The Power of God for Salvation
Romans • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 2 viewsNotes
Transcript
Mic
Prayer
A nationwide poll was taken some years ago in the United States on religious questions. When asked whether they believed in God, 95 percent of those polled answered “yes.”
But, when asked whether religion in any way affected their politics and their business, 54 percent said “no.”
They claimed to have a belief, but they did not have a directing faith.
Faith is action. Faith encompasses the entire spectrum of life’s encounters and experiences. In short while they thought they had faith, their actions showed that their faith was not in God but in something else.
on another occasion…
An American missionary in Africa wanted to translate the English word faith into the local dialect. He could not find its equivalent. So he went to an old sage, who was himself a fine Christian and asked for his help in rendering the needed word into understandable language. The guru studied it, and finally said, “Does it not mean to hear with the heart?”
With that in mind, let us turn to our text for today which comes from Romans 1:16-17 found on pg 1125 in your pew Bible
2 Slides
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 to faith; as it is written, “But the righteous man shall live by faith.”
These two verses have been called the theme of the book of Romans. They are probably one of the most powerful verses in the Bible.
It was these verses that triggered the Reformation in the the middle ages when it took hold of the hearts of men like Martin Luther and John Calvin. Martin Luther was plagued by guilt.
He had read his Bible. He knew he was a sinner.
All he had to do was look at his life. He was weighed down with guilt. but What could he do?
He went to all sorts of lengths to try to get rid of his guilt. He tried to keep the law… but he failed.
He would offer penance.. but that was not enough. His guilt still remained.
He could say his prayers 100’s of times … he could whip himself … he could go out and try to do good deeds… he could put all his money in the offering plate… and still he knew he was lacking something… what could he do?
Then he was chosen to go to Rome on behalf of his monastery. When he went on a journey to Rome He walked some 700 miles from Germany to Rome. That was some trip. That would be like you and me walking from Bryson City to New York City.
The year was 1511, and young Martin Luther was excited when asked to go to Rome with a colleague on Augustinian business. When Martin first caught a glimpse of the city from a distance he yelled out “Holy Rome, I salute you!”
But once in the city itself the overtness and extent of even the priests lifestyle of sin was a shock to Martin’s expectations. He encountered priests who openly mocked the people they were meant to be ministering to.
He was confounded by the number of prostitutes working in the city of priests. At the time of Luther’s visit to Rome there was one prostitute for every fifteen people living in Rome.
To keep this in perspective Martin Luther like all priests had taken a vow of chastity when he became a priest and was unable to process the hypocrisy.
Slide
What you are seeing in this picture is the Holy stairs. The mother of Constantine is said to have moved the steps from Jerusalem to Rome in 326 AD. The “Holy Stairs” are the steps that led from the temple up to the praetorium of the governor's palace in Jerusalem . These are the stairs that Jesus would have climbed on his way to His trial before Pilot on the day of His crucifixion.
There was a superstition that if you ascended the 28 stairs on your knees a 1,000 years would be removed from your time in purgatory. Martin Luther climbed these stairs on his knees taking time on each step to pray a prayer just as tradition required.
Now despite the disappointment Luther felt upon arriving in Rome, Martin desperately hoped that climbing the twenty-eight marble steps of the “Holy Stairs” would make him a little more ‘right’ with God – at least enough to keep him out of Hell and shorten his time in Purgatory when death came calling for him.
It was on these steps … well I can’t describe it near as well as others.
He knelt on the first step and felt a spiritual rush.
“These” were the stairs that stood in the court of Pontius Pilate fifteen hundred years before. These were the “Holy Stairs” that Christ Himself walked up when called before Pilate to stand trial.
Martin gazed at the second step before placing his knees upon it. There it was! The dark stain! Right in the middle of the step!! The stain of blood that had dropped from the tortured body of Christ – or so it was said.
To Martin Luther there couldn’t be anything holier than climbing these steps – and so this twenty-seven-year-old monk desperately hoped that climbing these twenty-eight steps would make God less angry with him.
As Luther reached the middle of his short upward journey on the stairs something unexpected happened. He sensed a heavenly Voice speaking to him. It was a Voice that wasn’t filled with anger as Martin might have expected but a Voice filled with an everlasting love.
And that Voice said to Martin Luther: “The just shall live by faith.”
Martin Luther contemplated what the voice said… the just shall live by faith… the just shall live by faith’’
THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH! … AND WITH THAT Martin Luther’s life was changed for ever and the reformation was born!
It was this passage that transformed the life of John Wesley. and these verses have the power to transform our lives as well!
2 Slides
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 to faith; as it is written, “But the righteous man shall live by faith.”
Let us put this passage in context. Paul is not ashamed of the gospel. in other words, He would not let anything keep him from sharing the message of salvation through Jesus Christ.
Paul had to be smuggled out of Damascus and Berea, because they wanted to kill him. He was stoned and left for dead at Lystra. He was imprisoned in Philippi, chased out of Thessalonica, laughed at in Athens, considered a fool in Corinth, and declared a blasphemer and lawbreaker in Jerusalem.
Do you think he faced hostility? You bet he did! Did he cower from proclaiming the gospel to those around him? No!
He was eager to preach the gospel to all who would hear including to those in Rome.
Why? Because the gospel is the power of God for salvation to all who will believe.
How does that compare to us today?
Every true believer knows it is a serious sin to be ashamed of our Savior and Lord. Yet at the same, we also knows the difficulty of avoiding that sin.
When we have an opportunity to speak out for Christ, we often fail to do so.
We know the gospel is unattractive, intimidating, and repulsive to the natural, unsaved person
..… and to the ungodly spiritual system that now dominates the world.
The gospel exposes man’s sin, wickedness, depravity, and lostness, and
it declares pride to be despicable .… and works of righteousness to be worthless in the sight of God.
To the sinful heart of unbelievers, the gospel does not appear to be good news but bad....
, and when they first hear it they often react with disdain against the one presenting it or throw out arguments and theories against it.
For that reason, because of our fear of men..… and of not being able to handle their arguments … that is the single greatest snare in witnessing.
We have all sorts of excuses for not sharing the gospel. How long did it take Paul to get around to sharing the gospel? I suspect that if you met Paul, He would have been sharing the gospel with you on the same day if not at your first meeting.
Geoffrey Wilson wrote, “The unpopularity of a crucified Christ has prompted many to present a message which is more palatable to the unbeliever, ..…
but the removal of the offense of the cross always renders the message ineffective. An inoffensive gospel is also an inoperative gospel.
This is why many turn to a more attractive gospel like the prosperity gospel. God wants to bless you. That is why they focus on health, wealth, and prosperity.
God is not angry. He would never punish anyone.
Friends we are all sinners and in need of someone to save us.
The Gospel is the power of God for salvation!
Many of us want to change inwardly. We want to change in a way that will make us feel less guilty and more content, and there are a host of programs, philosophies, and religions that promise to meet those desires.
Many man-made schemes succeed in making people feel better about themselves, but the ideas they promote have no power to remove the sin that brings the feelings of guilt and discontent.
They can’t get rid of our feelings of guilt because we are guilty.
Those ideas cannot make men right with God… but they can quiet down your guilt for a time. That’s part of the benefit of drugs and alcohol… but in the end they will kill you. It’s like taking aspirin to dull your pain… but it does nothing for the cause of that pain.
Only the power of God is able to overcome man’s sinful nature and give you spiritual life! It is only the gospel that has the power to lead us into a true relationship with God and eternal life.
The Bible makes it clear that men cannot be spiritually changed or saved by good works, or by the church, or by some church ritual, or by any other human means.
Men cannot be saved even by keeping God’s own law. The law was given to show men their helplessness to meet God’s standards under our own power. The law was not given to save men but to reveal our sin and thus to drive men to God’s saving grace.
2 Slides
19 Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, that every mouth may be closed, and all the world may become accountable to God;
20 because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin.
Paul reminded the church at Corinth that
Slide
18 For the word of the cross is to those who are perishing foolishness, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
and in
3 Slides
23 ... we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block, and to Gentiles foolishness,
24 but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
25 Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
We all have our limitations, but the power of God is not limited by our abilities.
Moses had problems with his speech… but that did not stop God from using him.
Josiah was only 8 years old when he became king.… but he was one of the greatest kings Israel had.
Jesus chose His disciples not from among the well educated and elite of Israel but from ordinary fishermen up in Galilee.
as they said about Jesus Himself.… Can anything good come out of Nazareth?
DL Moody was a shoe cobbler.
Who knows what God can do if you put God first in your life.
It was in 1873, when D.L. Moody heard British evangelist Henry Varley utter these life changing words:
“The world has yet to see what God can do with and for and through and in a man who is fully and wholly consecrated to Him.” Moody determined to be that man and the world has never been the same since. God used him to turn the world upside down and he can use you to!
And what is the message that Paul preached? what is the message that Moody preached.
He preached that we all are guilty of sin.
9 Slides (ending vs 18)
10 as it is written, “There is none righteous, not even one;
11 There is none who understands, There is none who seeks for God;
12 All have turned aside, together they have become useless; There is none who does good, There is not even one.”
13 “Their throat is an open grave, With their tongues they keep deceiving,” “The poison of asps is under their lips” ;
14 “Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness” ;
15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood,
16 Destruction and misery are in their paths,
17 And the path of peace have they not known.”
18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
This is the message that Peter preached on the day of Pentecost.
Slide
36 “Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ—this Jesus whom you crucified.”
He called them murderers to their face.
It was only when the people were confronted with their sin that they cried out to Peter
What shall we do? and Peter replied.
4 Slides (ending vs 40)
37 Now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brethren, what shall we do?”
38 And Peter said to them, “Repent, and let each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
39 “For the promise is for you and your children, and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God shall call to Himself.”
40 And with many other words he solemnly testified and kept on exhorting them, saying, “Be saved from this perverse generation!”
Peter told them to “Repent and be saved.”
They needed to repent.... to turn from their sins. That means to quit. Stop cold turkey.. and start following Jesus.
We place our trust in Him and so we change our behavior and begin to imitate Jesus in our walk and in our talk.
Paul in our text says salvation is for everyone who believes. This is what it means to believe. It means to place our trust in Jesus and become a follower… an imitator of Jesus.
In fact Paul himself tells us in
Slide
1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children;
and what does salvation mean?
It means to be saved… to be delivered? to be delivered from what?
from the wrath of God… and from hell.
and when we do that we become a child of the King. The Holy spirit enters into us.. He changes us and gives us a heart of love and compassion.
Someone may say to me… what if after I become a Christian, I accidently sin maybe I walk off with someone’s pen. What about me? Am I condemned to hell?
What do you do? Do you keep the pen? Then you are a thief. Do you immediately say to yourself OH No! and return the pen. Do you confess your sin (even though it was accidental, repent and try to make amends? Then God is faithful and righteous to forgive our sins and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness. As followers of Christ we try to be holy in all of our behavior.
This is the power of God… It transforms us and as a result our behavior changes.
As for the person who tries to justify continuing in their sin, they are probably not saved.
If we truly believe in Christ… our behavior will change. Not because I am trying to earn my salvation or prove my self… It is because my faith is in God and I am trying to be more like God. I want to please Him because I love Him.
Instead of being all about me.. I begin to care for others. Christ’s love within me compels me to want to help others. This also is the transforming power of Christ working in me.
and so Paul writes in Ephesians 4.28.
Slide
28 Let him who steals steal no longer; but rather let him labor, performing with his own hands what is good, in order that he may have something to share with him who has need.
We get a job and we work… not just to meet our needs but so we can help others!
why? so that we may have something to share with others. Rather than being takers… We work so we become givers.
We see this also in
2 Slides
11 and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands, just as we commanded you;
12 so that you may behave properly toward outsiders and not be in any need.
We work so that when we come into God’s house we can bring an offering, we don’t come empty handed. In fact look how Paul speaks of the Christians in Macedonia after they had been saved.
5 Slides (ending vs 5)
1 Now, brethren, we wish to make known to you the grace of God which has been given in the churches of Macedonia,
2 that in a great ordeal of affliction their abundance of joy and their deep poverty overflowed in the wealth of their liberality.
3 For I testify that according to their ability, and beyond their ability they gave of their own accord,
4 begging us with much entreaty for the favor of participation in the support of the saints,
5 and this, not as we had expected, but they first gave themselves to the Lord and to us by the will of God.
They were in deep poverty and affliction… they were being persecuted, but they were begging Paul to let them contribute to help those in Jerusalem.
and they were giving joyfully!
They wanted to give.. because of all that God had done for them and in them.
If you can’t give with that same joy… don’t bother to give… God doesn’t need your money...
but I will tell you this. God loves a cheerful giver and you can’t outgive God.
2 Corinthians puts it this way.…
2 Slides
10 Now He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food, will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness;
11 you will be enriched in everything for all liberality, which through us is producing thanksgiving to God.
When Christ comes into my life He changes me.
He takes away my anger and gives me a spirit of peace and self-control.
He takes away my greed and gives me a spirit of love and compassion.
He takes away my depression and gives me a spirit of Hope.
He takes away my selfishness and gives me a spirit of giving.
2 Slides
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 to faith; as it is written, “But the righteous man shall live by faith.”
The gospel is the power of God for salvation… and that means for you.
Have you truly repented of your sins and placed your faith in Jesus.
Are you displaying the fruit of the Spirit in your life because you have the Holy Spirit living within you? or are you controlled by a spirit of fornication or lying, or anger, or depression, or selfishness?
Do you see the power of God working in your life… from faith to faith?
If your life is not reflecting the love of Christ and the fruit of the Spirit,… I invite you come to the altar… ask Jesus to forgive you of your sins… place your trust in Jesus and because your trust is in Jesus begin to follow Him. as it says in
3 Slides
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith [that is faith in God] ; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;
9 not as a result of works, that no one should boast.
10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works [that is the changed life that we have been talking about], which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
That changed life is not so that we can be saved… There is nothing we can do to earn our salvation; it is a result of our salvation. It is because we have turned from our sins and have now become imitators of Christ.
Let’s pray
