Introduction We are in our third week of this series called the road. And that's what we're doing. We're taking this road that's laid out in Paul's letter to the Romans in order to understand what does the gospel mean? What does it really mean? What does it mean that Jesus did on the cross? And how does that impact my everyday life as we go into 2018? That's why we're starting with this series. We want to start with the gospel just straight up straight scotch. Here's the gospel, here's what it means. So that from there we can see how that impacts our life. And as this is all part of like really owning your spiritual formation, owning the fact that it's not just, I'm sitting on my couch and I'm like, all right, God, just teach me everything. If you're real, do you know, zap me with knowledge. You know, like we want to be like the matrix and he just like links us up and we know everything and that's just not how faith works. We have to own that. We got, Hey, if you want to get fed, you got to get a fork and dig in. This is about self-feeding Christians. So on this road so far we've seen our first two markers on the road. Marker number one was for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Who has sinned all. Yeah, there's no, there's no like getting out of it. There's no excuse. We've all fallen short of the glory of God. Romans three 23 and that's where faith really starts to begin. When you realize that I can't fix myself, I can't do it. No matter how much I meditate, how much I study? I can't perform the surgery on myself. I there's something spiritual going on that I can't fix. Marker number two was about the remedy for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. And if you missed it last week, we shared, it's like this chasm where the wages of sin is death. We're stuck. We were lost without it. But there's a gift waiting for us on the other side, the gift of God, which is eternal life and Christ Jesus is the bridge that through faith in him, that's how we get from death to life. It's all about the fact that what did on the cross changed everything for us. I was thinking about this week in the strangest of places, the ER room. So if you ever had an ER visit, by the way, I'm fine. This is a story about me going to the ER last week. Everything's fine. But many of you know that I have a predisposition for skin cancer. So it's a genetic thing. I go every six months to get checked. Occasionally I have moles removed. I had one removed to my scalp. It's a real bummer. Try not to let that happen. So, had it removed from my scalp last Friday, a week ago? And, anyway, later that night, all of a sudden I start bleeding from the head. Very scary situation when you start bleeding from the head. So I go into the ER and I'm holding my head like this and I come into the ER and you know, it's as if it's just, you know, everyday casual, you know, they're like, first of all they asked me, how are you doing? Really? How am I doing? and then I kind of made a joke out of it cause I was just so like really? I said, I'm fine. I'm just bleeding from the head. Nothing, not a smile, not, I mean nothing. And then the next response was, would you like some gauze? Sure- they hand me this stack of gauze and just like looked at me and I put in the hand like, okay, go ahead and have a seat. I'm like, why is nobody alarmed? I'm bleeding from the head. Like, what have you had to have seen today to think this is no big deal? So again, I'm bleeding from the head in the, in the ER and I'm just like waiting and waiting. But I felt like I remember movie beetle juice when everybody's in the, in the waiting room, you know, I can have a shark attached to my leg and they wouldn't care. They're just like next, you know, next one up. It's like you're at the deli counter. So then they bring me over to the ER was really full so they bring me over. I'd waited like an hour. They bring me to the pediatric ER, which is so much more fun. You know, it's a lot more cheerful cause they had room in there but I felt ridiculous cause I get in there and like my feet are hanging off the edge of the bed cause the beds too small and I'm just feeling really dumb the whole time. So the nurse comes in and of course an hour and a half later like, well it's not bleeding. Thanks. You know. But I was concerned had any of the stitches, you know, popped or something and she looks at it and apparently everything looked great and if there was some kind of dark magic, made my head bleed, I don't know what it was like. They didn't know what it was. They're like, everything looks good. And the doctor came and he's like, like, yeah, there's a lot dry blood on there and it's all, it's all dried up. And he's like, but don't, don't mess with it because that's how it's going to heal the wound. And then I had this like gospel moment, okay, this is what it means that Jesus did on the cross. His blood covers over my wound of sin and I am healed. You know the word atonement for the forgiveness of sins. That word literally means to cover over. Now when it comes to my spiritual self, when it comes to my soul, I can't cover over my own sins. I need someone else to do it for me. I need the blood of Jesus to cover over my sins. And when that happens, everything is different. Everything changes forever because his blood heals me. Who would've thought the ER where I thought about Jesus and atonement? So what does that mean that his blood covers over our sins? Well, that's, that's the way of understanding justification. It's a big theological word that you see in Paul's writing all the time. Justification to justify to make, right? There is a little trick that you can learn about the word justification that the Lord sees us just as if we never sin justification. It's actually even more powerful than that. He saw that we sin, but he forgives us because of the blood of Jesus Christ. Justification. So now let's dive into Romans chapter five verse one. Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. That may not even be the most shocking part of the gospel here to me is even more shocking than that. Verse two, or excuse me, verse six you see at just the right time when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. I know different times in my life. Maybe you've felt this too. I'm not going to go back to church until I feel like I got my act together. That's kind of like, you know, I'm not going to get married until I get my act together. Okay, that other kid, until I get my act together, you soon discover that you never have your act together. At least I don't. Somehow we, pre decide that we're not good enough to come as we are to Jesus. We have to come as some newer, better version of ourselves first, which is the lie. Christ died for the ungodly. There were, there are three categories of people according to the Jewish mind at the time of Paul. Three categories of people, and you'll read this in the Talmud, which are the rabbinical writings based on the 613 commandments you're supposed to keep from the old Testament. So in the Talmud are a bunch of rabbis explaining how you're supposed to obey all of the old Testament law and you see this in the Talmud. There are three categories of people. Go ahead to the next slide. The first is the righteous, the righteous. These are the people who follow the obligations of the law and they're about as heartfelt as it sounds there they meet the obligations of the law. This is, this is what the Pharisees would have been, right? That it wasn't about their heart, it was about following the letter. Those are considered the righteous people. All right? The people who are meeting the expectations of the law, the next category or the playas or the good, these are people who are meeting the expectations of the law, but go above and beyond that with their heart. They show compassion, especially for the poor. So these would be the people who they're obeying their obligation to the law and then they help out the poor. For example, back then it was customary to pay. You're expected to pay a temple tax if you're poor. You obviously couldn't afford that. So there were some generous people who had paid the temple tax on their behalf. That would be considered a good person or a righteous, or excuse me, a pious person. And then the third category of course, is the ungodly or the sinner. One who does not belong to God, basically any non-Jewish person in the world. Why? Because you weren't living under those commandments. You weren't living under that covenant. So you were considered to be a sinner. It was not for you. You know, interestingly this whole category came from an interpretation of rabbinic interpretation over nail clippings. Who would have thought, when I followed this rabbit trail, I was like, what? What is this? But apparently, it was believed at that time that nail clippings were like impure. So if you clip them a nd a pregnant woman, I'm not making this up, a nd a pregnant woman walked on them, it could somehow damage the pregnancy or cause her harm. So what they would say is a righteous person would bury the nail clippings so that the woman couldn't walk on them. The pious person though would burn them. So there was no chance of them being unearthed. Right? The good person would completely get rid of them and the ungodly person would be like my college roommate and just l eave them all over the g round. Isn't that weird though? I found that very strange. But anyway, those are the three categories that have nothing to do with the sermon. just a little fun fact. The three categories, three categories of people, and it said that Christ died for the ungodly, the least. The last, the lost, let's go back to verse seven. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person. One who is following the obligation of the law, right? So back then it would've been the Pharisees. Very rarely would someone die for a Pharisee. They weren't exactly beloved by the people. Imagine you're going about your everyday life and someone's pointing out everything you do wrong. You probably have someone like that in your life, but let's say you had a whole bunch of them. They were afraid of the Pharisee. So very rarely would somebody die for a righteous person. He continues though. For a good person, someone might possibly dare to die. That generous person, the beloved person, the town hero, but God, and here it is. Here's the gospel. God demonstrates his own love for us in this while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. That's the good news of the gospel. The gospel isn't wait til you get your act together and then come to me and I'll forgive. You know, your act will never be together. I'm gonna forgive you before you even knew you needed forgiveness. The good news of the gospel is that it's not dependent on our abilities to be faithful, to obey the law, how much money we give to our church, how many times we attend. It's about what God has done before we ever knew we needed anything done for us. This week I was doing what most pastors do, I was on Twitter, a very well known mega church from North Carolina. Their pastor. It's pretty controversial. Not going to say cause I'm not into slamming other pastors. This is I slam what he said on Twitter. He said, this next slide. If you want a change of heart, you first change your habits and you know, I'm scrolling through and I'm thinking about that and then I stopped and I just kinda set the phone down and I pondered that for a minute. If you want a change of heart, you must first change your habits. The more I thought, I mean, it sounds like great wisdom at first, but then I thought, you know what? That sounds like. Sounds like a Pharisee. It sounds like my heart being changed is dependent on me. Well, if I get my habits right, my heart's gonna change. That's not the gospel. And yet so many of us have fallen into the trap of believing that, that if it's because of what I do, that God's going to love me more or that I'm going to be saved or that something's going to go. If I pray hard enough, we're going to sell the house. If I do this enough, if I'm faithful enough, then God's gonna show up and he's going to bless our lives. That's not it all that is so anti gospel, it's ridiculous. A better tweet would have been this. If you want to change your habits, God must first change your heart. It's a heart transplant that we need. We need God to change us from the inside out. That's something only he can do. And you know what? That leads to different habits. It's kinda like DNA. DNA turns into or grows into a specific living organism, right? You can't. Another way you can start with the DNA of a tomato and get a human being and vice versa. I mean listen, if I've learned anything from Jurassic park, I've learned that much. We're not going to grow into the people of God as followers of Jesus Christ redeemed, covered by his blood, living in the way of grace fully until we have a change of DNA.Okay? In other words, Jesus must supply us with new DNA. We the DNA of Jesus Christ, so to speak. We need him to change our heart. Give us a heart for Jesus. He used to change our heart. It's gonna change our life. Verse nine since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's through him for if while we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his son? How much more having having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life? In other words, it's all because of what he did. If we have any hope of being saved and having life everlasting, it's because of what Jesus did on the cross. That is the basis that we all have to have hope in the resurrection. It's because of Jesus. This is the gospel. This is gospel 101, 201 and 301 this is the whole thing, so our third marker on this road through Romans is Romans five eight but God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. I saw this story on CBS this week its a really awesome story about this guy who needed a kidney. Did you see this story on the news? He needed a kidney. He was having kidney failure and he went with his family. To Disney and he had a tee shirt made that he wore that said to kidney blood type O positive and a number. Somebody took a picture of it and posted it on social media. Somebody responded and donated him a kidney. Can you believe that? Could you imagine, I mean somebody who doesn't know you. It feels so random, right? Somebody actually cared enough to save your life and they are asking if they had both of them together. The guy getting the kidney and the donor, they're together and they're asking the guy getting the kidney. They're like, how do you feel about him? And what he's like, really these questions, how do I feel? You know? And the guy's like, I could never express how grateful I am. Like my whole life is changed because of him and I hope that we remain friends and I just want to do anything again to help repay him back the rest of my life. How would you feel if somebody showed you that kind of love? It would change the rest of your life. What about for Jesus who didn't just give a kidney? Who saved our life and our soul forever before we even knew that we needed saving. You see, this is the Christian faith. It's not just a bunch of rules or or steps that I must take to please God. It's about the fact that before I could even take my first steps, God laid down his life for me out of his pleasure, and he asked me to come and to follow, to live a life of faith, to respond to his amazing grace so that the whole rest of my life, I'm trying to say thank you for what he's done for me. If you want to change your life, God must first change your heart. Some of you may be wondering, how do I do that? I got a real simple way of saying that, and it's the following steps of prayer. Go ahead to the next slide. This is the Christian prayer for every single human being ever confess. Just like our road, our Roman road, confess it. God, I fall short of your glory. I know it. I need forgiveness and I can't forgive myself. Then repent. What does your repentance mean, it's saying You're sorry and stop doing whatever you're doing right. It's a, I repent from that way of living. I don't want to be like that anymore. And so I surrender my life to you. I believe you forgive my sins. You, I believe you are who said you are. And I want to follow. And if you pray that, and incidentally, even if you've been following Jesus your whole life, you can pray that every day. But if you've never prayed that, I wanna encourage you. Reach out to me this week. My email addresses in the bulletin. It's online. Jason at towerhillchurch.org can't be any easier. Reach out to me. I'd love to talk with you about it. This is what it's all about. This is the gospel. This is the road that Jesus calls us to walk.