By Faith

Romans 1:16-17

Please stand…

English Standard Version Chapter 1

16 For 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. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

Pray…

Have you ever been ashamed of something or embarrassed? I remember when I first started playing music and even when I was at my peak, people would ask me what I did and I told them I was a musician and they would ask, “Do you play in a band?” I would say, “Yes”. Then they would ask the band name and I would, reluctantly, say my name. “It’s my band.” Then it would always be that “oh well good luck with that.”

Why did that make me feel ashamed or embarrassed? I have no idea. Maybe it was the voices in my head that showed me all my insecurities. Maybe it was caring what others thought of me, my life choices? Would they like my music? If they didn’t, did I think they wouldn’t like me? Everything, like that, that makes you feel ashamed or embarrassed is based in insecurities.

That word is means that you do not feel secure in your decision. Is this the right thing to do, is this the right person to date, is this the right job. Maybe it is a career path you are going down, or a person you are dating, or a belief that you have that you do not share with the world.

Paul had one of those beliefs. The world around him did not believe that God had come down from his rightful place in heaven, to earth to take on flesh and dwell among His creation in the person of Jesus that was then murdered on the cross for the sins of the world and raised to life by God the Father so that we could have a new life with Him. The world didn’t believe that once God the Son was raised up with the Father that God the Holy Spirit would come down and dwell in those that would believe.

The Greeks didn’t believe that their gods were personal. They were in another place. They wouldn’t come down to common man. If they did think they were personal, when they went home at night and laid their head down on the pillow, they didn’t really think that the gods were watching them sleep or cared about trivial matters of life. The Jews didn’t believe that the Messiah would be like Jesus. They were looking for a general or a political leader that would conquer the Romans and reinstate Israel as the world power. The world didn’t know anything about the Gospel and they couldn’t because their eyes had not been opened and the message has not yet been taken to all the world.

Paul knew that his job was to take this news to that world. He had one eager mission and that was to preach the Gospel. That act is the only thing that can open eyes and unstop ears. Being obedient to Jesus means living and preaching the Gospel with our lives and with our mouths to a dying world. Paul was under obligation to the Jews and the gentiles to get this message to them.

English Standard Version Chapter 1

16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel

Why would there be a possibility that people would be ashamed of the Gospel? It pushes against the world. It requires belief and change from the believer, a change that the believer can’t do in himself by himself. It says that we are not gods to ourselves, but there is a God that is in the heavens over us. This God wants a relationship with us and it has to be a monogamous one. He doesn’t like to share your heart. He wants to be the singular Lord of your life and He IS the truth. In Paul’s day, and in ours, the Gospel is offensive.

Tim Keller, the late pastor and theologian, says that there are four ways in which people are offended by the Gospel.

The Gospel is offensive because it is free and undeserved. What do you mean it is free? You can’t buy it, you can’t earn it, you don’t have to belong to a certain type of church to attain it. It is not locked behind walls of books or intellect, or DNA code, or the amount of money you give to the church, it is there for the rich and the poor, the righteous and the dark sinner.

Every Sunday, I get the opportunity to bring you a message. I don’t know why He chose me to do this or why He has ME doing this. The words of these pages have been mined by the brightest minds that have ever walked the planet. Here I stand with a bachelor’s degree in marketing from a college not 30 miles from here, a washed up musician, failing the Lord every day, yet He uses me for this job. It doesn’t make sense that He would use the people from the world with all our inadequacies to preach this beautiful, perfect Word.

That isn’t how our world works. In order to get a fancy job that influences companies or people, you must work hard, go through all the schooling and earn your way up the ranks. I have a friend that is an engineer and he went to college for it, started with his company 20 years ago and has worked his way up to Senior Vice President. That is amazing and praise God for what he has been able to accomplish, but that is not how this works. My eyes can be opened to the Goodness of the Gospel, I can tell God that I desire to have that faith and He will give it to me in that moment and from that very spot, He can work through me to spread His Kingdom in mighty ways.

The world doesn’t deserve it. You and I don’t deserve it. It is free and undeserved because…

2. He died for us. Why did he have to do that? We were so evil, our sin was so great, the only way to be made right with the Father was only through a sacrifice that He could make.

In the Old Testament, God set up a sacrificial system where when you sinned, you could atone for that sin with an animal sacrifice or a food sacrifice. It was to cover the sin, but what happened, we didn’t stop sinning. No amount of bulls or lambs could cover our sin. In steps the Lamb of God. Jesus’ perfect sacrifice, God, nailed to the cross was the only way to be made right with the Father.

Jesus tells us in John 14:6

John 14:6 ESV

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

There are a lot of gods to pray to out there, but there is only one true God, as Clive reminded me this week. Only one God that stepped down off His thrown and laid His life down for His creation. Allah didn’t do it, Buddha didn’t do it, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva didn’t do it, they all make their followers try to be righteous on their own to get to them. Our God came down. He’s the only one with that resume.

That is why number 3 is offensive..

3. Trying to be good isn’t enough. Our good works can’t get us to God. We can live our whole lives feeding the poor, giving all our resources away, digging water wells in Africa, but without letting Christ in, those things are filthy rags. People don’t like this because they don’t realize how wretched they truly are.

I saw something this week about the Mormon church that was fascinating about this. In 2 Nephi 25:23 in the Book of Mormon it says that, “individuals are saved by Christ’s grace after they have done their very best.” I have known this for quite some time, but I wasn’t sure how that played out. This week I saw a Mormon post his disgust that the protestant church teaches that if a murderer/serial killer comes to Christ in true repentance, they can be saved. He said that he couldn’t believe that this was taught. The mormon thought under the teachings of their founder, Joseph Smith says, in the Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, ““A murderer, one that sheds innocent blood, cannot have forgiveness”.

This is false teaching and it should be called such because do you know who that includes? Moses. He killed an Egyptian for hitting a Hebrew slave, not against the law. David. He killed Uriah so that he could take his wife, Bathsheba. Paul. He was complicit in the murder of Stephen and other Christians.

When you think that you can be good enough to earn your salvation, that means that you start looking at others and saying, “At least I am better than them.” You start building walls to who can and who can’t come into the kingdom. Jesus talked about our shear inability to do good. He tells us in Matthew 5:21-22

Matthew 5:21–22 ESV

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.

If we rely on our own righteousness, we fail every time. We can’t work to get it. The law is so pure that even our thought life is exposed to an almighty God. This opening of our hearts and eyes is only done through His work that we must rely on. Which brings us to number 4…

4 Our salvation was accomplished by Jesus suffering and serving, not conquering and destroying. If that is how He came and lived among us, living perfectly, and He says in order to follow Him we must live the way that He lived, then that means we should serve and if necessary, suffer as he suffered.

Our culture and Roman culture would scoff at that. What does that mean? It means serving people that won’t serve you back. Loving people that won’t love you back. Dying to the desires of your flesh that take you away from the Lord of glory. Giving up freedoms to share the Gospel with weaker brothers and sisters, even to the point of giving up your life to further the kingdom in a land that is hostile to Jesus.

We do all of this…unashamed. We believe all this unashamed, why?

English Standard Version Chapter 1

for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes

English Standard Version Chapter 1

to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

When we work and live in the Spirit, we are not doing it on our own. It is the power of God through us that moves and works. Like I said earlier, it is encouraging to me when people say they like the way that I teach and the sermons they hear from this pulpit, but if you receive anything profitable from my teaching, it is God. There may be people that come because they like the way I say things, but it is only God that moves their heart. I appreciate the encouragement because it lifts me up and tells me that I am being obedient, but there isn’t a sound that has left my mouth that touches your heart for the Kingdom that I can take credit for. I am just a proclaimer of great source material. If I ever get away from the source material, I will happily see myself out.

His power works through those that surrender their life to Him. When we get to this place of not being ashamed of what God has said and shown us, we start to proclaim the good news and God puts people in our path that respond. This message is for everyone. It is the limitless love of God that is big enough for the whole world. He desires that none should perish, but it is only those that believe that will receive this gift. There is a distinction. It is for everyone that believes. That means that there will be people that won’t believe. It is not for us to make them believe, we can’t do that. Our job is to unabashedly share the Gospel and let the Lord do the work.

This is Paul’s mission. He said, “I’m going to give it to everyone and let God deal with the hearts.” We see him practice this in Acts 13, Paul preaches his first recorded sermon. He is preaching to Jews and gentiles who became Jews. He preaches that Jesus is the promised Messiah, that He came, though innocent, was executed by Pilate, resurrected and appeared to those that had been with Him during His earthly ministry. Then in verse 38 Paul says, “

English Standard Version Chapter 13

Let it be known to you therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, 39 and by him everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.

He is offering the gift to them right there. Then he says, “beware”, if you don’t take this gift, God will judge you. The people begged him to come back and tell them more the next Sabbath. When that time came it says that almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord. Not the word of Paul, but the word of the Lord. Jews and Gentiles both came to be saved and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed (Acts 13:48).

The Jews then drove him out of town and he shook off the dust from his feet and went on. He was not ashamed of the Gospel, though it meant that his Jewish brothers would hate him or would possibly kill him.

If we have a family member that is in the throws of addiction or making bad choices that we know will lead to destruction, is it loving or hateful to tell them what they can’t seem to see? The most loving thing we can do it tackle someone off a train track if they can’t hear the train coming. It may be jarring, but they will live. There is a wrath that is coming for all ungodliness that needs to be declared.

Paul took it to the Jews first and then to the Gentiles. The Jews because they were the lineage that Christ came from. They were his family. There was this idea in Judaism that their bloodline saved them. Because they were blood heirs to Abraham, they were better than everyone else. They thought they had the monopoly of God. They had the law and the prophets and the rest of the world didn’t. The Messiah was to come through the line of David, which is a Jewish line, so God said, “Tell them first, but this message is for the world.”

How are we to be saved from this coming wrath? Martin Luther, the German monk attributed to the Protestant Reformation, said that Romans is the very purest Gospel. This is the good news that we will see expounded upon throughout Romans because…

English Standard Version Chapter 1

17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith,

Like I said up front, you can’t be good enough. Your own works and righteousness can’t save you. The righteousness of God is revealed. We need to preach this Gospel because the world will never know if God doesn’t have mouth pieces proclaiming the Good News. That is why Paul says that he is obligated to bring the Gospel to the Greeks and the barbarians and that he is on an eager mission to preach. We can learn a lot from going outside and looking around, as we will see in the coming weeks, of how God reveals Himself through nature. Scholars call that natural revelation. Everyone sees it and can know that there is a God, but Divine or special revelation, one that comes from the Spirit to the world, must be shared by others who have that Spirit and a love for those that God loves.

The righteousness is a gift from God revealed from faith for faith. In Ephesians 2:8-9 says..

Ephesians 2:8–9 ESV

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

Did you catch that? The faith needed to be saved by grace is gift from God. When He reveals this righteousness to us, He gives us this measure of faith to believe and that spurs us to a life lived by faith. It is God giving you the tool that you need to do the work He has called you to do. If God told you that He wants you to spend all your days digging holes, He gives you the shovel and you are to take that gift and do the work that He has called you to do.

Faith is something that we must use. Ephesians 2:10

Ephesians 2:10 ESV

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

We use that faith so that we can walk in the good works that He has for us to do.

This is why He gets all the glory. He loves, He calls, He tells you what job you are to do, then He gives you the tools to do it, and He puts you in different places and around certain people so that you can use the tools to cultivate the ground you are living in. You don’t have to look around and say, “Where now, God?” This Gospel message is for everyone. You don’t have to work for a church or volunteer at the Mission, you have neighbors, kids, siblings, parents, co-workers that you get to tell the Good News to.

This is a way of life…

English Standard Version Chapter 1

as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

This Gospel must have the effect of change on your life. We are to take on Christ and be transformed to do what He does and think how He thinks. This faith has legs that need to be taken out to the World, but first it must be taken in. We first must have faith that God loves us, died for us and was raised so that we can have true joy and peace with God. If you don’t first have that, what are you sharing? If there isn’t a testimony that the world can see in your life, what are you telling? Are you ashamed of the Gospel? Have you felt the life changing power of God that it has? Have you laid your life at the feet of Jesus and said, “It’s all yours.”? Have you realized that you are helpless before a perfect and righteous God? The ones who are unashamed are the ones that have felt the power of God in their lives. They have seen it, their families have seen it and those around them have seen it. When you have trusted the net and it held, you can then lead others to take that leap because you know what is waiting for them. Be unashamed.