SPEAKER_01: Hey, I'm Pastor Steve Hole.
SPEAKER_01: I want to empower you today to walk in your true identity as a worshiper and warrior.
SPEAKER_01: Today, embrace the power of God's Word and the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Born for War podcast.
SPEAKER_01: So we're in the book of Romans, you guys, and I and I just emphasize this again that whenever we read an epistle in the New Testament, anytime we read a book of the Old Testament, those were typically read all at once.
SPEAKER_01: They were, it was like a letter, like you get an email from your fiance or you get an email from your dad or a sister or brother.
SPEAKER_01: You read the whole thing, right?
SPEAKER_01: And even if it's five pages, you'll read the whole thing.
SPEAKER_01: You don't read like a set of verses, and then a week later you come back and read another set of verses.
SPEAKER_01: So that's what makes Romans hard is number one, it's a long letter to the Roman Christians, but but we've been in the first three chapters, and the first three chapters are really bad news.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's bad news because Paul is trying to emphasize that there's no righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: All these different things that you think are gonna make you good and make you moral and make you righteous are never ever gonna get you into heaven.
SPEAKER_01: They're never gonna get you into a personal, vital, dynamic, growing relationship with Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And that Christ came to give us that righteousness, but we've got this battle going on.
SPEAKER_01: So he's trying to take us through all the different avenues and all the different ways in which man tries to justify himself.
SPEAKER_01: And so turn to Romans 1.
SPEAKER_01: In Romans 1.16, again, I say this, it's not because I think you forget easily, it's because I'm always reminded that this is a letter, and I want us to follow the flow of the letter without reading it at all again.
SPEAKER_01: But in Romans 1.16, that's the theme.
SPEAKER_01: That's the theme of the letter.
SPEAKER_01: He says, For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation to everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.
SPEAKER_01: That's the point.
SPEAKER_01: So you couldn't have a better book, a better set of verses, chapters in all of the Bible about what is the gospel than the book of Romans.
SPEAKER_01: And as I said earlier, you know, back in the beginning, we were talking about the very early days of Romans.
SPEAKER_01: I said, great revivals have broken loose through Romans.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was through Romans that Augustine discovered God in a new way.
SPEAKER_01: It was through Augustine's writings on Romans that Luther read his commentaries, an Augustinian monk in 1516, that brought forth the Protestant Reformation because of the revolution that occurred in his heart that he wasn't justified by the law, which is the way he had been taught in the Roman church at that time.
SPEAKER_01: And then John Wesley, John Wesley, who struggled so much to understand God and to follow God the best that he could.
SPEAKER_01: He even had a holy club at Oxford.
SPEAKER_01: Him and George Whitfield, they were together in that.
SPEAKER_01: It was after being a missionary in America, coming back in a storm, seeing these Moravian Christians that were just so calm and peaceful about their walk with God and about their salvation.
SPEAKER_01: So he started going to these Moravian meetings and he goes to the street called Aldersgate.
SPEAKER_01: And Aldersgate, it's the reading of Romans.
SPEAKER_01: It was a commentary of Romans by Luther that John Wesley later said, My heart was strangely warmed, and I knew that I was saved.
SPEAKER_01: This is about salvation.
SPEAKER_01: This is about how we get saved and then how we grow in faith.
SPEAKER_01: So the first three chapters are really tough because look at chapter one, and we went through that.
SPEAKER_01: How the ungodly can never find the righteousness of God.
SPEAKER_01: And we see this regressive cyclical nature of sin, where he talks about that cultures and societies, and we as individuals, we suppress the truth.
SPEAKER_01: We know the truth, but we suppress the truth.
SPEAKER_01: And then I talked about how suppressing the truth leads to futility in our thinking.
SPEAKER_01: That then that usually leads to idolatry.
SPEAKER_01: And then it says God gave them over three times.
SPEAKER_01: God gave them over to vile passions.
SPEAKER_01: God gave them over to sexual immorality.
SPEAKER_01: And then if you look at verse 28, he kind of the coup de cra of the whole thing is he comes and he says, You have now been given over to a debased mind.
SPEAKER_01: And so yesterday we had, we had this situation in which we talked about God, sex, and science.
SPEAKER_01: We had a conference on it, and we had a we had a psychiatric nurse, Lisa Davis, lecture up here on basically brain science and talking about how the brain actually gets confused and actually shrinks.
SPEAKER_01: It literally shrinks through pornography.
SPEAKER_01: If you're hooked on pornography, if you're into the dopamine fix that comes through pornography in your life, you're shrinking your brain, man.
SPEAKER_01: And I gave the argument last week, and I'm not saying it's the central thing.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying that.
SPEAKER_01: I don't think my mom ever looked at porn, but she did die.
SPEAKER_01: She died after 10 years of Alzheimer's.
SPEAKER_01: So I'm not saying that that's it, but I'm saying it can contribute to, it has to be true that as we see the rise of sexual uh immorality, and we talked about that too yesterday, but also we're talking about image, image um immorality that comes through pornography, that literally, from a psych psychiatric nurse, biologically, you are shrinking your brain.
SPEAKER_01: And my and my question was, and I'm not saying I have an answer, but I'm throwing it out there, that could it not be attributing to what we now know as dementia and Alzheimer's?
SPEAKER_01: Not the main thing, but part of the whole of what's happening.
SPEAKER_01: Because when you continue, when we continue to disobey God, it has ramifications physically, mentally, emotionally.
SPEAKER_01: And in this case, Paul is saying in verse 28, it leads to a debased mind.
SPEAKER_01: And that literally means you're confused all the time.
SPEAKER_01: You don't know what to do.
SPEAKER_01: And I shared the illustration, I'll say it again.
SPEAKER_01: You know, I believe in law, okay?
SPEAKER_01: I believe in law.
SPEAKER_01: So there's a stop sign right over here on Jamboree, and I stop at the stop sign, or I stop at the stop as a stop light.
SPEAKER_01: And then when it's green, I go.
SPEAKER_01: And I have a clear mind and I know still what I'm gonna get at Walmart.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: But if I decide I don't really care about the law, I don't really care about what people say, I'm just gonna go up my pace, I'm gonna do my thing.
SPEAKER_01: Think how confused you start to be because now you're not convinced totally, you can't be, if the guy coming down Chapel Hills is gonna stop or not.
SPEAKER_01: So guess what?
SPEAKER_01: There's at some point somebody's gonna smash you because you're not following the red light because they've got a green light, and you're gonna have an accident, and then you're gonna blame God.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: So you start having a debased mind.
SPEAKER_01: You're confused because you don't have any standards of guidance for your life anymore.
SPEAKER_01: That's really confusing.
SPEAKER_01: But God's actually given us guardrails.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna get a sexually transmitted disease because I'm committed to my wife and she's committed to me for the rest of my life.
SPEAKER_01: So that's the point.
SPEAKER_01: It's a debased mind.
SPEAKER_01: We start, we start shrinking our brain because of sin.
SPEAKER_01: And then we talked about in chapter two if we could just be, okay, I hear what you're saying, Steve, I'm gonna be moral.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna be a moral person.
SPEAKER_01: He says, morality won't save you.
SPEAKER_01: Morality doesn't get us the righteousness of God.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, well then it must be the law, it must be the Ten Commandments, it must be the righteousness that comes from the Jewish law.
SPEAKER_01: And he says, nope, you still can't follow the law.
SPEAKER_01: Even the apostle Paul said, Look, I am a Pharisee of Pharisees.
SPEAKER_01: I scrupulously followed the law, but there was this one law I could not follow, and it was do not covet.
SPEAKER_01: We all break the law.
SPEAKER_01: We can't ever be quite righteous enough.
SPEAKER_01: And so you see, this first three chapters is bad news.
SPEAKER_01: It's really bad news.
SPEAKER_01: I'm glad you're still coming.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, you're supposed to be, you know, you're if you're like a word and spirit pastor, you know, and everything.
SPEAKER_01: I see the guys, you know, on YouTube and everything.
SPEAKER_01: Man, they can prance around and they've got skinny jeans and all that stuff, and they're really cool, and wow, everybody's screaming, and it's a positive message.
SPEAKER_01: Victory in Jesus and all that.
SPEAKER_01: Well, there's no victory in the law.
SPEAKER_01: There's no victory in just being moral.
SPEAKER_01: That's a good idea.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you have a choice between being an immoral unbeliever or a moral unbeliever, I'll take the moral unbeliever any day, but it doesn't save them.
SPEAKER_01: So he's trying to press in because there were Jews, there were religious uh Jews in Rome, there were Greeks and there were Gentiles in Rome, and they're both worshiping together.
SPEAKER_01: And the Jews are tending to kind of press in to the Gentiles.
SPEAKER_01: If you just follow the law, you'll be a good Christian.
SPEAKER_01: That's how you get really saved, you know.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, okay, that faith in Christ stuff that Paul talks about, that's a pretty good start.
SPEAKER_01: But this is what you really need to do, you know, and you still see that today.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you come out of churches like that, where, you know, it's it's this ritual, it's this religious thing that you've got to measure up to.
SPEAKER_01: And Paul's saying, it doesn't cut it.
SPEAKER_01: So we pick it up in chapter 3, and he continues this argument, as I've shared before.
SPEAKER_01: Um, the chapter and verse was created by a monk in the 13th century, and this is actually a poor place for chapter 3 to be in your Bible.
SPEAKER_01: It really should be more about verse 27 and 28, as far as the thought pattern.
SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna go back to 28.
SPEAKER_01: We covered that last week, but let me just read it again.
SPEAKER_01: For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: But he is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart.
SPEAKER_01: And there's four key passages I talked about last week, where it talks about circumcision of the heart.
SPEAKER_01: Again, this is prophetic of Christ's coming in the spirit, not in the letter, whose praise is not from men but from God.
SPEAKER_01: Now, this is where he goes next.
SPEAKER_01: So, what advantage then has the Jew, or what is the prophet of circumcision?
SPEAKER_01: Much in every way.
SPEAKER_01: Exclamation point.
SPEAKER_01: Chiefly because to them were committed the oracles of God.
SPEAKER_01: So his point is that if we keep saying, and he keeps reiterating that the law, even the oracles of the Old Testament don't save you, then what's the purpose?
SPEAKER_01: Why do we even have a Bible?
SPEAKER_01: Why do we even have the Old Testament?
SPEAKER_01: Why do we even have the law?
SPEAKER_01: And he says, don't say that, because the oracles of God are still important.
SPEAKER_01: And so, you guys, you know, you look at even America, when the pilgrims came, they had a Bible.
SPEAKER_01: When the Separatists came, they had a Bible.
SPEAKER_01: When the Puritans came, they had a Bible.
SPEAKER_01: Not everybody in the founders and in the early days of our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, were Jesus followers, but there was a moral understanding of the parameters of life, culture, and even our legal system that came later through the scriptures.
SPEAKER_01: And that came from the Jews.
SPEAKER_01: So that's good.
SPEAKER_01: That's good, that's a good thing.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't save you, but it's important to have that.
SPEAKER_01: It's the standards.
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's like, it's like I appreciate mom and dad that I grew up with and the way in which they taught me and the morals that they inculcated into David and I about sexuality and uh right and wrong.
SPEAKER_01: Now that doesn't save me, it didn't save me.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't get saved until I was 18, but it was it was good.
SPEAKER_01: It kept me out of trouble.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, and so it's good.
SPEAKER_01: The oracles of God are good.
SPEAKER_01: They don't save you, but God has a purpose in that, and He has a plan for that.
SPEAKER_01: And we're in America today, and we have, I mean, the freedom to worship right now, the freedom of religion is based in the scriptures.
SPEAKER_01: For what if some okay, let me just start before I read the next few verses.
SPEAKER_01: This is the hardest set of verses, almost every theologue will tell you this is the hardest set of verses in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna do the best I can.
SPEAKER_01: And uh, so here's what it said.
SPEAKER_01: It's these rhetorical questions.
SPEAKER_01: Y'all know, you know what a rhetorical question is?
SPEAKER_01: It's it's a question that's kind of so dumb that you don't have to answer, okay?
SPEAKER_01: So it's or you're asking a question that's so dumb to this to the listener that they don't have to answer.
SPEAKER_01: It's just obvious.
SPEAKER_01: Well, now here comes a set.
SPEAKER_01: This evidently were the kind of questions that Paul was getting in uh from the Romans and stuff.
SPEAKER_01: For what if some did not believe?
SPEAKER_01: And he's talking about the Jews, the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_01: For what if some did not believe?
SPEAKER_01: Will their unbelief make the faithfulness of God without effect?
SPEAKER_01: Certainly not.
SPEAKER_01: Or indeed not, or another word be banish the thought.
SPEAKER_01: That's another translation.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you have, like if you have an NIV, it might say banish the thought, or or heaven forbid, some say.
SPEAKER_01: Certainly not.
SPEAKER_01: Indeed.
SPEAKER_01: Let God be true, but every man a liar, as it is written, that you may be justified in your words and may overcome, may, and you may overcome when you are judged.
SPEAKER_01: Here's what he's saying.
SPEAKER_01: Some people are saying that if the, I mean, this is really true, you guys.
SPEAKER_01: When you read the Old Testament, someone came to me in the first service and said, Yeah, man, you're so right on that.
SPEAKER_01: It's really true.
SPEAKER_01: If you read the entire testament, it's really a chronology of unfaithfulness.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it is that the Jews are constantly in rebellion to God.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, Judges is one of the best examples.
SPEAKER_01: You know, you've you've got, they've they're in the promised land.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, they got in, you know, and they've taken the promised land.
SPEAKER_01: Joshua let them in.
SPEAKER_01: And then it's like, you got Joshua, and it's like really cool.
SPEAKER_01: I love teaching Joshua because it's so positive.
SPEAKER_01: It's it's very victorious.
SPEAKER_01: And then it's Joshua judges.
SPEAKER_01: And like within a generation, they're already in trouble.
SPEAKER_01: They're already in trouble, man.
SPEAKER_01: They're already lying and cheating and going into idolatry and marrying the Canaanite women when God told not to.
SPEAKER_01: So then what happens?
SPEAKER_01: Slavery.
SPEAKER_01: Then there's some gal who's under a tree named Deborah, and she's under the tree of Deborah, and she gets a vision from God, kind of like a Joan of Ark, you know, and then she gets Barack, and they go in and they get 40 years of freedom because of winning the battle against Saara and the whole situation.
SPEAKER_01: And then they go back into sin, and then God raises up Gideon, and he doesn't even want to do it, and he's running around trying to hide from God, and God convinces him, you know, with this little contingent of men.
SPEAKER_01: That's the story.
SPEAKER_01: So the point is, look, we've read your scriptures.
SPEAKER_01: We read your Old Testament.
SPEAKER_01: They weren't called Old Testament, then we've read your Torah.
SPEAKER_01: And are you are you saying that God's faithful because of the unfaithfulness of Israel?
SPEAKER_01: And he says, heaven forbid, I never even said that.
SPEAKER_01: Where'd you come up with that idea?
SPEAKER_01: It's this idea that like if I don't have to believe about what God says, does that somehow justify me?
SPEAKER_01: Like if I believe that two plus two does not equal four?
SPEAKER_01: Or maybe to put it in vernacular today, I don't know what is a woman.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, I can't help it if you're a fool.
SPEAKER_01: Someone says to me, I don't believe in gravity.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna go up, I'm gonna go up on this roof right here, I'm gonna jump off and I'll prove that there's no gravity.
SPEAKER_01: And then I say to him, if you jump off, you're gonna break a few bones.
SPEAKER_01: And you're gonna go to the hospital, and your life's gonna be forever changed physically.
SPEAKER_01: And then they jump off and they break all their bones, and then they blame me for not being faithful to them.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's what we do, right?
SPEAKER_01: That's what we do with God all the time.
SPEAKER_01: And so God has given us guidance.
SPEAKER_01: He's shown, look, if you'll be faithful to these things, you'll be healthier, you'll feel better, you'll enjoy life more because I love you so much and I care about you so much, I've actually given you guidance to follow me.
SPEAKER_01: And he says, well, okay, they say, for once if they don't believe, does that somehow, that unbelief, make God's faith must of no effect?
SPEAKER_01: Verse 5.
SPEAKER_01: But if our unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God, what shall we say?
SPEAKER_01: This is a really interesting one.
SPEAKER_01: But if our unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God, what shall we say?
SPEAKER_01: Is God unjust who inflicts wrath?
SPEAKER_01: So his point is God said the Jews would fall into sin, yet he hasn't destroyed Israel yet.
SPEAKER_01: Does that somehow mean that God is righteous because of our unrighteousness?
SPEAKER_01: Church.
SPEAKER_01: We always have to be so careful with the forbearance of God, the long-suffering of God.
SPEAKER_01: And I've had so many friends through the years who they started, they they were just following Christ with all their whole-hearted Jesus disciples, and they start messing around a little bit, just messing around a little bit here and there, and nothing happens.
SPEAKER_01: Oh well.
SPEAKER_01: They're still anointed when they preach, they're still anointed when they minister to people.
SPEAKER_01: There's power in their word, and there was kind of this fear, right?
SPEAKER_01: Like, I can't believe I did that.
SPEAKER_01: Because they come to me sometimes and say, Man, I I did this, I'm so I'm so sorry.
SPEAKER_01: And and then they spill their guts out about some sin that, and sometimes pretty bad stuff.
SPEAKER_01: But then a week later, they're in a meeting and they're teaching, and the power of God comes.
SPEAKER_01: So it's almost like God seems to be blessing them in spite of the sin in their life, so that almost gives them permission to do, to keep going more into sin, because that's where our heart, our deceptive heart, always wants to go.
SPEAKER_01: Our heart always wants to go toward pleasure, our heart always wants to go toward the easy way.
SPEAKER_01: And so they go deeper and deeper and deeper into that.
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's the long suffering of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: That's the long suffering.
SPEAKER_01: He loves you.
SPEAKER_01: So he lets us go along, but there is a point where the curtain comes up and Oz is behind the curtain, you know.
SPEAKER_01: And you you you know, and so then it the gig is up.
SPEAKER_01: And so don't, Paul's about to tell us don't let the long suffering of God appear to be approval for what you're doing.
SPEAKER_01: Certainly not, he says.
SPEAKER_01: For then how will God judge the world?
SPEAKER_01: In other words, if God, I mean, there is a part of God that is a judgment God, and God is judging us when we do these things.
SPEAKER_01: I'll just give you exact, you know, examples just here from people I know that have things that have happened in the last church I was at at Mountain Springs, where there were there were several individuals that were heavily involved in pornography and things like that.
SPEAKER_01: And they, you know, we talk about it, they were vulnerable about it, but they would not change.
SPEAKER_01: And I said to him, I said, Look, I'm telling you, man, there's a the reality here is that God's long suffering and his grace will eventually run out because he loves you.
SPEAKER_01: Not because he wants to judge you, but because he loves you.
SPEAKER_01: And that's exactly what happened.
SPEAKER_01: And in each case, they lost their marriages and everything because wives aren't going to put up with that stuff.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: But they had so many chances to repent, so many chances to change, and then there was a point where the judgment of God came.
SPEAKER_01: For if the truth of God is increased through my lie, verse 7, to his glory, why am I also still being judged as a sinner?
SPEAKER_01: And why not say, let us do evil, that good may come?
SPEAKER_01: As we are slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say, their condemnation is just.
SPEAKER_01: Heard of.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't even want to answer it.
SPEAKER_01: Not so.
SPEAKER_01: The grace of God is where he's going with all of this.
SPEAKER_01: What then?
SPEAKER_01: Are we better than they?
SPEAKER_01: Not at all.
SPEAKER_01: For we have previously charged with Jews and Greeks that they're all under sin.
SPEAKER_01: Here's what he's saying.
SPEAKER_01: That even those who were attacking the early church of Rome, the Christians, both Jews and Greeks, we're not any better than them.
SPEAKER_01: We're not saying that we're better than them.
SPEAKER_01: And that's the thing we have to be so.
SPEAKER_01: Remember, we talked about self-righteousness a couple weeks ago?
SPEAKER_01: That's a tendency of the Christian church has been to become self-righteous.
SPEAKER_01: And so we start condemning certain people in certain sins.
SPEAKER_01: And we talked about homosexuality, remember, we were talking about that.
SPEAKER_01: We were talking about some of the issues of our day right now in Romans 1.
SPEAKER_01: And we have to be so careful that we become self-righteous because we're no better than anybody else.
SPEAKER_01: And now he's gonna really, really hammer home the point.
SPEAKER_01: And so Paul, who's a genius, puts together all these different verses from the Old Testament to put a train of thought anointed by the Holy Spirit to just make his point clear, you can't find any righteousness in yourself.
SPEAKER_01: You are never gonna be righteous enough.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 10.
SPEAKER_01: As it is written, there is none righteous, no not one.
SPEAKER_01: There is none who understands, there is none who seeks after God.
SPEAKER_01: They have all turned aside, they have altogether become unprofitable.
SPEAKER_01: There is none who does good, no not one.
SPEAKER_01: So the argument could be made, no one is really a seeker of God.
SPEAKER_01: No one is really a seeker of God in and of themselves.
SPEAKER_01: But I would say this, that there's something about it.
SPEAKER_01: You I mean, this room is full of trophies of grace.
SPEAKER_01: I know enough of you in this room personally know you've got amazing stories.
SPEAKER_01: We could do, we could do a movie on some of your life.
SPEAKER_01: And we've got some really bad people in here.
SPEAKER_01: And you've done really bad stuff.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: But we've all done these things.
SPEAKER_01: We're just bad people.
SPEAKER_01: He wants to make it clear you don't have what it takes and you never will.
SPEAKER_01: Their throat is an open tomb, verse 13.
SPEAKER_01: With their tongues they practice deceit.
SPEAKER_01: We're all deceitful people.
SPEAKER_01: The poison of ass, that's an Egyptian cobra, is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness, their feet are swift to shed blood, destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known.
SPEAKER_01: There is no fear of God before their eyes.
SPEAKER_01: Jordan Peterson, the noted uh clinical psychologist.
SPEAKER_01: You know, I remember seeing me on Pierce Morgan.
SPEAKER_01: They were in his interview, and and uh Pierce Morgan, bless his heart, he really does try to seek the truth.
SPEAKER_01: Um, but he's he's just he's so naive.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it I mean, I hope you'll figure this out over time.
SPEAKER_01: But he was interviewing um Jordan Peterson, and he said to Pierce Morgan, he said, something about good and evil.
SPEAKER_01: And he said this.
SPEAKER_01: He said, you know, in my studies, what I found is just how evil people are.
SPEAKER_01: Really evil.
SPEAKER_01: And then Pierce Morgan said something about Hitler, and he says, Yeah, we're all kind of Hitlers.
SPEAKER_01: And Pierce Morgan's like, what?
SPEAKER_01: Here's what he was saying, because I've listened to other stuff.
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't in this particular interview.
SPEAKER_01: How could it be that you could grow up as a German Lutheran pastor or Christian?
SPEAKER_01: You're you're baptized as an infant, you grow up in this, probably honestly, one of the most ethical, legal cultures of the time was Germany, and be a guard at Auschwitz and a guard at Dachau, and incinerate people every day in a furnace and starve them to death and beat them, and then walk a quarter of a mile to your home, have prayers with your kids, have dinner, sleep well at night, go on holidays to the sea, and it doesn't bother you a bit.
SPEAKER_01: How can that be?
SPEAKER_01: Because that's the nature of man, that's who we are.
SPEAKER_01: And all of you, including myself looking in the mirror, have the capacity to deceive ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: And that's his point.
SPEAKER_01: If we had what it took, if there was something so good within us that we could somehow create our own righteousness, there's no need for Christ.
SPEAKER_01: He's setting us up.
SPEAKER_01: This is the bad news.
SPEAKER_01: All of you, write this down.
SPEAKER_01: All of us are up to no good.
SPEAKER_01: We are.
SPEAKER_01: I cannot tell you how many times I've lied when I knew it was a lie, and I knew I shouldn't tell a lie, but I told a lie.
SPEAKER_01: And it didn't bother me the next day that much.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm a pastor.
SPEAKER_01: I'm a professional Christian.
SPEAKER_01: So there's no fear of God before their eyes.
SPEAKER_01: Now we say, now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law.
SPEAKER_01: That every mouth may be stopped and all the world may become guilty before God.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, by the deeds of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.
SPEAKER_01: All that the law is, is a mirror, James says.
SPEAKER_01: James says that you look in the law and you see yourself, and then you walk away and you forget what you saw.
SPEAKER_01: Because the law is a mirror.
SPEAKER_01: The law is scales in your bathroom.
SPEAKER_01: You get up and you stare at them.
SPEAKER_01: And you start figuring out, okay, I better not have any clothes on.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, I better make sure I dry off after the shower, because man, you're just convinced.
SPEAKER_01: You there's a there's always a magical number, right?
SPEAKER_01: Like my dad, 91 years old.
SPEAKER_01: He told me that, he told me, I've told this, I think to you guys before.
SPEAKER_01: I know I've told it to the men, that my dad's so funny.
SPEAKER_01: He's 91, he's in great shape, smokes a cigar every day, and just feels great and takes a mile walk, and he's cool, man.
SPEAKER_01: And anyway, so he gets on the scales every day.
SPEAKER_01: And he says, if I'm over 160, then when I go to my Bible study where we have pancakes and bacon, I don't eat the bacon.
SPEAKER_01: That's a pretty cool dad, though, you gotta admit.
SPEAKER_01: Like, dad, that's kind of, I think that's you need the protein, whatever.
SPEAKER_01: Forget it.
SPEAKER_01: You know.
SPEAKER_01: But all that scales do is they register who you are.
SPEAKER_01: They register what your weight is.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't show you, it doesn't train you, and it doesn't even equip you about how to lose weight.
SPEAKER_01: It shows you who you are.
SPEAKER_01: That's all that the law is.
SPEAKER_01: So the Ten Commandments was to show us sin and to show us our depravity, but it doesn't change us.
SPEAKER_01: It can't change us.
SPEAKER_01: But now, now we're starting to move into good news.
SPEAKER_01: And by the way, starting next week, lots of good news.
SPEAKER_01: The whole rest of Romans is fantastic news.
SPEAKER_01: It will revive your heart, it will bless you, it will empower you, and we'll be off and running, but we've still got a little bit more here.
SPEAKER_01: But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the law and the prophets.
SPEAKER_01: Even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all who believe.
SPEAKER_01: There's no difference.
SPEAKER_01: So he's saying, look, okay, the law identifies sin, helps you know you're sinner, it scales, it shows you're overweight, shows you're underweight, whatever.
SPEAKER_01: All it does is register that.
SPEAKER_01: But now I'm showing you this is how you find the righteousness of God is through putting your trust in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Because he takes all the wrath of God and he releases into you all of the righteousness of God.
SPEAKER_01: So when they would, when they would do these sacrifices, they would take that lamb and they would slay that lamb, and the priest would lay hands on the lamb, and the idea behind that was that the wrath of Israel, the wrath of the nation of Israel, was poured into, our sins poured into that sacrificial lamb.
SPEAKER_01: That was prophetic, that was symbolic of Christ to come.
SPEAKER_01: And so it is with us, church.
SPEAKER_01: So it is with us that God lays his hand upon you when you put your faith in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: He lays his hand upon you, and he says, I'm taking all of your unrighteousness and I'm laying it now upon my son.
SPEAKER_01: And now I'm pouring the righteousness of God outside of yourself, whether you're moral, immoral, whether you have a debased mind, whether you've been a good religious boy and girl, whatever it is, I now pour the righteousness of God into you.
SPEAKER_01: Jew or Gentile, Jew or Greek.
SPEAKER_01: Doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_01: For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, verse 23.
SPEAKER_01: And so, and so back in ancient times, they had these archery contests, and they would have, you know, be it'd be like 50, 75 yard shots that they would do with the bow, and they would, and you got your target there, and a bullseye is pretty small.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it wasn't very big, so you couldn't see with the naked eye, and they didn't have a long-range glass back then, but there would be somebody down there.
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure they weren't next to the target.
SPEAKER_01: I hope not, because you know, you might make it, some guy could cough and but they would come, they would walk up after the shot, and then they would shout out, sin one, sin two, sin three.
SPEAKER_01: And that's where King James in the 17th century, when they were putting together the King James Version, they came up with the word sin means missing the mark.
SPEAKER_01: It means missing perfection.
SPEAKER_01: It means missing God's perfect righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ, whom God set forth as a propitiation.
SPEAKER_01: What a big word, what a strange word that is.
SPEAKER_01: It means satisfaction.
SPEAKER_01: Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation, a satisfaction by his blood through faith.
SPEAKER_01: Faith, faith, faith, faith, faith.
SPEAKER_01: Justified, so many different definitions.
SPEAKER_01: Quick, easy one.
SPEAKER_01: Just as if you've never sinned.
SPEAKER_01: So when we put our faith in Christ, you are made completely 100% righteous in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: You are set free from your sin.
SPEAKER_01: And that's the whole rest of the book of Romans.
SPEAKER_01: The whole rest of the book of Romans is how to actually apply this freedom.
SPEAKER_01: And he's going to talk about the battle of the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: He's going to talk about these things, and it's super cool.
SPEAKER_01: And when we do our wholehearted advance retreats, when we do those with men, I go through Romans 6, 7, and 8.
SPEAKER_01: I just hammer it and hammer it.
SPEAKER_01: And so I've got already my sermon notes, and I can't wait to get there.
SPEAKER_01: But Christ at the cross, at the cross, took all of your wrath, all of your rebellion, all the bad stuff we've all done.
SPEAKER_01: We've all done bad stuff.
SPEAKER_01: He took it all on himself.
SPEAKER_01: And then he actually, he, the high priest, he laid hands on you, and he poured his righteousness, not sin.
SPEAKER_01: He poured righteousness into you.
SPEAKER_01: And you're completely forgiven, man.
SPEAKER_01: Past, present, and future.
SPEAKER_01: And if you're carrying guilt today, I want you to get prayer about that because, yeah, you're guilty.
SPEAKER_01: But if you've put your faith in Christ, you're not guilty anymore.
SPEAKER_01: It's the judge up there, you know, and he and he has to pronounce judgment.
SPEAKER_01: He says, Yeah, you're guilty.
SPEAKER_01: And then it's like he takes his robe off and he comes up beside you and he becomes your dad.
SPEAKER_01: And he says, I'll pay for your guilt so you can walk free.
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to go to prison.
SPEAKER_01: You can walk free.
SPEAKER_01: That's the righteousness of God through faith.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law.
SPEAKER_01: Or is he the God of the Jews only?
SPEAKER_01: Of course not.
SPEAKER_01: Is he not also the God of Gentiles?
SPEAKER_01: Yes, of the Gentiles also.
SPEAKER_01: Since there is one God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith, faith, faith, faith.
SPEAKER_01: Do we then make void the law through faith?
SPEAKER_01: Certainly not.
SPEAKER_01: On the contrary, we establish the law.
SPEAKER_01: Here's what he's saying.
SPEAKER_01: Let me conclude with this.
SPEAKER_01: There's a new law.
SPEAKER_01: There is a new law now.
SPEAKER_01: So there was a law of regulations, there was a law of do's and don'ts.
SPEAKER_01: There was a law of good and bad.
SPEAKER_01: That's wiped out.
SPEAKER_01: You see, that law is what a lot of legalistic churches are into.
SPEAKER_01: It's like, how far can I go in my sin and still get saved?
SPEAKER_01: That's what that kind of law does.
SPEAKER_01: It's a new law and it's the law of love.
SPEAKER_01: And the new law of love is how far and how close can I get to Christ and know him and love him.
SPEAKER_01: Big difference.
SPEAKER_01: And so the new law is love God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength in your neighbor as yourself.
SPEAKER_01: We don't judge others, we love others, we love them into the kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: It's through repentance, it's through the sufferings of Christ, the long sufferings of Christ that leads us to repentance.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to the Forn for War podcast.
SPEAKER_00: We hope today's message has empowered you to make a difference in your world.
SPEAKER_00: To connect with Pastor Steve's sermons, books, and blog, visit Steve Holtonline.org.
SPEAKER_00: God bless.