6/28/2026 Sunday morning sermon

Message from the Book of Romans 

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Everybody this morning, right? I think we wore them out with Bible school. What do you think? It was a wonderful week though. We had uh many, many children that um we're not used to having. I think our biggest night with children and staff was 42. So uh except for the last night. Now, the last night they invited parents and stuff, and we went over 50 on the last night, and it was quite the interesting evening. Um, we were all outside, and all of a sudden, this cop pulls up and he asks for whoever he needs to talk to. So I walk over to him and he says, Yeah, there's a man that's escaped and possibly armed, and he's ran this way. Uh, can you please get all the kids inside? And yeah, that from that moment on, uh chaos ensued. And I don't know that we ever fully gained control of the evening after that. But you know what? God's always in control. God is always in control. So today, our first Sunday back after Bible school, um we're we had, I didn't count them because there were so many that came up, but I'm pretty sure we had 10 to 15 kids that last night that raised their hand to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior. So that was wonderful. That was wonderful. That means that we're making an impression uh on those young people and reaching them for Jesus Christ. This morning, um, we're going to continue through uh the Apostle Paul's letter to the Romans. And if you've been here for the past few weeks, you have noticed that this isn't just a history lesson that we're going through. This is a living, breathing, Holy Spirit-inspired guide to know how the grace of God actually works in your life. From the moment you wake up on Monday to the hardest and heaviest moment that you might have to face all week. God is there and He is working in your life. So Paul makes the whole purpose of this letter crystal clear right in the beginning. If you will look at Romans 1 and 16 with me. It says, 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. Now, did you catch that? Paul didn't say that it was just a ticket to uh get to heaven or a get out of free jail card that you just slide into your pocket so that you can use it when it is needed. However, he described the gospel as the power. The power. The gospel is the power. The Greek word that Paul used here was dynamis, and that is actually where we get our English word dynamite from. So he was trying to tell us that the gospel is powerful, it is explosive, it is life-altering, it is chain-breaking, this power that is the gospel. And God has placed that power inside of every single believer, every single person in this room this morning that has accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Savior and has the Holy Spirit living inside of you, which happens at conversion, you are living with dunamis, dynamite power, life exploding power living inside of you. The problem is too many people today know that they're saved and that they're going to heaven, but they don't know how they've been saved. So it doesn't really mean as much. Oh, yeah, I'm saved. And they don't really understand what has gone behind saving you. What is working behind the scenes to make your eternity with Jesus Christ in heaven possible? It's like you're sitting in the entryway of your faith, but you're refusing to walk on in and explore the whole house. Today, what I want to do is take you by the hand, and together we're gonna go a little further than the entryway of faith, and we're going to look through the house just a little bit. God has not called us to be confused, he's called us to be conquerors. Conquerors, and he has given us the power to do it. So I want to do something a little different today. I'm actually going to tell you the end of the movie before we watch the movie. All right? The end before we go through the whole movie. And why you say would you do that? Because it's some heavy stuff here in Romans, and I don't want you to get discouraged waiting on the end. So it takes you to some uncomfortable places. Paul says some things that sting a little bit, and I want you to be able to hold on to the hope that's going to be at the end as we walk through the tension. So here's the main point that I'm going to be making today. We are justified by faith alone. We're justified by faith alone. Now you remember that as we walk through this tension-packed Romans, this chapter this morning. Um, justified by faith alone might sound like a churchy word. Well, it is. It's a churchy word. That's why it sounds that way. But I want to make it a little bit more clear than that. It means that Jesus makes righteous before God all, and all is everyone. He makes righteous before God all who put their complete trust in him. That's the good news this morning. Every sin is forgiven, every stain is washed clean, every failure is covered, every same shameful secret is erased and every guilty verdict is overturned. How does that feel this morning? To know that with Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, every failure that you have ever had is erased. And it's not just forgiven, it's forgotten. Right? It's not just forgiven, it's forgotten. Everyone who places their faith in Jesus Christ is justified before God. Your sins are wiped completely clean, and you have a place reserved in eternity with Jesus Christ. And not because of anything you did, but because of everything that he did. Now I was expecting that this morning. I thought about that. I read that statement to myself 50 times this week. John Chamnus in the back, when I said that, he had to stand up and raise his hands. Let me say this statement again, and I want you to listen clearly because I personally don't see how anybody that is saved can listen to this statement and not get a little bit excited. Alright? Let me read it again. I said that it's a glorious gift, and that everyone who places their faith in Jesus Christ is justified. Your sins are wiped completely clean, and you have a place reserved in eternity with Jesus Christ, and you didn't have to earn it. It's nothing you did, it was all done by Jesus. Does that make you excited this morning? Does it make you excited this morning? But to truly understand how this glorious gift works, you need to understand the depth of the hole that you were in before you were justified by Jesus Christ. This morning, Romans chapter 3 opens with a question that the people of Paul's day were probably asking. They were most certainly asking. They were saying things like, okay, Paul, what about the Jews? What about God's chosen people? What about the ones who follow the law? The ones who've been circumcised, the ones who go to synagogue every week. Surely they have some sort of an advantage. Well, let's see what Paul says. Romans 3, 9. Romans chapter 3, verse 9. He's blunt, guys. He's blunt. What shall we conclude then? Do we have any advantage? Not at all. For we have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin. Paul was just blunt. I don't care who you are. I don't care if you're God's chosen people. I don't care if you're a Gentile. Every single person is under sin. Every single person under the power of sin. Not some of us, but all of us. Every single person on this planet, regardless of your religious background, your church attendance, your tithing record, your family name, every single person is under the power of sin. So then Paul reaches back into the Psalms and he starts stacking verse on top of verse because he wanted to make sure that he drove this point home. So Romans chapter 3, verses 10 through 16 tells us this. As it is written, there is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands. There is no one who seeks God. No one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless. There is no one who does good, not even one. Their throats are open graves, their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know. He's talking about everybody. He's talking about everybody. That's me. That's you. It's everybody. And these are hard words. They're uncomfortable words to hear. It may even be making someone squirm right now to hear God explaining that people are worthless and that they have all sinned, that no one is worthy, their lips speak as vipers. This is quite cruel. But the word of God is doing exactly what it's designed to do. The word of God is not written to make you see how perfect you are. The word of God is trying to show you how imperfect you are and how you need a righteous, holy God in your life. And what a better way to show you how much you need God in your life than to show you just how wicked people actually are. Here's the truth of the matter. The truth about human nature, I'm not talking about any specific one person. I'm talking about us as a human race. We all tend to have inflated images of ourselves. We all tend to think we're better than what we are. We all tend to think that we are the best one for the job. We like to think that we have pure motives. But can I tell you this morning that if you dig a little deeper, buried under most generous acts is a seed of self-interest. Under most acts of kindness is a seed of self-interest. We like to think we always put others first, but merely what we're doing is acting on our own desires. How does it benefit us? What will we get out of it? We try to be compassionate, but if we're brutally honest, we're almost always far more absorbed in our own problems than in the person standing right in front of us. And that's just human nature, guys. That's just how we are. We have our good days, but even on our best days, our very best is still stained before a holy, righteous God. We don't compare. Nothing we do, even on our best day, compares. But the most morally upright person, I want you to think about the most morally upright person that you know, the most honest, the most giving, the most faithful person in your life. Now I want you to imagine that God gets out a magnifying glass, and every single thought they've ever had, he examines. Every motive behind every action, every word spoken in private, every moment of pride or jealousy or quiet bitterness that they might have had. Even that most noble person, that most upright person is not right in front of God. They're just not. So today I'm going to talk about someone that in a real life example that everybody thought was moral and upright and upstanding. And I'm talking about David this morning. David, David, the little shepherd boy. David, he became a giant slayer, and then he became king. He wrote half of Psalms, which is full of songs that churches still sing today. David. He was great. If there was ever a person in all of history who might seem like he could earn God's love, it's David. You would think he could with all that he has done. But I want you to listen to how God himself described David. Acts 13, 22. It tells us. After removing Saul, Saul was the king, after removing Saul, he made David their king. God testified concerning him. I have found David, son of Jesse, a man after my own heart. He will do everything I want him to. David was a man after God's own heart. God personally handpicked David to be the line, the bloodline of royalty. Handpicked him. He established his throne forever through David because the Messiah, Jesus Christ Himself, comes from the bloodline of David. David was so, so important to God. He was a worshiper, a builder, a warrior, humble, obedient, fiercely loyal. But even David fell. And he didn't just stumble. When he fell, he fell, he fell hard. He saw a married woman from his rooftop one day. And he gave in to his lust. He had her brought to his chambers. He got her pregnant. And then he orchestrated the murder of her husband by putting him on the front lines of a war in order to try to cover it all up. That's pretty bad. That's pretty bad what he did. And even when the prophet Nathan confronted David over it, God's words cut like a blade in 2 Samuel 12, 8 and 9. He said, I gave your master's house to you and your master's wives into your arms. I gave you all Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you more. Why did you despise the word of the Lord by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of Ammonites. God said, David, I gave you everything, and you still chose sin over me. And that's some of us today. God gives us everything. We are so blessed. And yet we still choose sin. We still choose sin. You know, one of the hardest questions that I get asked a lot by people who are trying to decide if they want Jesus Christ in their life or not is if there is such a God, if there's such a good God, why does he let bad things happen to good people? You know what my answer is? Because there's no such thing as a good person. There isn't. Now I'm talking about that you might have kind people, you might have generous people, and you might have people who do tremendous things, but when examined through that microscope, when examined through that magnifying glass of a holy and righteous God, there are no good people. And I've already read the scripture that tells you so. I've already read the scripture that tells you so. There's no one who stands righteous before God on your own merits. Not you, not me, not David, none of us. And here's the full weight of that truth. It is only by the grace of God that we don't get what we truly deserve. It's only by the grace of God that we're not already in an eternal torment. It is only by the grace of God that he did not look at this broken, rebellious human race and wipe us out completely and start all over. Because we're all unclean and not good. Now, this is not a scare tactic. This is the word of God. I just read it. Our lips are like vipers. We're not good. No, not one of us. But that should make the grace of God all the more breathtaking. That should make the grace of God all the more breathtaking. Now, the obvious question starts to rise up at this point. If none of us can be good, if none of us can live up to God's standards, why did he give us the law in the first place? Why did he give us the Ten Commandments or any of the other 600 plus laws that are in the Old Testament? Why would he give it to us if he didn't think that there was someone out there that could fulfill them? Paul answers this question directly in Romans chapter 3, verses 19 and 20. Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore, no one will be declared righteous in God's sight by the works of the law. Did you hear that? If you try to follow the law to become righteous, the Bible plainly says no one will be declared righteous in God's sight by the works of the law. Rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin. Through the law, we become conscious of our sin. Of our sin through the law, we realize that we can't live upright. We realize that we can't live perfect. We realize that we aren't good because he has given us a moral standard and we live down here. He's given us a moral standard and we can't seem to reach it. So what's the only other way? Call on Jesus and the blood that he sacrificed for us on the cross, and through Jesus Christ, we become righteous and justified before a mighty holy God. That is the only way. That's the only way. It's kind of like the Ten Commandments and the other laws, they're a mirror for us to look into. A mirror for us to measure ourselves up to. Just to see how decrepit and unworthy we actually all are. The law was never meant to be the solution. The law, people, is the diagnosis. You're unworthy and you need Jesus. Look at it this way. It's kind of like you've been having chest pains for a month. So you're convincing yourself, however, that it's probably just heartburn. You're convincing yourself that it's just fine. And you convince yourself, well, I'll just start eating better. I'll start exercising a little bit here or there. And you feel okay most days, but you finally break down and you go to the doctor and they run all the tests, and the doctor comes in and he says, You need to sit down. And he says, You have a very serious heart condition. Eating better and a little exercise aren't going to help you. What you need is surgery. You need the doctor to take care of it. That's kind of like what the commandments are. That's kind of like what the law is. We can't live a little better. We can't change a little bit and all of a sudden become worthy. God has to sit us down and say, I'm sorry, but you can't fix this. You need the doctor. You need the doctor to come into your heart and do some surgery to make you right before the Lord. That's what you need. That's what the law does to us spiritually. That's what the law does to us spiritually. There's no other way, no other method, no other formula, no set of tasks, no list of rules that are good enough to make us righteous in God's sight. Jesus Christ made the only payment, the only payment that will help. So I want to show you exactly what our spiritual situation looks like. And I want to use an illustration that most people in this room can probably feel. Imagine that tomorrow morning you go out to your mailbox. And when you go out to the mailbox, you pull out this envelope and you open it up, and all of a sudden, when you read it, it says, suddenly, overnight, you have accumulated a $50,000 balance on your credit card. $50,000 balance on your credit card. Well, your heart drops straight to the floor because you don't have $50,000 to just give to the credit card company, right? So you've accumulated this. No savings, you don't have any assets that you can use, no income that you can use to cover it. And at this point, you're completely drowning. So here's where it gets terrifying. The average credit card interest rate in America right now is hovering somewhere around 24%. That's high. All right. So that means that on a $50,000 balance, your interest alone in the first month adds $1,000 more to your balance. That's a lot. All right. But instead of admitting that you're financially broken, you're financially bankrupt, what you do is decide, oh, I'll just make the minimum payment. That's all they require. The minimum payment, right? So you skip a few coffees, maybe, right? You scrape together a few dollars and you mill in that minimum payment every single month. Here's what happens. After five years, you've handed the bank over $75,000 in hard-earned cash and you still owe them $38,000. After 10 years, you've paid them $115,000 and you still owe them $24,000. And if you stick to nothing but the minimum payment, it will take you over 35 years to pay off that debt. And the original $50,000 debt will end up costing you over $175,000. But here's the part that's even more terrifying. That's if you stop using the card. That's if you cut it up or lock it away. But what do we as humans do? We need to use it just one more time. And we'll swipe that card one more time and one more time and one more time. That's kind of how human nature is when it comes to sin. We already owe that $50,000 debt that we can't pay. And what do we do? We keep swiping the card. We just keep swiping the card. Without the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, we keep on sinning and we keep on building a debt that we will never be able to pay off to God. We keep on harboring bitterness. We keep on struggling in our marriages. We keep on falling back into our old habits. We keep going back to the things that we said that we were done with. And we are not just stuck. We are actively falling deeper and deeper and deeper every single day. That's how we do our sin. We accumulate a massive, crushed, crushing spiritual balance against a holy God, and the interest keeps compounding daily. So what do we do? We try to pay God on the installment plan. That's what we do. We try to pay him off by being a little nicer to our neighbors. Or we try to pay him off by throwing a few dollars in the offering plate. We try to pay him off by downloading a Bible app, but then we never open it. How about we try to pay him off by volunteering once a month or showing up to church on Easter Sunday and calling it even? Right? We are sending God our religious minimum payments, hoping that somehow they're going to erase the debt that we have built up over time, and the debt that we will continue to build up as we continue to swipe that card of sin. And it just doesn't work. The truth is, every good deed that we could ever do doesn't even cover the interest of our total depravity, let alone the new charges that we keep adding. So what do we do about it? How do we get out from under a debt that is this crushing? How do we start over when we have a balance of sin like that that we can't overcome? Here it is. Remember what I told you to remember at the beginning of the sermon? It's justification through Christ. That's how we do it. Justification. Right when the tension in Romans chapter 3 is at its absolute highest, and right when the weight of our sin feels the most impossible, the apostle Paul gives the greatest three-letter word in the entire Bible. But look at Romans 3, 21 through 26. But now God has shown us a way to be made right with Him without keeping the requirements of the law. As was promised in the writings of Moses and the prophets long ago. We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ, and this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are. For everyone has sinned, we all fall short of God's glorious standard. Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty of our sins. Do you feel the shift? That hardness all through that chapter of why we're not good enough? And then he says, but God. But God. But God made a way for you because he loves you so much. The bad news, we all fall short. Yet God in his grace freely makes it right. Now let's go back to our illustration of our $50,000. How does God make that right? He offers, he doesn't offer to help make the minimum payments. That's not what he does. He doesn't try to negotiate a lower interest rate. And he doesn't put us on a payment plan and wish us luck. That's not what he does. You know what he does? Jesus pulled out a check. Jesus pulled out a check, and in his own blood, he wrote the balance of your debt to God and he handed it to you. Jesus Christ wrote the balance in his blood and handed you the check. But here's what you have to do. You have to deposit it or it's no good. If you don't deposit that check into a life dedicated to Jesus Christ, if you don't accept that free gift of justification, that check's just gonna sit there and do nothing. You have to use it. You have to use it. Forgiveness would be God saying, I overlook what you owe, but justification is even far greater than that. Justification means God actually changes your legal standing before Him to not guilty. He actually changes the guilt in your life to not guilty. That's what justification does. Here's how you remember it. Just as if you had never sinned. Justification is just as if you had never sinned. The record is expunged and the slate is wiped completely clean. That debt's gone. It's gone. It's not a reward for righteousness because we can't be righteous. It's a gift for the guilty. So we're going into the altar call now. I'm going, I want you to look at Romans 3, 27 and 28. Can we boast then that we have done anything to be accepted by God? No. Because our acquittal is not based on obeying the law, it's based on faith. So we are made right with God through faith and not by obeying the law. Because no one can be good enough. The debt's too large, and Jesus is the only one who can pay it. So this morning, with your eyes closed, your heads bowed, no one looking around, if you have accumulated a sin debt and you've been trying to work your way up out of it, I want you to remember this morning there's no way to work your way up out of a sin debt. It takes Jesus Christ and his shed blood on Calvary. If you've never accepted Jesus into your heart, or maybe you've accepted him, but you've been trying to keep your salvation by your good works. Maybe you need to be re-justified this morning. You need to recommit, whatever your situation, or maybe you just want to thank God because He's so great. I want you to raise your hand this morning. If any of those are you. Amen. Amen. Amen. Hands going up all over the place. Yes, I see them. Let's pray this morning. Heavenly Father, God, we come before you this morning, acknowledging, Lord, that there is no one good, and there's nothing that we can do, God, that would make us holy before your eyes. We want to thank you this morning for your gift of Jesus Christ and for the shed blood on Calvary, Lord, that his sacrifice erases our debt. Because God, we're an imperfect people, we're a no-good people. And all we have is to cry out to you for justification. Lord Jesus, please forgive us. Please forgive us of thinking that we're better than we are. Please forgive us of thinking that uh we're too good. God help us to be humble. Help us to walk humbly before you as David did. Help us, Lord, to know the true cost of the justification that you have given us. God, help us to dedicate our lives, help us to rededicate our lives, and help us to live anew in you. And God help us to understand the power of the justification we have. And God to start walking in uh newness and in excitement for what you have done for us. We pray these things in the name of Jesus. Amen. Amen. Real quick, the announcements for the week. Tonight, youth night, six o'clock. Um if you have youth that could come, make sure you come. We had what, about 11 youth this week, I would say. About 11 youth that came consistently every night. That was good. So um, if you're out there and you came to Bible school, um come back for youth tonight at 6 o'clock. That's 12 ages 12 through 17. It goes up to 18. Um, don't forget our kids program on Sunday mornings, kids uh from baby to uh 11 through 11 or downstairs on Sunday mornings. Uh on Monday nights, we don't have anything right now. On Tuesday nights, we have our outreach group. We go out on Tuesday nights and we go door to door inviting people to church or just praying with them, whatever they need. We're just out there for the community. Wednesday nights, there's men of faith, there's ladies, there's kids, and there's youth. All four meet on Wednesday nights at 6 o'clock. And you don't want to miss that. Thursdays are open right now. Fridays. Fridays is celebrate recovery. Alani's bowing her head. I love how the excitement that he throws at Celebrate Recovery. Guys, this isn't just an addiction group. This is a group for all of us. If you have anything that, any habit, hurt, hang up, it could be grief, it could be overeating, it could be anything. It could be pride, it could be anything at all, dual relationships or uh what do you call it? Dependent codependency. And it could be anything. If that's you, come on Friday nights, 5:30 is a free meal, 6:30. The meeting starts followed by group shares. And we have nothing this Saturday. So there you go. That's the announcements for the week. We do have um vacation. Oh no, that's over. We have back to school bash coming up in August. Okay, coming up in August, but I'll tell you more about that later. Um, John, do you?