Romans Road Application Part 4

Thank you.

Hello. All right everyone, welcome back to Church of the Bible. For those watching on Facebook and our mobile app today, welcome to your first worship service with us for our announcements. As we begin, the first announcement is from this week. Today a forward we will be broadcasting our worship service.

We are finally, after three years, licensed to broadcast our worship music and that part of the service over the air. So for those of you who have just been watching the videos on Facebook and not joining in zoom but have been wanting the full experience, we are finally able to deliver that to you and that makes us very excited. This Wednesday at 06:30 P.m Mountain time, we will be doing our Genesis Bible Study. This week will be chapter 46. It is posted to the mobile app and the website already.

If everybody will take a chance and go through that video or read the commentary between now and then to get that, get caught up and be ready to go, that would be greatly appreciated. I think this week's video is only 18 minutes, so it's not a very long study. So you can take 18 minutes and get that done and then shawnee, do we have any more announcements right now?

Okay, well I guess that is everything for announcements. So let's open up with the word of prayer and then we will turn the time over to Shawnee for the worship music. Father God, we thank you and praise you for this day. Lord, thank you for your goodness and your greatness to us and we just praise you for all that you do. Lord, I thank you as we come to a conclusion of our sermon series today through Romans Road for what you have revealed to us in Your word, what you have revealed to us about our nature and what you have and will be tonight revealing to us about how we should respond to you and live our life.

Lord, I pray that as we go to worship, that we will worship you in spirit and in truth, Lord, that we will pour our heart out to you and that we will also open our hearts and our ears and our minds to your truth being poured into us. And I pray Lord that we will not only be hearers of your word, but doers as well. And we thank you in Jesus name, amen.

You my God has saved my soul I am yours forever more I won't be moved up if I'm sure you my God you saved my soul when you came for me held in chains by the enemy but you broke them in victory now I'm free. I am free you're my choice and you are my hope I am safe by Your grace alone I will sing all of Your love for me I am free. I am free you might gotta save my soul I am your forever more I want brought me up out from the grave I'm busting out with songs of race what once was it is now alive you gave to me the rest of life you brought me up out from the grave I'm forever more I won't be moved up this I'm sure you might gotta save my soul you might have passion love that's never feeling let mercy fall on me everyone needs forgiveness the kindness of a savior the whole nations say you're taking to the mountains my God is mighty to save he is mighty to save forever offer of salvation heroes conquered the grave jesus conquered the grave take me and she'd find me all my fears and failures fill my life again I give my life to follow everything I believe in now I surrender my my God is mighty he is mighty to save forever offer a salvation heroes and cockers of graves jesus you if you've been walking the same old road for miles and miles if you've been hearing the same old voice that same old lies if you're trying to feel the same he's a way maker if you need freedom he's a pretty shaken savior we've all searched for light day instead of night we've all found ourselves one out from the same old fire we've all run the things we know just ain't right and there's a better free up if you believe it if you receive it if you can feel it somebody cares about if you believe it. You receive it if you can feel it somebody cares amen. You know, the nice thing about our Lord and Savior is he is a chainbreaker.

And he takes the chains of sin and the chains of death and he breaks them and he casts them to the ground that we may not have the death that we deserve, but that we may have eternal life, that we may enter into the kingdom of heaven. So today will be our last day in the book of Romans. We are finishing up Romans Road today and for anyone who is just entering the series with us, I want to quickly summarize as we will not be back in Romans for some time.

The book of Romans begins by telling us I can't get that muted there. So Romans begins here by telling us that we are all sinners. It tells us here that every man and every woman who has walked the earth knows that there is a creator God out there. We know it because he has made manifest to us through the visible creation. So although God is invisible to us, the very creation, the very world that we live in, life itself is evidence and speaks to our God and that we have rebelled against Him, that we have suppressed the truth of God.

We have taken it and we have compressed it and put it in a box on a shelf in the deepest, darkest corners of our mind. And have not acknowledged Him or given things to Him, but have instead chosen to rebel and sin, to go our own way, to do our own thing. And the wages of that sin is death. So we have earned for our selfdeath.

It tells us that there is no difference between the Jew and the Gentile. Whether you are Jewish or you are Gentile, there is no difference at all because we have all sinned, we have all fallen short of the glory of God and we all deserve the same wage. And it tells us that the solution is that Jesus Christ would impute his righteousness to us. So instead of earning our way into heaven, we are given the way into heaven that's imputed to us, so that we can shed everything that keeps us away. And then that last song there, Chain Breaker, told us that he is a chain breaker and he is.

We are told in Romans five that as one by one man did sin and death and disease and corruption enter into the world, that through one man, even Jesus Christ, does life enter into the world. And forgiveness and redemption. In Romans six it tells us here that we are buried with Jesus and we are resurrected with Him into his life. We are told that we no longer have to serve our old Master of sin. But we have the choice now.

We can choose to serve Jesus Christ in seven and eight. It tells us that we are now divorced from the law, we are freed from it, and we are free to remarry God, to marry Jesus Christ.

Now, the last few weeks we have been going through the application portion of this. We now know why we need a Savior. We now know how our Savior saved us. And there is a responsibility brought to us by knowing that. And from twelve through now we have been discussing that.

But salvation, that brings responsibility. When we accept Jesus Christ as our Savior, as our God, when we call Him Lord and Master, we have a responsibility. And Jesus talked to some of the people in his time about that, when he rebuked them in Luke 646, and when he said to them, why do you call me Lord, Lord, but not do not what I say? So if we call Jesus our Lord, then we bring upon us the responsibility to do as he would ask us, to do as he would expect. Now, Paul set that example very well.

He lived his life striving to be obedient to God in every way. When he met Christ, he immediately preached Christ and he was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.

Paul shows us how to live out what Jesus told us, how to love him. Jesus says in John 1415, if you love me, keep my commandments. But Paul goes further and shows us how we ought to love other people. And he will discuss that today beginning with Romans, chapter 15, verses one through six. He tells us that we then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the week and not to please ourselves.

Let every one of us please his neighbor for his good to edification. For even Christ pleased not himself. But as it is written, the reproaches of them that reproached thee, fellow me. For whatsoever things were written, aforetime were written for our morning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures, might have hope. Now the God of patience and consolation grant you to be likeminded one toward another according to Christ Jesus, that ye may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So we're going to begin in these first six verses, talking about responsible practice here. And we're going to see a few things here, about six things. We're going to see service, we're going to see sincerity, we're going to see the Savior here. We're going to see sacredness strength and spirituality. Okay?

Strong Christians are responsible for the weaker Christians the same way that when we are born into the world, when we are babies, we have people, a support system, a structure that helps us to grow up, that helps us to enter into the world that we live in. Our baby Christians are brand new Christians who are new to Christianity, new to salvation, new to God, and at the same time new to the vast attacks of the enemy. They need the support of the stronger Christians. Paul yet says the same thing. In Galatians six verses one and two.

He says, Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual restore such a one in the spirit of meekness, consider in thyself, lest thou also be tempted. He says in verse two to bury one another s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. So he says a little bit differently here. But whether we are weak to our sin in a particular moment in time. Or weak just in our flesh.

Whatever the case may be. Whether we have burdens and we are getting weary from our burdens. We have an obligation as Christians to come to the support of that struggling Christian and to give them as we would as a child with a babe in the world. To give them that entry into the world there. Now in Galatians Two, it says that as we do this we fulfill the law of Christ.

And what law is that? That is the second greatest commandment that Jesus gave us. He says that the second greatest commandment is that you would love your neighbor as yourself. And that is the law of Christ that we fulfill in doing this. Verse one here tells us here that we are not to live to please ourselves.

And I'm going to be a little, I'm going to come down a little hard on this. It is pleasing ourselves that got us into the sin mess that we have to deal with to begin with, okay? If we didn't seek to please ourselves, we would have never gotten in this crazy, messed up world that we now know. But being a Christian is not about how can I make myself happy, how can I gain, how can I come out on top? But being a Christian, being a Godly person, is about how can I love everyone else, how can I serve them, how can I reflect the light and the glory of God that is in me into the world?

And that is what Christian living is about. It's not about us. It's about God. It's about his glory. And we live to glorify Him.

In Romans twelve, it told us being saved, being free the way that we are free, that we ought to live our lives as a living sacrifice. Sacrifice acceptable to God. But he goes further. Here we don't just live to please others and to help others. But it says here in verse two to let every one of us please his neighbor for his good, to edification.

So he goes further. We don't just do whatever it takes to please our neighbor, but when we do stuff to serve them and to love them, it is to their edification, it's to build them up. It is so that they can see and know God, so that they can glorify God with us.

It's so that they can know the path to heaven and hopefully that they will accept Jesus Christ as the way, the truth and the life. So we don't just go and start doing whatever worldly wicked, lustful actions because it will make our neighbor happy. That is not edifying to the neighbor. But we also don't do things that bring them down just because something is good for us. We talked about this, I think it was last week, maybe two weeks ago.

We talked about the fact that if you have a friend who is an alcoholic, you're not going to break out your beer and start drinking in front of him. It may not be sinful for you, but it is for him. And so we won't do it. So we live as a sacrifice. We live in a way that serves our neighbors, that pleases our neighbors.

And when we say neighbor here, I don't just mean the person next door to me, but as Jesus had shown us, our neighbor is all of our brothers here, all of our sisters and members of this great family that we live in the human race and we edify them, we reflect the glory of God. And as a perfect example of this for the Christian who hears us and says, well, I don't want to live my life in service to whoever. I don't want to spend my life trying to please other people, let me point to Jesus as the example for even Christ. Verse three says pleased not himself, but as it is written there reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me. Think about that.

If there is one person, only one person who has the right to expect to be pleased, who has the right to demand pleasure, it is God who is Jesus Christ. So if the one person that exists that could claim a right to pleasure pleased not himself, but lived to serve you and I and everyone else, then how much more shall we live to serve? Shall we live to reflect that same light of his?

Verse four here? It tells us that whatsoever things were written a four time were written for our learning that we, through patience and comfort, other scriptures might have hope. The things that are written here are sacred. The contents of these scriptures are sacred and they are there that we would have hope. And why do we have hope?

Because they all point to the person in verse three. They all point to the one person who lived his life solely for other people. Because we have hope. As we learn through patience and through the scriptures of the life that Jesus Christ lived and the gift that he left behind to give each of us, we have hope. We have hope because we no longer have to think about where we're going.

I actually wrote a response to somebody on Quora the other day who asked me why anyone with a God who would condemn people to hell should have any hope at all. They wanted to know it's ridiculous. They wanted to know why I had hope, why anyone should have hope if my sin condemns me to hell and there is no way that I can earn my way out of it. The thing is, they were asking that question in response to something else I had written. And they only paid attention to the fact that I talked about the wages of sin is death.

They only paid attention to the fact that I mentioned my works are filthy rags and I can't get out. And they skipped the portion where I wrote about what Jesus did for us. And I actually read it, they mentioned it somewhere else, but it went over their head. To them it's like why should I have hope? Why should I care?

Why should I try? And the answer is simple because it's not based on me. The moment that Jesus Christ covered me in his blood is the moment that it was no longer based on anything I could do ever again. But it was given to me. And now I have hope because it's done.

I can't mess or screw this up.

I have a ticket into heaven. I know the way, the truth and the life. And this comes here by not giving up, but it comes by reading God's word and by receiving strength and hope and encouragement from it and knowing the truth of what it says. And so we are told here that the God of patience and consolation grant you to be like minded one toward another, according to Christ. Jesus says that ye may, with one mind and one mouth, glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So as part of our responsible practice here, what are we doing? We are living in harmony and unity. In other words, as Christians, we ought not be at each other's throats. We don't need to be strangling one another. We don't need to be arguing and bickering.

We talked about two weeks ago the whole issue about not debating over whether or not we go to church on Sunday or Saturday and whether or not we can eat meat or vegetables only. But we live in harmony and unity. And the one thing that matters, Sharon, that is Jesus Christ, that is that we love each other. And how do we live in harmony? Verses one and two we live a life to please one another.

I'll let you in on a little secret here. If you live your life in a way that you are loving everyone, and you are pouring out the love of God upon them, and everyone else is living in that same way where they are pouring out the love of God on everyone else, there would be no more division. It is hard for there to be division. If everyone here in this meeting, if everyone here today, if our sole focus is to love each other with every fiber of our being, it is hard to be divided. And God does not want us divided.

When we are divided, we cannot glorify God with one mind and one mouth. We cannot give him that glory.

But if we can love each other, and then if we can all see the grace of God and the blessings and gifts of God, we can glorify him, it says, with one mind and one mouth.

If we can continue to read here, we'll see about some more responsibilities that we have. In verses seven through 13, Paul says wherefore receive ye one another, as Christ also received us to the glory of God. Now, I say that Jesus Christ was a minister of a circumcision for the truth of God to confirm the promises made unto the fathers, and that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written, for this cause, I will confess to thee among the Gentiles and sing unto thy name. And again he saith, rejoice, ye Gentiles with his people.

And again, Praise thee, Lord, all ye Gentiles, and laud him, all ye people. And again Isaiah saith, there shall be a root of Jesse. And he that shall rise to reign over the Gentiles and him shall the Gentiles trust. Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that ye may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost.

So the first thing here, Paul repeats an idea that he stated previously in our application. He says to accept others as Christ has accepted you.

Christ accepted me into his family, despite all my flaws, my character flaws, my sinful flaws. Perhaps I have some attitude or sense of behavior he wouldn't necessarily have, right? I am, for one, I'm not perfect, I'm very imperfect. But for two, take my sin aside. We have differences in how we see things and how we act and what we find funny and what pleases us and doesn't please us.

And we are to accept each other as Christ accepted us. So how did Christ accept me? With open arms.

He opened up his arms and he said, matthew, here I am waiting to receive you. He did not attempt to change every little thing about me before accepting me. Fact christ does. It the opposite. He attempts to change me for the better only after receiving me just as I am now.

I'm not saying that because that's how Christ, we seed me to change me, that we should change each other. We'll let Christ do the change in there. But the point that Paul is making is that we are to receive each other as we are. We are to receive each other, all of our sins, all of our flaws, all of our issues combined, if that person was received by God, why should that person not be received by us?

In fact, if we need another reason too, more so than the fact that Jesus accepted us, more so than the fact that he accepted them, and that should be a great reason. The fact that I know every little thing that I've done and God accepted me anyways, I should never close the door to someone else. But how about the fact that I want others to accept me the way that I am? Right. Treat others the way you want to be treated, like golden rule.

Or as the Bible would put it in Matthew 712, he says therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them. For this is the law and the prophets.

Now, this same passage, it tells us that Christ had come to help the Jews. He was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto their fathers. Jesus confirmed the promise made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that through then would all families of the earth be blessed. How did that happen? When he died and he rose again, and he gave that free gift to all who would receive it.

All families of the earth may have been blessed to David when God had promised that from his seed, from his root, the root of David with the Messiah would the Eternal King come to reign. And Jesus has fulfilled that promise. We know that he's the Eternal King, because we know that he is God because he resurrected. And we know that he is reigning now and will even reign here on the earth. We know that he is the eternal king.

There shall be no king, no government and no enemy that will ever overthrow Him.

But he has done what he had promised. And by the way, what a great thing it is, this side of history to look back and see that all of the promises of God to the forefathers of our faith have been kept. Because when God makes a promise to me, I can look to the future and know that he will keep it. It was 20 years from Abraham to Christ. Abraham never saw the fulfillment of that promise.

Isaac never saw the fulfillment of that promise. Jacob never saw the fulfillment of that promise. Moses never saw the promised Land, at least from within the Promised Land. David never got to see the king that would come from his seed, from his root, that would reign eternally.

John the Baptist did not live to see the Messiah that he prepared the way for to be resurrected.

And nonetheless they live their life with faith, with the knowledge that because God declared it, that he would fulfill it. And here we are, 4000 years from the time of Abraham, and we can see those promises laid out. We can see when they were fulfilled, how they were fulfilled, when they were fulfilled. And that should give us great faith and great confidence that our God is a promise keeper. So when he says to you, I will never leave or forsake you, never means never.

He's kept every other promise.

And so we can have confidence from today until whenever we die, that he will never leave or forsake us. And when he says, behold, I am coming quickly like a thief in the night, we can live with that same faith that he is returning it's 20 years from when he resurrected till now. But don't forget it was 20 years from Abraham to Christ.

It was 1000 years nearly from David to Christ.

So we know that just because he promises us something, that it's not going to be on our time, but we know he will keep it. In fact, as another example, we'll talk about on Wednesday in Bible study. He promised Jacob, you know, Israel, that he would bring him out of Egypt. Well, he was dead before he left Egypt, but the promise was kept. That might be a little bit of a worse example, but it demonstrates the point that when God makes a promise, he will without fail keep it.

In verses nine to twelve, it tells us here that there is pardon for the Jews and the Gentiles alike. It tells us that the Gentiles of which every person here tonight, you are a Gentile, and you have received a pardon. Psalm 1849 says therefore will I give thanks unto Thee, Lord, among the heathen and sing praises unto my name. David was seeing and give thanks to God among the heathen because they too receive a pardon.

Now to us we have an instruction in Psalm 17, one o, praise the Lord, all ye nations. Praise Him, all ye people. David praise the Lord because we had salvation and would be given salvation. And we should praise the Lord as well, because we have received salvation. And this is rightful praise.

Praise that he deserves, that he has a right to receive. And that tells us in verse nine that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy, that we would sing unto his name. And Paul tells us in verse ten, he says, rejoice he Gentiles with his people, we should rejoice. And even the Jews should rejoice. Remember we talked about in chapter nine and chapter eleven that it would seem to the Jews that Paul was talking against, and like there was no hope for the Jews.

The God of the Jews, the God of the Israel is open to the Gentiles, and the Jews have rejected him. But even the Jews in verse twelve, the prophet Isaiah had said, there shall be a root of jesse. This is referring to Christ here. And that he shall rise to the reign over the Gentiles, and Him shall the Gentiles trust.

But we know that there is a remnant of Israel. There are Jews today who are saved. There have been Jews for 20 years who have trusted in.