.
You want to see truth. You will never experience it apart from the gospel. And it comes by faith.
Faith in what? Faith always has an object. Remember Dave Hunt used to talk about when people were condemning fundamentalism. And they still do.
Oh, you’re a fundamentalist. And he said, Every time I get on an airplane, I ask and pray to God, I hope the pilot is a fundamentalist when it comes to flying an airplane. He goes by the fundamentals of flight.
He doesn’t just get on the plane and go, I wonder what would happen if I push this button instead of the one I’m supposed to push over here. He hopes that he flies the plane in a manner that’s always going to take off and land and fly without crashing. Because he’s a fundamentalist when it comes to how to fly a plane.
But when it comes to salvation, when it comes to faith, when it comes to sharing the gospel, we don’t want to look at the fundamentals of the faith. All of a sudden, it’s a derogatory thing to be called a fundamentalist, to believe in the fundamentals of what the Scriptures say. What are some of the fundamentals of the faith? The first fundamental is, that each person that’s born into this world is a sinner and has no means of redeeming or saving himself or herself.
They’re condemned to an eternal hell because of their rebellion against God. And we’re going to get into that. I don’t know if it will be this morning, but it will definitely be next Sunday.
Every one of us is born with a rebel’s attitude. Ask a parent if they have to teach their child, their baby, how to sin. Or has that child got a rebellious nature? You see, the Scriptures tell us that each one of us is born and conceived in sin.
David said, I was conceived in sin. It wasn’t that his mother was an adulteress. It was that she was a sinner and his father were sinners and they passed this heritage on to him through his birth.
The Scriptures, the fundamental of the faith, is that Adam sinned. And when Adam sinned, every one that was born and came in the line of Adam is a sinner. Every one of us can trace our roots back to him.
We’re all related. There’s two points in history. We’re all related.
We all came from the seed of Adam. And after the flood, everyone that’s alive in the world today is a descendant of Noah. But guess what? Adam needed to be saved and Noah needed to be saved and we need to be saved.
And when people ignore the fundamental, the most fundamental of all things, that we’re sinners, that have no means of dealing with our sin, apart from God’s solution, we will never find the solution. The second fundamental of the faith is that only God can redeem and save us because we can’t save ourselves. Every one of us needs the Lord to intervene on our behalf.
But the third fundamental of the faith is that the choice is ours. The choice is ours. The mark of faith in the life of the believer is that I trust and believe in the words of Jesus Christ, in the words of this book that say, no man cometh unto the Father but by me.
I am the way, the truth, and the life. Jesus revealed that and that’s why on more than one occasion they tried to pick up stones to stone Him. They tried to push Him over a cliff.
They tried to prematurely kill Him. But He was ordained to go to the cross on our behalf that He could shed His blood for our sins because the Bible tells us, another fundamental of the faith, without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. And the blood had to be the blood of a righteous man.
And there’s no righteous man that’s ever lived except Jesus. Jesus went to the cross and shed His blood that you and I could be saved and that’s a fundamental of the faith. And then not only did He die on our behalf paying the penalty, but He lives on our behalf revealing His victory.
He rose again from the dead. Now Paul says, for to take this gospel to the Jew first and then to the Gentile and that therein is righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith it is written, the just shall live by faith. Faith in what? Faith in God.
Faith in the finished work of Christ. Faith in the fact that Jesus paid the penalty for our sin and He took upon Himself our sin. That His righteousness could be placed on us.
So then Paul gets into more of the problem. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness. What does Paul mean by that? Well first of all, he didn’t exclude anybody.
It’s everybody that’s got the problem. We all experience and deserve the wrath of God and it’s been revealed from heaven against men that are unrighteous. People say well, God’s done with Israel.
We read in Psalm 78 this morning He’s not done with Israel. As a matter of fact, He’s judged Israel, chastised Israel on more than one occasion for their sins. I just listened to another guy this last week.
He’s a brilliant man. And he was talking about questions that atheists ask. And one of the questions is well, if God is such a just God, why did He tell Israel to go into the land of Canaan and commit genocide against all the Canaanites? That’s a question.
Why did God do that? You can read about it in the Old Testament. He actually did that. They were to go in and when Joshua went in to take the land, they were not to leave any of the Canaanites alive.
Drive them from the land. Well, first of all, I want you to understand God was merciful with the Canaanites before He ever brought His judgment on them. How long had the family of Jacob been in Egypt before they came back as the nation of Israel and were standing on the borders of the Jordan ready to go into the land of Canaan? How many years? Over 400 years.
God had been merciful and not brought His judgment against the Canaanite peoples for over 400 years. Well, why did they deserve judgment more than other nations? Well, if you knew what the Canaanite people were like and what the worship of their gods was like, it was so disgusting you can’t even talk about much of it. A common practice was the killing of their children and the sacrificing of their children.
The blood of their children cried out.
Because they killed them and offered them to their gods as sacrifice. And that was just one of the things they did. They were a despicable people, an immoral people, an ungodly people.
Yet we’re going to see they had the same evidences around them that pointed to the fact that there was a true and a living God that they should worship and they should not be worshipping idols and beasts and men. But not only was God merciful, God was just. And then you’ll also see, contrary to the Calvinists that would say that God condemns people to hell, you will read of Canaanite cities and Canaanite peoples long after the nation of Israel went in and was to destroy them all.
And not only that, you will find Canaanite women in the lineage of Jesus Christ. How can that be? Rahab was a Canaanite. But when she heard of God and she saw the power of God and she understood the justice of God, she cried out to the mercy of God and He delivered her.
Not only deliver her, He made her a princess in the nation of Israel. One that was in the lineage of Christ. Tamar, a Canaanite girl.
Judah went and got Tamar and brought her to marry his oldest son, Ur. Ur was such a wicked, evil man, God judged him. And he died prematurely before they could have a child.
So Judah said to Tamar, you will become the wife of my second son, Onan. And it said that Onan had his focus so much on the worldly things, and now I can be the number one son and inherit all of my father’s wealth. But if I have a child by Tamar, I will be having Ur’s child.
And so it says that he would not consummate the relationship to result in a child. And God judged him because of his wickedness. And then there was a third son, but he wasn’t quite yet old enough.
He was probably a teenager, but a little younger than his brothers. And Judah said to Tamar, go back to your family, I’ll come and get you, and I will give you to my youngest son when he’s of age. And all of a sudden, what happens? Tamar hears that the youngest son is ready to be married, but Judah isn’t coming.
So Tamar does that, which everybody condemns her for doing. She dresses up like a harlot because she hears that Judah is coming to town. She sits alongside the road.
Judah’s wife had died some time ago. Judah comes up and sees her. He makes an arrangement with her.
He goes and spends a night with her, impregnates her. And then when it comes to consummate the deal, he says, I’ll give you a goat, a kid. But I don’t have it with me.
She says, I need something to prove that you are going to give this to me. So he gives a signet, his ring, or his mark that said he was Judah. He gives him the staff, and he gives him the bracelets off his hands.
All that point to the fact that he is the one that had been with her. Judah goes back. He sends his servant and says, get a goat.
I’ve got to go. I owe a debt. You’ve got to go give it to this harlot that was up where I went.
Judah goes. The servant goes, and he can’t find the harlot. He’s not there.
He asks again, is there a harlot in this area? And they said, no, there’s no prostitutes around here. So he goes back to Judah, and he says, I can’t find her. It’s not long after that, about three months later, word comes to Judah from the family of Tamar that she’s pregnant.
She’s three months pregnant. Judah’s livid. She is part of his house.
And he had sent her away, but she’s still part of his house. And how could she do this to embarrass him? And so he goes, and he’s going to have her killed. He’s going to have her put to death.
And he gets there, and he meets Tamar. And when she comes out, she said, just so you know, these are the things of the man whose child I’m carrying. And she gives Judah his staff, his signet, and his bracelets.
And Judah says, you are more righteous than I. Tamar is in the lineage of Jesus Christ. How is she more righteous? The Messiah was to come through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. And what son of Jacob was to be the lineage of Jesus? Judah.
Jesus would be lion of the tribe of Judah. Yet Judah was cutting off the line. And Tamar made sure it didn’t happen.
God is merciful. And God overlooks some of the dumb things we do to try and help Him. But God also shows mercy and forgiveness through His Son.
I want you to understand. It says here, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness. And in just closing, I want to give a little definition to that.
Judah’s sons held the truth in unrighteousness. They knew the truth. They knew what had been promised to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, their grandfather.
Judah, their father. Yet they took that truth. They held that truth.
But then they committed unrighteousness to ignore that truth. That’s a scary place to be. I say today, we’ve got problems in our country.
We’ve got problems in the world. Satan’s schemes are being put together faster than they’ve ever been put together. You’re seeing the end times coming just as Jesus said it would.
Just as He prophesied in Revelation and through the prophets. And we studied in Daniel and studied in Ezekiel and studied in Isaiah and Jeremiah. And when we’ve studied before in Revelation.
But as you’re looking at that, understand we hold the truth. And what I see happening today is that often times we as Christians hold the truth in unrighteousness. We don’t seek to righteously proclaim the truth to a world that’s in rebellion against God.
But instead would rather conceal the truth for whatever reason. Whether it’s that I don’t want to be embarrassed. I don’t want to be persecuted.
I don’t want to lose my job. I don’t want this. I don’t want that.
I’m not going to proclaim the truth. I’m not going to proclaim the gospel. I’m not going to live my life in honor of the Lord.
I’m not going to do it. But instead what I do is I know the truth. I hold the truth.
And then I go out and commit unrighteousness. And if you look at some of the ways that it’s being done, unrighteousness. It’s identifying with doctrines of devils and men that have come into the church and replaced the gospel.
I’ve named some of them this morning. Replacement theology. Israel’s been replaced by the church.
Alive from the pit of hell. They’re two separate identities. Calvinism.
That God is this form of a Christian version of Islam. Where it’s all fatalism. It’s all just by fate.
I want you to know if it’s by fate. Look at those people that have been saved that should have never been saved. Like the man I shared with you in Answers to Prayer.
Other lies that have come into the church to replace the gospel. That the gospel is really an entertainment center. It’s there to entertain men’s hearts.
It’s to tell stories. It’s to present music that they’re going to like. Instead of tell the truth.
And so we hold the truth. We know the truth. But we hold it in unrighteousness.
And our lives reflect unrighteousness of this world. And we ignore the truth while we hold it. And do the unrighteousness.
The bad thing is. Next Sunday you’re going to see. It’s not just the church doing this.
It’s the whole world doing this. And we need to understand what our calling is. We need to hear what Paul said.
This is the theme of this book. The gospel of Jesus Christ. Hear the theme.
Do the theme. And walk in the power of God. You want to see God’s power? In closing, I’ll just give you one more example out of the Bible.
Jesus was brought before Herod. And Herod was all excited because he’d been hearing about this Jesus. And how he could perform all these miracles.
And so Herod viewed it was my turn to have the show. So Jesus comes in and Herod says, I want some miracles. Do some things for me.
And Jesus just stood there. You see, miracles would never save Herod. Herod had had John the Baptist’s head.
Because he was living with his brother’s wife. And John the Baptist confronted him about the sin. Herod had no desire to change.
He just wanted miracles. He wanted a show time. Show time.
There’s a book out there called Show Time for the Sheep. Written by Tom McMahon. It deals with the whole concept of what I’m just talking about now.
Holding the truth in unrighteousness and desiring show time. Instead of really wanting to know the truth. Jesus wouldn’t budge for Herod.
Herod sent him back to Pontius Pilate. And Pilate ended up under the pressure. That was placed upon him.
Condemning Jesus to the cross. Fulfilling the greatest victory in the history of the world over Satan. Not by miracles.
But by the greatest miracle of all. Where the power of God was displayed through the gospel of Jesus Christ. And men’s lives are transformed.
Let’s just close in prayer. Lord I pray that you just speak to us through your word. Help us to understand the importance that you’ve called us to share with others.
The hope that we have in Jesus. We’re not to hold the truth in unrighteousness. But rather we are to walk in the righteousness of your character.
While we proclaim the truth. This we’d ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.