Sermon Tone Analysis

“How the Gospel Saves Believers”

God’s Good News, part 7

Romans 1:16-17

“For in it the righteousness of God is revealed…”

~~v.17

“Behold, as for the proud one,

His soul is not right within him;

But the righteous will live by his faith.”

~~Habakkuk 2:4, nasb

 

                the gospels if God power to bring those how keep believing to everlasting joy in the presence of God.

 

1.

Our Ultimate Problem:

God’s Wrath

 

            Most of us here would quickly agree that all people need salvation.

But salvation from what?  What’s the problem?

The clear and resounding answer from Romans is that we need to be saved from God’s wrath.

Notice Romans 1:8…

 

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.”

~~Romans 1:18, nasb

 

            The given reason we need saving is that God is very angry at our unrighteousness and the way we suppress and distort the truth to justify ourselves.

We see another glimpse of this in chapter 2:8, where Paul refers  */“/**/to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, wrath and indignation.”/*

Just like 1:18, notice “truth” that is rejected and “unrighteousness” embraced.

This is our problem.

God is indignant and wrathful toward us in our unrighteousness and our untruthfulness.

* Our twofold problem:

            Unrighteousness and Untruthfulness

 

            Back up three verses to 2:5,

“…Because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God.”

~~Romans 2:5, nasb

            The righteous judgment of God is His wrath.

A holy God blazes out with wrath and indignation over unrighteousness and untruthfulness.

God is not to be trifled with.

This is why we need saving.

This is our ultimate problem.

God’s final wrath separates us from Himself and casts us into hell.

Yes, we do need to be saved from sin…guilt…disunity…bad relationships…destructive habits….harmful

ways; but mainly our answer is: we need to be saved from God’s wrath.

2.

Our Ultimate Solution:

God’s Power

“…It is the power of God for salvation…”

~~v.16

The Gospel is mainly God’s good News that God Himself has rescued us from the wrath of God.

God forgive those who tell and focus on the problem and don’t give the answer, God’s answer.

The Gospel is the power of God for salvation from the wrath of God, the power that brings us to eternal safety and joy in the presence of God.

Romans 5:9 says this clearly…

 

“…Having now been justified by His blood,

we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him.”

~~Romans 5:9, nasb

 

            The Gospel is God’s power to rescue believers from the wrath of God or from the righteous judgment of God.

 

3.

Our Ultimate Process:

A Strong Understanding    

 

            We are dealing with an important question: How does the gospel save believers?

How is the gospel God’s power for salvation?

The answer is verse 17…

 

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

3:21; [2 Cor.

5:21; Phil.

3:9]

~v.17, esv

 

            God so loved the world that He sent his only Son…  God demonstrates His own love toward us in that while we were sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).

The gospel of Jesus is a demonstration and revelation of God’s love.

But verse 17 doesn’t say that.

God’s love is not a sentimentality, but a deep, godly love.

God does not simply say, “I love you, so I will overlook your sin.”

God’s love upholds all other attributes of God.

Rather, God’s love takes our unrighteousness and God’s righteousness into account and deals with them in the death and resurrection of Jesus.

That is what Romans is all about.

God inspired the apostle Paul to write an understanding of how believers are saved from God’s wrath.

It matters to Christ that believers learn how gospel is the power of God for salvation.

Many believers have a weak grasp of our condition without grace.

Most professing Christians could not articulate how the Holy Spirit works to convert and goes on working to keep us and purify us and fit us for heaven.

Yet the Bible goes to great pains to teach believers, and as John Piper says,

 

“It is stunning how many Christians simply do not care to know these things and therefore do not know them.”

~~John Piper

 

            Paul gets inside the love of God to explain how believers are saved.

He gets inside God’s love and shows how God deals with the real problems of the universe.

They are deeper than we think.

There is enmity against God and a suppression of truth and a deep unrighteousness of soul, resulting in the almighty wrath of God, that only one power in the universe can overcome.

Do you see that preoccupation with the world, self and Satan don’t hold a candle against the real thing, God’s righteousness?

Unless you see this, you can go away to college and lose your faith, and many have.

What is wrong is so wrong, that if you see the real problem you won’t try to solve it philosophically or with works.

I want to follow Piper’s lead and plead with you to read and care about the inspired word of God.

God gave us His word to teach us how the gospel saves believers and brings them safely to heaven.

I beg you for His glory, as well as your sake to get serious about growing in the knowledge of God.  Paul said in Colossians 1:9-10…

 

“…We have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.”

The Truth is a privilege, a comfort and a joy to know.

This is a precious window of time.

We are moving slowly through Romans so that you can think and study and read and discuss and review and check things out for yourself and pray over what you hear.

I said at the beginning that I will go as slow through Romans as you allow.

* *

*What’s Next To Do?*

“If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them” (John 13:17).

*Be determined to know more than others.*

If you yourself do not cut the lines that tie you to the dock, God will have to use a storm to sever them and to send you out to sea.

Put everything in your life afloat upon God, going out to sea on the great swelling tide of His purpose, and your eyes will be opened.

If you believe in Jesus, you are not to spend all your time in the calm waters just inside the harbor, full of joy, but always tied to the dock.

You have to get out past the harbor into the great depths of God, and begin to know things for yourself—begin to have spiritual discernment.

When you know that you should do something and you do it, immediately you know more.

Examine where you have become sluggish, where you began losing interest spiritually, and you will find that it goes back to a point where you did not do something you knew you should do.

You did not do it because there seemed to be no immediate call to do it.

But now you have no insight or discernment, and at a time of crisis you are spiritually distracted instead of spiritually self-controlled.

It is a dangerous thing to refuse to continue learning and knowing more.

The counterfeit of obedience is a state of mind in which you create your own opportunities to sacrifice yourself, and your zeal and enthusiasm are mistaken for discernment.