[0:00] I want to look at Romans chapter 1 verses 16 to 18 today. And I want to address the issue of being unashamed of the gospel.
[0:11] ! Have you ever found yourself ashamed of the gospel?! I imagine if you are a believer, you have had some instance of this. I remember one time when I was back in college, I was working retail.
[0:24] I was a relatively new believer, very excited about the Lord, and very faithful pretty much to share the gospel when I could. And I was working in retail and just kind of enjoying life and the fact that I belonged to Jesus.
[0:39] I was rescued from my sin and so forth. And I was whistling as I was working. And then I went over to a customer and I said, do you need help with anything more? And he said, yeah. Why are you so happy?
[0:50] Golden moment, right? He asked me why you're so happy. It's my chance to say, and for some reason, I don't know if I was in, I think I was intimidated by the guy. He was a big guy. I came up with a really pathetic answer.
[1:03] Instead of saying what I ought to, I said, well, I just am. And it was just the worst answer. And I felt terrible for it. I don't know if you've had a moment like that.
[1:14] That's not my only moment. But I'm not here to share my bad moments. There's that reality of being ashamed of the gospel. And we do it for different reasons. But God doesn't leave us there in that place of being ashamed and struggling.
[1:29] He helps us. He's given us his word. His word is living and active. And he wants to minister to us through it. And to do that even today. So if you are someone who has struggled like me with being ashamed of the gospel, I have great hope for you.
[1:44] Because God has given us his word. And by his spirit, he wants to speak to us. So let's pray. And ask for his help that we might learn and respond to his word. I'll pray. And then we can stand to hear God's word read.
[1:57] Lord, we thank you for you and your word. And we thank you, Lord, that you are full of mercy and patient. And Lord, in you is power. And your word shapes us and changes us and enables us to walk with you and to walk in your way.
[2:13] So I pray, Lord, as we look at your word today, that we would receive your word. And you would grant us power to embrace it and to believe and obey. And I pray you'd help me, Lord.
[2:23] I feel weak. I feel especially weak this morning for whatever reason. But that's good because you're mighty. And I pray you would show yourself mighty today as we look at your word.
[2:35] Your life-giving, your true, your faithful word, your eternal word. And we ask these things in Christ's name. Amen. Amen. Please stand as we read God's word. Romans 1, 16 through 18.
[2:49] It says, Paul is speaking in the beginning of this letter. He 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.
[3:08] For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
[3:27] Romans 1, 16 through 18. God's word. You may be seated. Paul says plainly here in the beginning of verse 16, I am not ashamed of the gospel. Paul says that actually multiple times throughout his writings.
[3:40] You can find that. He is someone who is not ashamed of the gospel, but who also prays for boldness. He asks the churches to pray for boldness for him.
[3:52] And really this struggle is at the heart of every believer. This tendency to be ashamed, to not be bold. And yet Paul instructs us here in some key ways.
[4:04] And I want to take a look at these verses because they are Paul's reasons for not being ashamed, but they are more than just Paul's reasons for not being ashamed. They are our reasons.
[4:15] So if you look at these verses, you can see a logic that's here. First, of course, he says he's not ashamed of the gospel. And he says because it's the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.
[4:28] And then he gives the reason or that drives that. It's because in it a righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith.
[4:38] And then verse 18, the problem behind this is the wrath of God is being revealed against all the unrighteousness, ungodliness of humanity. So he's really giving a reverse order.
[4:49] He says the problem at the end, then the answer, and then how that drives him not to be ashamed. And so I want to look at that logic, but the other way around. So we're going to look at the problem first, this reality of the wrath of God being revealed.
[5:06] And then we're going to look at the answer, the righteousness of God revealed in the gospel, and then talk about the power of God and then why we're not ashamed. In all this, at every point that I'm making, there are reasons in these truths that drive us not being ashamed.
[5:22] So we'll just walk through it. So first, we're going to start at the end in verse 18 on the wrath, God's wrath against our sin. It says, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
[5:40] This statement is what is the background for everything that Paul is saying in this section. So notice four things. It speaks of God's wrath. God's wrath. Now, God's wrath is not human anger.
[5:54] God's wrath is not in personal karma. It is a settled, holy, judicial response of a perfectly righteous God towards evil. Second, it says it's being revealed.
[6:08] It's ongoing. God is actually revealing his wrath now. And of course, it will be ultimately revealed in the final judgments. But it's happening now. Third, it says it's from heaven.
[6:20] It's God's wrath. It's just. And it's against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. It's universal in scope. And it's focused. It's reasonable. These are truths that are important to understand.
[6:35] And Paul actually takes time after verse 18 to go through almost three chapters worth of why this is happening to explain the background. So I will just pretty quickly walk through that reasoning and examine it for us that we might understand this reality of the wrath of God.
[6:53] The ground for it is not God just being wrathful for any reason. And it's because of the unrighteousness and ungodliness of humanity. God's wrath is being revealed against ungodliness, against unrighteousness.
[7:08] This unrighteousness is a corporate reality for all of humanity. Chapter 1, he talks about that. It's a reality that is for all of us.
[7:20] It's for the self-righteous who think that they don't qualify, that they don't fall under this diagnosis. And ultimately, it confronts every human being.
[7:30] There's no unrighteous. No, not one. It's so important for us to understand this, to understand this dark background to the glorious gospel of grace.
[7:45] This dark background is really important to understand because if you don't get the dark background, the gospel doesn't look so bright and glorious. Matter of fact, why do we even need this gospel of grace?
[7:55] If we don't have a serious problem. This is the right diagnosis for our own situation, and we need to face it. And often, it's the failure to understand this diagnosis of humanity, all of humanity, and all of us also individually.
[8:12] That is why we're ashamed of the gospel. We don't understand how dire the circumstances are. The reality is for all of humanity, is for us, is for your neighbor, is for your family member.
[8:23] However, we subscribe to some other diagnosis of humanity often. There's often compromise. And we let the worldly ideas about humanity seep in and say, well, we're okay, actually.
[8:39] We're more or less good. But that's not what Romans says. Paul wants us to understand this dire situation that drives his compulsion to share the gospel with whomever he can, and his example for all of us as well, to follow him as he follows Christ.
[8:56] So chapter 1 goes at length to explain the situation that we are unrighteous corporately, culturally, as a civilization, as a species, even though God has displayed his glory and goodness clearly in creation.
[9:13] No one has an excuse because it's displayed clearly before all of humanity. Even though it's displayed, even though we are creatures made in his image, and therefore we know, all of us, every human, every culture, all of us knows right and wrong.
[9:31] It's there. You can study in terms of sociology all different people groups. They all know right and wrong at a fundamental level. They all share common morals. We know we're made in the image of God, even though we know right and wrong, even though we intuitively understand the natural order of things, even though all these things are there, we have rejected God and pushed the obvious aside.
[9:57] That's what Romans 1 teaches us. Not only have we just merely pushed it aside, we are actually actively spurting it. That's what Romans 1 teaches us. From one degree of corruption to another, we are actively suppressing the truth, as we saw Paul's statement in Romans 1.18.
[10:15] This is who we are. This is what we do. We have stricken gratitude and reverence from God from our songs, our stories, our celebrations. You see that all around us.
[10:26] God is the awkward and unwelcome guest in our culture, isn't he? And Romans 1 says, this is not by accident. This is on purpose.
[10:37] This is the situation. This is the sorry state of humanity. This is the ridiculous state of humanity. Humanity has credited nature rather than the creator.
[10:50] We've marveled at our own accomplishments rather than the fact that we can do nothing apart from the grace of God. We have ignored and rejected and denied and even raged against God.
[11:01] It's a ridiculous and terrible tragedy. That's what's clear here in Romans 1. The culmination of our folly is actually exchanging the glory of God and all of his goodness and glory as simply revealed in creation.
[11:19] We've exchanged that for the creation, for images made in the image of creation, mankind, animals, birds, and worse. We are hell-bent in worshiping anything else but God.
[11:34] And as we pursue this line, the choices get more and more bizarre. This is the reality of humanity. Paul accurately diagnoses us.
[11:47] And you just need to look around. Study our own culture. Look at history. It's undeniable. He is speaking the truth. We know it's spoken in God's very word. Therefore, it is true. But it's confirmed by our own observations around us.
[12:00] And we do this all right in front of God, living in his house, his world, his universe. We do it with images, people, celebrities, ideals, money, sex, power, entertainment, and self, and self-image on and on without stopping.
[12:18] And this is a cosmic crime. And we are all guilty. The late theology professor Cornelius Van Til spoke of humanity as a little girl sitting on her father's lap.
[12:37] Slapping him in the face. Telling him he doesn't exist. That's what we do. We sit on God's lap. We sit in his creation amidst his revelation of glory and goodness.
[12:49] And we slap him. You don't exist or you're mean. It's a cosmic crime. It's a sad reality. And as we do this, Paul talks about the results in chapter 1 of Romans.
[13:01] We reject God and our universe, our world, our culture, our relationships, they unravel. And so Paul says three times in chapter 1, God gave them up in their foolishness, in mankind's foolishness, our foolishness.
[13:19] Gave them up to the lust of their hearts. Gave them up to dishonorable passions. Gave them up to a debased mind. God said, okay, if this is your choice, I'm going to give you over to it. And here you go. And there we go.
[13:33] Abandoning God results in being abandoned by God to confusion and moral brokenness. And the picture is appalling. And we all know it shouldn't be this way.
[13:49] Paul says that we are filled with all manner of unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, malice, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malevolence, gossipers, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
[14:20] This is humanity. All of us to one degree or another. So be careful, by the way. And I'll talk about this. Not to say, well, I'm not as bad as those others who do this.
[14:31] I can't be that bad. All of us are indicted by Romans 1 and 2 and 3 to one degree or another. We are all guilty of these things. We only need to look around at our current moral landscape to recognize this.
[14:45] Our culture's present sexual ethics are now governed by desire and preference with personal identity locked into these choices. To value myself or anyone else, the rule goes, I must support whatever choices that person makes.
[15:02] And society has declared sexual freedom non-negotiable and treats anyone who disagrees as the moral problem. This is our culture, hating the truth and suppressing the truth of God's word.
[15:17] And in one way or the other, we are all guilty to a degree of related sins. And God, in his righteousness, gives sinners what they choose.
[15:34] And this is what we see in humanity. This is what we see all around us. This is what we see to some degree in our own hearts. See, it's not just out there. It's not just culture. It's not just history, but it's in all of us personally.
[15:46] And so Paul will take time in chapter 2 to turn the tables on those who look at the culture and say, oh, it's awful. It's going downhill fast, but I'm not that bad.
[15:58] And he will turn the tables and say, you also are guilty. You who say they ought not to do this, you do it. Maybe not in the same way, maybe not to the same degree, but you do it as well.
[16:12] Well, I've never murdered anybody, but Jesus asks us, have you ever been bitterly angry with someone? Have you ever wished that person just simply wasn't in your life anymore? Is that really that different than murder?
[16:24] The same heart that destroys another human for our own convenience is there in all of us. Maybe you've never committed adultery, but have you lusted after someone wanting them in a way that doesn't belong to you and is not appropriate?
[16:41] We all are guilty. Well, I've never stolen, but really, have you? Have you taken advantage of anybody else in any way? Taking something from them that's not really yours to take?
[16:56] I don't really lie, but do you lie about others or promote lies and propagating things that are not verified and maybe slanderous? That's kind of what happens all around us in social media.
[17:08] We are all guilty. None of us are innocent in this, and nothing will help us really. No heightened activity in church membership.
[17:20] No knowing the truth or being orthodox in your profession of faith. No amount of good works. These things will not rescue us.
[17:30] They will not undo the unrighteousness that is in our hearts. It's dark, and we don't even know the half of it. Can you imagine? Maybe this will happen someday. We invent a brainwave detector that actually can interpret what's going on in your brain.
[17:48] So it's a brain. Imagine if you had on your phone this app. I don't think any of us would want to have it, but a brainwave monitor and interpreter that could take all the things you're thinking during the week and actually create videos and put those on your computer.
[18:01] And today, after church, we're actually going to have somebody's brainwave for this past week on the screen here, and we're all going to enjoy it together. Would anybody enjoy that?
[18:13] Would the person whose brainwaves are shown, whose videos are shown, enjoy that? No. That just shows us the reality that we don't like to face, that we are full of unrighteousness. It's at least embarrassing, if not terribly condemning.
[18:28] This is the reality. The story is told that the London Times once sent out an inquiry to famous authors asking them to write an essay about what's wrong with the world, and the famous author G.K. Chesterton wrote his essay saying simply this, Dear Sir, I am yours, G.K. Chesterton.
[18:53] I am. He understood the biblical truth. The problem with the world is not what's out there, it's what's in here in my heart. I am also unrighteous before a holy God.
[19:07] This is the reality. Romans 3 tells us, For all have sinned, all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God. You, friend, brother, or sister, fall short of the glory of God.
[19:21] None is righteous, Romans 3, 10 and 11. No, not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. This is the reality for all of us in our natural state.
[19:32] We are all unrighteous. We are all polluted by sin. We're like glasses of water into which mud has been introduced.
[19:43] Stinky, foul, sewer mud. And some of us, maybe the glass is almost all mud. And maybe you know it if that's the case.
[19:55] Others of us, it's just a little bit of stinky sewer mud. Just a little bit. And we're certainly not like those glasses that are all mud. But are any of the glasses fit to drink?
[20:08] Not one. We are all unrighteous before a holy God. And this diagnosis is so important. Understanding this truth.
[20:19] It's important, of course, because it's true. It's the ultimate reality. It's important to grasp because the world will give you every other diagnosis but this one. And that will affect you.
[20:31] And that will dampen your zeal to make the gospel of grace known to those around you. I know it's uncomfortable. And believe me, it's really awkward for me to come as your guest and just preach what I did.
[20:45] But we need to hear it. And we need to realize it's true. And we need to realize that this diagnosis is not given to us to condemn us but to rescue us.
[20:57] That's the trajectory of all this. This diagnosis of the dark backdrop to the gospel of our sickness, of our moral sickness is so important so that we might understand how much we need to cure.
[21:09] But not only you personally, of course, that's your first priority. But all those around you, and all peoples throughout the whole globe, need the cure that comes in relationship to this.
[21:22] Because it's not just that we're unrighteous but we're unrighteous before a holy God. God is holy. He is pure. He is pure goodness. He is infinitely glorious.
[21:36] And He is perfectly just. He's not capricious. He would never judge anything in a way that would be just over the top, excessive.
[21:47] Dante's Inferno is not biblical. But hell is. And God's perfect justice is. The wrath of God is not narcissism on God's part.
[22:00] It's His holy, patient, determined opposition to evil and attitude and action that leads Him to a faithful commitment to respond and eradicate all evil, to judge it all.
[22:14] And there is real evil all around us, inside of us. And God is the creator of all and Lord of all who is goodness. And so He must act.
[22:24] He must be just. Now we all understand justice. We do. When we see something done to an innocent person, relatively innocent person, we're shocked and concerned if we watched an elderly woman get knocked to the ground and robbed in the street.
[22:41] We probably would chase after the guy. We'd be upset at least. We understand justice. That's wrong and we feel it and we know it when we hear of the mistreatment of children and all these other evil things.
[22:54] We're indignant, appropriately so. We get justice. We understand it but we are often good at applying it to others and not to ourselves. And God is perfect in His justice.
[23:07] He must judge those who have sinned against the innocent one, God Himself, in His goodness and glory, in our rebellion. He must judge sin done against one another, against those made in the image of God.
[23:21] We have all fallen short and sinned in these ways. This justice is revealed from heaven by a perfect God.
[23:32] not an offended dictator but the Holy One. It's not vindictive. It's not cruel. It's not partial. It's perfect. Actually, the saints in heaven recorded in Revelation 15 celebrate His justice and His judgment.
[23:47] Great and amazing are your deeds. It says, O Lord God, the Almighty, just and true are your ways, O King of the nations. They celebrate His perfect justice and His judgment. And His justice is exactly appropriate.
[24:00] And therefore, it is appropriately severe for sinners. The punishment fits the crime. Romans 6 tells us the wages of sin is death.
[24:17] Death. Death. Eternal separation from all the goodness and greatness of God and His mercy and kindness that we all know and we all take for granted.
[24:32] It is a just reckoning for those who reject God and persist in it who rely on their own supposed righteousness instead of running to Christ for rescue.
[24:44] That existence is eternal. Eternal separation. We call that hell. And Paul teaches in chapter 2 actually that those wages and implications and the fullness of God's justice is accumulating even now for us as we continue, if we do, continue to reject God.
[25:06] Romans 2.5, But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed. We are storing it up if we continue to live in that place of sin, rebellion, and self-righteousness.
[25:22] We add to this terrible treasure chest. It makes me think of Marley in Christmas Carol as he encounters Ebenezer. And Ebenezer asks about this chain that Marley is carrying.
[25:39] And Marley says to Scrooge about the chain which is the judgment of God on Marley and on Scrooge he says it was as full, as heavy, and as long as this seven Christmas Eves ago.
[25:52] You have labored on it since. It is a ponderous chain. This is the reality in God's holiness and justice. He will bring a just reward, a just punishment for our sin.
[26:10] And apart from Christ we all, each one, and all humanity, each one, is in serious trouble. I take no pleasure in bringing you bad news, but it is the reality.
[26:29] And I must, for my own heart's sake, my own mind's sake, and for yours, remind you of this situation so that you don't go around thinking things are quite alright. Thank you.
[26:39] A.W. Tozer warned, the vague and tenuous hope that God is too kind to punish the ungodly has become a deadly opiate for the consciences of millions. And this opiate is in the air that we breathe.
[26:57] In August 2007, the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis collapsed. Major bridge, major highway, killing 13 people. Part of the tragedy is that the engineers knew the bridge needed repairs.
[27:10] And because of budget constraints, they hadn't gotten to it in time, and they assumed the bridge would last longer. They assumed the bridge would be okay.
[27:22] Thank you. And the reality is that people without Christ, our beloved family members and friends and neighbors, are traveling on a bridge destined to collapse.
[27:36] And we, like those engineers, think, well, we got time, and it's not that serious. They won't really happen. And we need to recognize, no, they're traveling through life on a collapsing bridge, and it will collapse.
[27:52] And we are called as ones who, if you know the good news, to come to the rescue and sharing that good news, to have that heart, to have a heart of compassion for those who are traveling on this bridge, even as Christ had compassion on sinners.
[28:06] sinners. This is the heart we all need. This is the heart you need on Tuesday at the office, Wednesday around the dinner table, Thursday with the neighbor across the way, each day of the week as we interact with those around us, to have the same heart.
[28:27] Well, that's the backdrop. That's the situation. That's the diagnosis. It's not the end of the story. Thank God. God has provided a way of escape from His just judgment.
[28:42] And His provided way actually is also perfectly just, perfectly righteous. He does not compromise His justice one bit in His solution for our unrighteousness.
[28:55] And Romans 1.17 speaks of it, for in it the righteousness of God in the gospel is revealed from faith for faith. As it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. The righteousness of God here certainly involves His justice towards sin.
[29:12] It involves His perfect character. But it's speaking of a righteousness that comes to us, revealed from faith for faith, that would be given to those who live by faith.
[29:22] It's a righteous declaration given by God, a verdict in righteousness of not guilty, fully approved, accepted. And He grants this to sinners on the basis of the righteousness of another.
[29:40] Romans 3. After Paul has spent all this time talking about this dark backdrop, that is so important to understand and apply to our lives. He transitions once we recognize we don't have anything to stand on ourselves.
[29:55] He transitions to God's answer. But now, the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and prophets bear witness to it.
[30:07] The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe and are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith.
[30:28] This was to show God's righteousness. First, I just want you to recognize and we'll talk about how this all works, but to recognize that the center of this righteousness is not an idea, it's not a method, it's not a system.
[30:43] It is a person. His name is Jesus. He is the righteousness of God as we read earlier, because of Him you are in Christ Jesus who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.
[31:00] It's the person of Jesus. Jesus Christ is God Himself who took on flesh to rescue us, to be the fulfillment of all righteousness in His life, in His faith, in His obedience as the perfect human being, to fulfill the promises of God that are throughout the Scriptures, and then to take that righteous, worthy, perfect life, that beautiful, glorious life, and then lay it down on the cross to die for sin.
[31:36] He who knew no sin became sin for us so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. He became sin. He took upon Himself our sins, our unrighteousness, the fullness of it, all the evil, all the disgusting details that God knows in fullness were all put on Christ, the Holy One, bore our sin on the cross, and then the Holy One, the Father, poured out holy justice on Him.
[32:07] God Himself, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, put forward Christ as this offering so that He Himself would receive perfect, complete, final justice for your sins, for all who would believe, all and any, whosoever.
[32:26] And if you're hearing this today, maybe for the first time, that includes you. The invitation is to whosoever would believe. This is an offer done. In history, it's real.
[32:37] And God verified its historical truth by what we know from the Scriptures, but through the resurrection of Christ, it is real and it is offered whosoever should believe.
[32:48] Our sins are placed on Him and He pays the penalty. He is a propitiation. That word is a word we don't use much. It's an offering to appease wrath, but in the case of God, it's holy, just wrath.
[33:01] Who put forward Jesus? God Himself. Who is the one who is perfectly just punishing? God Himself. He offered the offering Himself to rescue us.
[33:13] By His blood, He died on the cross in our place and He bore the full wrath of God. God's wrath burned white-hot in holiness toward His Son and He released perfect vengeance for our evil on Jesus.
[33:30] He is the righteousness of God in every way, fulfilling our righteousness and our righteousness because when we trust in Him, we are forgiven. We are credited as if we had never sinned and our sins are taken away by Him.
[33:45] He is our righteousness in every way and to Him be the glory alone. and it is through simple faith that righteousness is from faith for faith.
[33:58] It's trusting in another, trusting in Him, trusting in Christ through simple faith. What does that faith look like? Simply turning away from our sin, turning away from self-righteousness and trusting in God's solution for our unrighteousness and for our sin.
[34:18] This is the answer and this is the only answer for the terrible predicament of humanity. It is the most important thing that you could tell anybody you know because their biggest need, gravest concern, ultimate, ultimate issue is not how successful they are, not how their family's doing as important as that is, not how well they're being fed as important as that is.
[34:50] All those things have their place. They're important but the biggest issue is they're a separation from God by their sin and the solution is Jesus. They are in dire need of that solution.
[35:03] We all are and that solution has been provided fully in God through Christ and is offered to any and all. So your coworkers, your friends, your neighbors, your family members and the countless tribes throughout the globe need this answer and he is the answer fully.
[35:24] So stop thinking that some other issue and other answer is more important. This is part of why we're ashamed at times and it just can't be that important.
[35:36] This person will be insulted or whatever it might be. No, there's nothing more important. Their predicament is their biggest issue and the answer of Christ is their biggest solution that they need to hear and know. And so this motivates Paul because the gospel is the power of God.
[35:55] The gospel is the power of God. There are lots of things that are the power of God. God's power is all around us. We see it in creation. It's amazing to think about the power that's out there and things like this.
[36:07] And I have a science background and maybe this is why I'm just geeky. I just drive around at times and just think like that is a continuous fusion explosion in the sky. It's massive and it heats us and we love it.
[36:19] It's amazing. So it's powerful. There's lots of things that are God's power but the gospel ultimately is the power of God. the most important power of God for the salvation of all who believe.
[36:36] To the Jew first and also to the Greek really for everybody every type of person every human throughout the globe throughout history it is for them the salvation that God provides.
[36:47] It's the power of God for their salvation in every way from the penalty of sin because Christ takes on himself that penalty. No more penalty when we run to Jesus and trust in him.
[36:59] The believer finds in Jesus the penalty of sin paid for but not just the penalty but the power of sin. Paul is going to go on in Romans and talk about this.
[37:09] The power of sin is broken. In chapter 5 he just talks about the wonder of the grace of God that the penalty is taken care of and then in chapter 6 it says and the reason that we don't just go out and sin is because we are now united with Christ.
[37:24] We belong to him through faith and sin is broken we don't want to live that way anymore and he's given us his spirit so sin doesn't have to dominate us anymore we are free in the gospel.
[37:38] And then chapter 8 he talks about the reality that ultimately we are growing in our walk with God and putting sin away and then there will be a day when we go to be with him in glory and sin's presence will be permanently eradicated from our lives and then in the new creation.
[37:54] This is the salvation that is ours in Jesus and this is the goodness of God this is the power of God for salvation. The gospel is powerful it's the most powerful thing that you can ever handle.
[38:10] This room is full of miracles full of those who have been raised from the dead. If you are a believer you've been raised from the dead spiritually already.
[38:22] How did it happen? Well the spirit of God came in and did it but how did it happen? You heard the word of truth. You heard the word somebody was unashamed enough to share it with you and you heard this proclamation of the forgiveness of God in Christ and at that moment something happened that changed your eternity.
[38:47] Your dead soul your dead spirit was raised to life. You were given a new heart and you received eternal life at that moment and that life will never perish and you now are alive and hearing the word and responding because of the resurrection life that's in you.
[39:03] That's the power of God. It changed you forever and made it so that you could be forgiven and be formed in the image of Christ and have an eternity ahead with God. That's power. The greatest miracle you can experience is that because that miracle leads to eternal life and everything else.
[39:21] The gospel is the power of God. It is the most powerful thing you can ever handle because as you share God and his infinite power and glory and his purpose of using the word works in those who hear it to bring life and it's happening and I'm sure it's been happening here.
[39:43] It's happening all around the globe. There are, we live in an amazing time as the gospel is going forward but yet so many more need to hear it. Lives are being changed, cultures changed, families changed in the power of the gospel.
[39:58] So that's why Paul's not ashamed of it because he knows it's the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes. He knows that in the gospel is the righteousness of God his answer for our problem of unrighteousness and the justice of God, the holy wrath of God.
[40:16] He knows that that's the ultimate truth and that's the ultimate thing that others need to know. This gospel. So, why?
[40:29] Why would we ever be ashamed of this gospel? We need to think about these truths by God's grace.
[40:42] Have them affect us. Now, there's lots of forgiveness as infinite forgiveness in Christ's atonement. I'm forgiven for my pathetic answer to that guy. The Lord is gracious so I don't want you to live in condemnation but I want you as you hear the word to be motivated.
[40:59] Lord, please help me soak in these things and propel me to be unashamed to share the gospel, to pray for those neighbors. Don't, now, there are a thousand qualifiers to this whole message, right?
[41:12] So don't go up to your neighbor and be obnoxious. I'm not saying that. But, but, pray. Pray for them. Love them. Look to do good works to bless them because you've been blessed.
[41:24] Not because you're doing, like, if I can just share the gospel as a result. We do good works because of who we are in God. But, but through that, pray for open doors for the gospel and pray like Paul does who is maybe the chief unashamed person.
[41:38] He still said, please pray for boldness for me. Pray for boldness for one another. And then be bold. Be bold and share the gospel in those awkward moments.
[41:49] It's never, you never get past the awkwardness because of these reasons. Because it's the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes. In it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith.
[42:03] The righteous shall live by faith. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. These are all reasons to be unashamed.
[42:15] So, listen to the word. Stop listening to the rival gospels that fill our ears, the deceptions that are out there, the other diagnoses that are there that will always diminish these truths.
[42:29] There's lots of things that are out there. Lots of false gospels of all sorts. They come in dressed as politics on the left and the right, as social movements, twisted virtues, the American dream, a Marxist utopia, religions, humanism and atheism dressed in lab coats to look really nice.
[42:47] It's all foolishness. Don't be fooled. Don't be afraid. Don't compromise. Don't let the upside down world define your reality.
[42:58] let the truth of God's word transform you so that you and I together that we might be unashamed of the gospel.
[43:10] Let's pray. Thank you, Lord, for your word. And we need you so much, Lord.
[43:23] And those around us need you so much. And you deserve the glory of our bold proclamation. So I pray you'd stir us all up that we would not stop praying and loving and serving and not stop looking for every opportunity to proclaim the gospel, the power of God for salvation.
[43:48] Use us, oh Lord. Fill us. Lord, I pray that there be many who come to know you as a result of these truths transforming us for the glory of your name.
[44:00] You are worthy. We love you, Lord. And we ask these things in Christ's name. Amen. Amen.