The Verse That Changed Everything!
Roman’s Series
CCCAG March 8th 2020
Scripture- Romans 1:1-17
Intro:
I’ve been really looking forward to beginning this series. Even though I know that for me anyway, it will be a lot of work, I know it has the potential to grow us, to equip us, and to prepare us for the next chapter of our church families life and destiny in this community.
Roman’s is that important of a book, and having this taught and explained to you will help you not only in your day to day lives, but in being a witness for Jesus in this world.
How many people here have heard of the dark ages? A little history lesson this morning to put our central verses into context.
The Dark Ages were a period during the middle ages where there was a cultural and spiritual decline, especially in Europe and Western Asia. It started around 600 to 700 AD and lasted until the 1500’s.
Although Religion and religious life were very common, true spirituality in seeking and living for God was very suppressed, ironically by the religious elite that wouldn’t even permit a person to own a bible. The printing press had not been invented yet, so everything was copied by hand, and if there was a bible around, it was written in Latin which no one outside of that elite class could read or speak.
During this time, there was a great amount of deception, and even spiritual abuse going on. One of the greatest examples of this was the practice of indulgences. Let me take a moment to explain what those were.
The practice of granting indulgences started in the 11th century by Pope Urban II to reward anyone to signed up to fight in the crusades. They were slips of paper issued by the church, that guaranteed the person receiving it, or their relatives, freedom from purgatory.
If you don’t know what purgatory is- It is not an idea found in the bible.
Purgatory is a belief that came from a tradition that developed in the Roman Catholic Church that everyone needed to serve time in spiritual prison as punishment for their non-serious sins before going to heaven. Purgatory is not the nicest place to be, and you can be there for a while. It was a place of isolation where a soul could spend time in prayer and repentance, but not as bad as hell.
Fast forward to 1347. A mysterious illness begins to spread throughout the Christian world. People who become sick with this disease become ill, bloat up, turn black and died.
The Black Death wipes out 60% of the population of Eurasia, or 200 million people in 3 years.
It is by far the most horrible pandemic ever. The social, political, and religious upheaval shook the Western world to it’s core.
With the church, that meant that 60% of the people who regularly came to church and gave in the offering, died, and those who did come were even more impoverished. A rough guess, but 80-90% of the money disappeared from offering plates.
Throughout Europe, various areas that might have had leaders of questionable integrity began the practice of demanding money for indulgences, or for the forgiveness of sins at all because most church’s, including the Vatican, were still in the middle of huge building projects that needed to be finished.
To show how bad this practice of indulgences got, a saying arose as the priests would call for the offering-
“As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs into heaven”
Why is this bad?
Think about the word indulgence. If you indulge in something, it’s giving yourself permission to do something that is pleasurable. By itself, that’s not a bad thing. God gave us things on this earth to take pleasure in.
Chocolate is an indulgence
For me, hunting is an indulgence
Vacations are an indulgence.
Indulging in God permitted pleasure is not the problem, the problem is indulgences were a system in which you can indulge in forbidden pleasure and then just pay a penalty, and you can do whatever you want.
That’s why we in the Protestant church consider the practice of indulgences heresy, because only the cross of Jesus Christ can pay for your sins. Only through repentance, which means to turn away and admit that God is right to call that action sin can you receive forgiveness.
This practice was largely unchallenged for centuries until the year 1517.
In 1517, a there was a monk who had been assigned to teach theology at the University of Wittenberg Germany was giving the assignment to translate the Latin Bible into German so that the local priests in training could start their studies without have to take 2 years to learn Latin.
This Monk had been raised, trained, and followed his religious system to the letter. He believed everything his church taught.
He even did the sacrament of climbing, on his knees, the 217 steps that lead into St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The teaching is that if you do that, you receive forgiveness of your sins.
The problem is, after he did that, he still felt condemned, and now had very sore and torn up knees.
So this monk returned to Wittenberg and continued translating the bible into his native German, when he came across the scripture we will focus on this morning-
Roman’s 1:17
(Rom 1:17) For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
A few years later the monk, whose name was Martin Luther, wrote about this moment-
“When I discovered that, I was born again of the Holy Ghost. And the doors of paradise swung open, and I walked through.”,
A few century’s later, Charles Wesley wrote a hymn, “And can it be?” that has a verse that describes what Luther felt at this moment.
Long my imprisoned spirit lay
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray,
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.
Luther promptly sat down, and spent the night writing down 95 Theses, or statements condemning the practice of indulgences.
Now remember- one of the reasons indulgences were used was to fund the church, and it’s massive building projects.
Luther strongly condemned that practice in his 95 theses.
For Example-
Theses 82 Why does not the pope empty purgatory for the sake of holy love and the dire need of the souls that are there if he redeems an infinite number of souls for the sake of miserable money with which to build a church?'' The former reason would be most just; the latter is most trivial.
Theses 86 ``Why does not the pope, whose wealth is today greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus (Crassus was a Roman politician believed to be the wealthiest man in history up until that time), build this one basilica of St. Peter with his own money rather than with the money of poor believers?'
Martin Luther went out the next morning and nailed this 95 theses to the door of the church in Wittenburg- the church door was the community bulletin board. His original intention was not to start a revolution, but to have a scholarly debate with his fellow theologians.
But God used it, and it blew up into what is now known as the Protestant Reformation, which was the beginning of the age of enlightenment, and what led us out of the dark ages.
That the power of this verse in Romans- “the righteous will live by faith”
It’s the verse that changed everything.
The first thing this verse did was to-
I. Destroys religious systems
Throughout history, humanity has tried to build a bridge to God. In the book of Genesis, we read about a people who wanted to build a tower to reach the heavens and dethrone God.
The problem is, they missed the point- God already provided that bridge in the rugged crossbeam of a bloodstained cross.
Prior to Luther discovering this truth, his religious system told him to do this, and do that and MAYBE God will be appeased.
God said, I have already done it! It’s written right there in the bible.
That’s why religion says- DO
God says, DONE
The word righteous in verse 17 isn’t a state or condition to strive for- the Greek wording and phrasing means a condition given or granted by God, not a condition attained through human effort.
This is critically important for you to understand, believe, and live accordingly.
For example- I don’t have to go back to school to be a paramedic. I did that in 1996. I attained the title of paramedic. As long as I have a license in my pocket, I’m a paramedic. This has been attained, and no one can take it away. That’s something I earned that right.
However, Our righteousness before God is given to us through the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus. That righteousness doesn’t expire, it can’t be taken away, and it will never stop as long as you continue to follow Jesus.
This idea that we live by faith alone completely destroyed the political and religious system of Luther’s day.
This truth, that “the righteous will live by faith” led to one of the 5 statements of the reformation, also known as the 5 solas.
You can see them on the back of your bulletin today.
They are the backbone of Protestant Christianity, and they are all talked about in the Book of Romans.
Sola Gracia- By Grace alone (God’s riches at Christ’s Expense)
Sola Fide- by Faith Alone
Sola Christus- by Christ Alone
Sola Scriptura- by Scripture alone (our only authority, not tradition, not denominational opinions or position papers, but the bible is our source of faith and conduct)
Sola Deo Gloria- Glory to God alone (not to a man or position)
All five of the sola’s support the idea we see in Roman’s 1:17- the Righteous will live by faith.
There is another important point to this verse-
II. Linked the Old and New Testament
Roman’s 1:17 is really a quote from a little-known book in the Old Testament called Habakkuk. Habakkuk was a prophet in Judah at the same time as Jeremiah when the Babylonian armies were on their way to conquer Jerusalem once and for all. Habakkuk was praying one day, and pouring out his heart to God about the rampant sin in the land.
I’m going to paraphrase and condense it for the sake of time-
Habakkuk’s first question to God- “God, you are holy, and you cannot stand sin. How long before you judge those people who keep leading us into sin?”
God’s answer, “Judgment is coming. The Babylonians are on their way and they will wipe out what’s left of Israel and Judah.”
Habakkuk answered- “Whoa! Slow down! I was just asking for a little disaster (maybe a small earthquake, or a pillar of fire of something) to get people’s attention, not a compete annihilation? Besides (and this was his central argument), as bad as we are- the Babylonian’s make us look like choir boys! They are the most evil and nastiest people ever, and you are sending them to judge us?
God’s reply- “Don’t worry, they will meet their end as well, and their mighty empire will fall in a single day.”
God then contrasts the soul of the proud with the soul of the redeemed with this verse in Habakkuk 2:4
(Hab 2:4) “Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith.
I bring all this to your attention this morning to say this-
God is the same, yesterday, today, and forever.
God is no different today, then He was to Adam, to Noah, to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, any of the Judges, the prophets, the kings, or anyone else in the Old Testament.
It’s always been about faith. (Repeat)
Faith, or lack thereof, is where all this mess started.
Consider Genesis chapters 2-3
God creates humanity and places them into the Garden of Eden. He gives them two basic guidelines and one hard rule
The guidelines-
Eat all you want
Have a lot of babies
The hard and fast rule-
Don’t eat of the tree in the middle of the garden.
Obviously, they had faith to follow the first two, because hear we all sit today.
But they lacked faith in God’s word, and ate from the forbidden tree.
So this spiritual conflict we find ourselves in today, the wars, the suffering, the evil, the sickness all come from the same source-
Not trusting in God’s word.
In other words,from a lack of faith in what God says is true.
It’s all been about faith.
It always will be about faith.
The bible says
Heb 11:6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.
It’s incredible nuggets of truth like this that make Roman’s so powerful. It’s been called the Gospel According to Paul, and if we back up one verse, we see this proclaimed-
III. This is the Gospel Paul is not ashamed to preach
(Rom 1:16) 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.
If you ever want to know what Paul's mission statement was , it is found right here in this one verse .
He saw his mission as preaching to the Jew about the glorious riches of Jesus Christ and then to the gentile about the one true God that loves them and wants to forgive them and bring them home.
Everything after this that you see in the writings of Paul wrap around these verses right here in the book of Romans.
You've heard me say that John 3:16 and 17 are the central verses of the Bible that you interpret all the other verses through that thought that Jesus gave to us About God
“For God so loved the world that he gave us his one and only son that who ever would believe in him will not perish but have everlasting life For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world but that the world should be saved through him”
When you use that lens to look at the Bible everything starts to make sense then. The hard questions we would ask about God's actions in the Old Testament become crystal clear.
One of those hard questions- “how can a god of love order the killing of every man woman and child who existed in a promised land before Israel came to conquer it?”
you can answer that question by applying John 3:16 and 17, and by considering what was happening in that time in history-
The nations and people of Palestine prior to Israel arriving were deep into very evil idolatry which included sexual slavery, rape, and child sacrifice as part of their worship to Pagan gods. God gave them 400 years to repent, and they only grew worse.
Israel was their judgement, just like several hundred years later Babylon was Israel’s judgement. This wasn’t a temper tantrum thrown by a God that let his creation get out of control like some atheists would say, but God removing a great evil from the earth before it hurt more people or spread further.
An oncologist is not evil for cutting cancer out of a body- they are protecting the rest of the body from something that will kill it, and God deals with humanity as a whole the same way.
To be clear- this is not a rabbit trail to fill up space in a sermon- it’s an example of how you should view the rest of the book of Romans, and even the rest of Paul’s writings- through the prism of Romans 1:16-17.
We receive God’s grace (God’s riches at Christ’s Expense) by faith.
Paul doubles down on that in his teaching to the church at Ephesus-
(Eph 2:8) For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
You can’t add to God’s salvation. You can’t buy your way into forgiveness, do a mighty work to gain God’s favor, or suffer your way into His good graces.
The only scorecard God keeps has a yes or no on it-
Did that person through faith accept what I have already done for them through the cross of Jesus Christ?
If you are trying your best to add your own works to that scorecard, the checkmark starts moving slowly over to the “No” box.
It’s only through faith in believing His plan of salvation through Jesus Christ that you can be saved.
This is the Gospel that Paul was not ashamed of.
This is the Gospel that Paul stated He was called to preach.
This is the Gospel that we believe today.
That is the Gospel that is proclaimed throughout the book of Roman’s, and this book and it’s truth is what changed the world.
It’s my prayer that in the coming weeks, God change our hearts and our minds as we explore it’s richness.
Altar Call
