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Introduction to Romans (Part A)

Cross Reference Radio / Pastor Rick Gaston
The Truth Network Radio
January 20, 2025 6:00 am

Introduction to Romans (Part A)

Cross Reference Radio / Pastor Rick Gaston

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January 20, 2025 6:00 am

Pastor Rick introduces our new study of Paul’s letter to the believers in Rome via Peter’s 2nd letter to the church reinforcing that Paul’s teachings are correct but they can be difficult to understand. We also learn of the history that leads up to Paul’s writing of the letter.

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A puny and pathetic argument to say, well, I don't believe in the Bible because man wrote it, that immediately limits God. You have just bound God to your standards.

And instead of examining the information, you have already closed it down. And it is, of course, to the one who uses that argument. Well, that comeback, I think they don't want God to be God.

They want to be in control. Let's turn to Peter's second letter, 2 Peter 3. We are introducing Paul's letter to the Romans, and we're going to do it with a foreword from Peter.

2 Peter 3. We are going to stand and take verses 15 and 16. And so, would you stand, please, for the reading of God's Word, 2 Peter 3, verses 15 and 16. And consider that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation, as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction as they do the rest of the Scriptures. What an endorsement when Peter wrote these words. Paul may have already been in heaven.

He certainly had finished all of his writings, with perhaps the exception of 2 Timothy. But he says here, our beloved brother Paul, Paul was a man that put Peter in his place. And Peter, man enough to not let that dim the friendship, his respect for Paul, his ability to see how much God was using that man. He says also, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction as they do the rest of the Scriptures. Well, that shows that Paul's letters were ranked as Scripture in Peter's lifetime. He is saying Paul's letters, his writings, are every bit the Bible that Genesis is, that Isaiah is. Peter said to twist Paul's writings is to damn one's soul, meaning Paul's writings were God's Word. And so he come to a letter like Romans, and it's not just, okay, this is what the first of a few Christian writings. I think it is a puny and pathetic argument to say, well, I don't believe in the Bible because man wrote it. That immediately limits God. You have just bound God to your standards.

And instead of examining the information, you have already closed it down. And it is, of course, to the one who uses that argument, or that comeback, I think they don't want God to be God. They want to be in control. In Romans chapter 1, Paul writes, to all who are in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Rome was the very place Satan did not want Paul to reach. We covered that going through the last two chapters of Acts. Everyone knew all roads led to Rome, but Satan knew that they also led from Rome. And that bothered him when a man like Paul was going to be there. Paul wrote in Romans chapter 1, so as much as is in me, I am ready to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome also. And by this time, by the time that this letter was written, about three years before Paul's shipwreck adventure. So when he goes on the ship, the letter was already read by Satan. He already knew what was in that letter, and he knew that Paul, reaching Rome, could write, he could preach, and he could reach the world.

And he did. He went to Rome and he wrote Ephesians and Colossians and Philippians and Philemon and maybe other documents also that we don't have. He made converts there. We covered some of that as we finished up in Acts. So Satan understood this, the city of the Caesars, the city of lost souls. When God defeated Satan's plans, which were to drown, and if he couldn't drown Paul, he tried to stab him, and if he couldn't stab him to death, he tried to poison him to death. All of that failed, and Luke sums it up. We came to Rome. Not a happy ending for the devil.

Three cheers in heaven for that one. We can fort Satan's plans. Every Christian can. Why, though, is this letter to the Romans considered Paul's doctrinal masterpiece? Well, my answer is because of its aggressive teachings on Christianity's essentials. A defining verse is Romans 5.

I think every Christian loves this. Where sin abounded, grace did much more. How much theology is behind that? How much theology is that built on?

A lot. In this letter, he reaches Jews and he reaches Gentiles. He talks about sin and faith and salvation. He poured out on the Romans.

I don't, for one minute, think that was his initial thought. The words faith and sin dominate the letter, because he's dealing with these things. Faith is the antidote to sin, and salvation is the outcome. And the title of this series is Sin, Faith, and Salvation. Last time we did Romans, it was the masterpiece of God. Next time, when we get to heaven, I'll do it again.

I'll know better, and then you can learn. Anyway, the word faith appears more in Romans than any other book in the Bible. Now, ratio-wise, there are others that use percentages higher, but still, that says quite a bit. In fact, in the New Testament, the word sin appears most in Romans than any other book in the New Testament. Hannah, the mother of that incredible prophet Samuel, he is one of the greatest characters in Scripture. She sums up the beauty of salvation in just a few words. 1 Samuel 8, he raises the poor from the dust and lifts the beggar from the dung hill to set them among princes and make them inherit the throne of glory. You're not going to find a better summary of what salvation is all about than that.

You'll find as good, but not better. She's the one that wrote the words, but the author is God. The Holy Spirit moved in her heart, and what a poetic metaphor of life lifted from the dung hill, because this life is cursed.

It is under the curse, and we are called to function in the midst of it. And it is a profound statement on salvation. And the Roman letter lays out how God deals with sin, and how faith is paramount, and how salvation is sure. Romans 8, verse 1, there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. That's blessed assurance, and some theologians would like to take that from you and him and her over this.

Don't let it happen. I'd rather believe the Bible, especially when it's just as clear as that. Paul's not giving a different gospel with fresh insights, spelling out the ABCs of salvation. You younger Christians especially, I hope it's not being lost on you. I hope you don't think this is just a lecture about something in the Bible.

These are real people, and you've got to find yourself in the story. We're going to come to some of the real people that are the ingredients behind this letter reaching Rome, the very thing Satan did not want to do or happen. So in the face of sin's counter attacks on our faith, Paul answers questions. He puts it in question and answer format.

Shall we then sin that grace may abound? Certainly not, and he goes on to answer. It turns down a lot of rabbit holes too. He starts on something and he just goes off the subject, and it's all profound. It drives those who insist on outlining everything a little mad, but that's okay.

It's harmless overall. Let the letter speak for itself. He condemns sin while rescuing sinners. That's God's approach, and that's how Paul lays it out. Therefore, Romans 5, 1, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

His doctrine's always lined up. When we get to the next session, when we get to the first maybe one to seven verses, one to five verses, I'm not sure yet how far we'll get, we're going to find out how he opens up with Jesus Christ the Lord, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, because he loved the Lord so much. He went on to write in the third chapter, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. So he deals with sin, he deals with faith, he deals with salvation, and other things that support, go into this. I mentioned that any pastor that makes habit of standing in the pulpit and avoiding sin is making the same offering Cain offered to God, a fruit basket, no blood on it.

Sin caused death, and God never swept it under the rug, never looked the other way, immediately went right into damage control because he had planned this from the foundations of the world to get for himself a people from this life who would love him sight unseen based on truth. Again, it's not as important to feel as it is to believe. If I'm singing a hymn, I don't have to feel like I like the song, but I have to believe what it's saying. To me, that is very important because I'm not going to let my moods dictate to me my Christianity.

My faith is what matters most. It doesn't say, you know, the just shall live by feelings. The just shall live by faith, said Paul. He says it in Romans, he says it in Galatians, he says it in Hebrews. He's quoting the prophet Habakkuk. And God the Holy Spirit said, I want this repeated to my New Testament saints. They cannot miss this point. So I took a man with the right theology, the right understanding of God, an iron will and a high tolerance for suffering.

Well, I can get my theology together, I can put some iron into my will, but that tolerance for suffering thing, I'm still working on that one and I don't want anybody helping me and giving me things to suffer to work it out. This is the kind of man that wrote this kind of letter. Now you hear it called a book, but it's a letter. Perhaps a quick way to make that distinction is text versus email. You can be a little wordy in a text, you can attach things to it, you can research it in an email, but a text is more right off that moment.

I mean you can do some of that too, but overall, where Luke writes the book of Acts, which is about 18,000 words, almost 19,000 words, Romans is 7,400 and something. And it is remarkable that the man who sat down to write a letter created a book. We want to talk about some of that too. But it took this kind of man with this will, with this tolerance for suffering, to disentangle rabbinical teachings and pagan influences without being entangled himself. He's not sucked into meaningless arguments. He'll warn about that. When we get to chapters 14 and 15, he's going to go with the food fighting deal because he had the Jews with the pork, he had the pagans eating anything, and Paul's saying, look, we're not going to get messed up with this.

We're not going to allow this to divide us, sidetrack us. He warns Timothy as a pastor, don't be entangled with the things of the world. You stay focused as a soldier of the Lord. A man who would stand up to his enemies, that was Paul. But he also stood up to his friends, as I mentioned, about Peter and Barnabas, beloved Barnabas.

When they both found themselves on the wrong side of Christ, Paul engaged them both, and they never stopped loving him. Today you correct some Christians, oh brother, you better watch out, you hurt their feelings, and they're going to stick it to you if they can. Not all of them, but enough of them. It shouldn't happen once.

It happens too often. A church discipline falls on somebody and they're going to strike back. Jesus had much more to do after he ascended to heaven, that's what the entire book of Acts is about, of all that Jesus began both to do and to teach, Acts chapter 1 verse 1.

But he also had a lot more to say. He tells us that in John chapter 16, Jesus said, I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. Again, back to some Christians, you can't put restrictions on them, you can't tell them, they're not ready yet. They're offended by that. Jesus telling his disciples, there are things you're just not ready for yet, you've got to wait.

We should receive these things. Much of what is said in this letter is Jesus going on to say the things that he had to say, which they weren't ready then, but they're ready now. Some Christians can't stand more than a ten minute Bible study, which isn't a Bible study at all. Well, it could be, I'll take that back a little bit.

Somebody put me up to saying that, I'm not going to take the blame for it. 2 Corinthians, Paul writes to them, and he says, since you seek proof of Christ speaking in me, which he's saying to them, you know Christ speaks through me. He's not the only one, but he's talking about himself in relation to the Corinthians. So Christ does speak to his people.

He does work through his people. Christ being dead speaks as the authority of God because he is God the Son. And may we never lose sight of that doctrine. Sin, faith, and salvation, all sin, and face the consequence of death. The proof of sin ultimately is death.

Our last enemy, the Bible says. Romans 3, for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. What happens if you're outside of Christ Jesus our Lord?

Well, you're likely not going to benefit from it. However, Paul's going to spend a whole section dealing with that question, and it is going to be satisfying. Romans 5-8, God demonstrates his own love toward us and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Not Paul, not Moses, Christ died.

There are those that have another puny and pathetic argument. Well, I'm not good enough to be a Christian. No Christian is good enough to be a Christian. That's why it says he demonstrates his own love towards us while we were still sinners.

Don't wait for us to be good, you'll never make it. All your righteousness is as filthy rags. That's Old Testament doctrine, and it's New Testament also. So the next time somebody runs that one by you, run Romans 5-8 by them. Let them know that you're either making an excuse to reject Christ, or out of ignorance you need to be corrected so you can receive him. Romans 10-10, for with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. Things have to be activated. It's not enough that you're aware of something.

You have to act on them. And that's what Paul is saying there in Romans 10. God has provided salvation from death of sin to the resurrection of Jesus, which is about 25 years. The resurrection of Christ is about 25 years before this letter was written, authored by the Holy Spirit, of course, with profound assurance. Now, I like to quote 1 John 5-13. I've written to you these things that you may be assured of your salvation. Well, it's in Romans too, and it's elsewhere, but let's just take one of them out of many from Romans. I am persuaded, Paul wrote, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor death, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Nothing's left out of that. That's the spiritual realm. That's the physical realm. It's physics, it's people, it's devils and demons. None of them can separate me from Christ. One reason why this letter is so loved by many Christians, I prefer narratives, the Gospels, Acts, Samuel, some of you prefer the Psalms, maybe it's Genesis, maybe it's Romans or 1 John.

It's okay. It's all the same author, and it appeals to however we are built. And we are built. We are exposed to things in life, our environment, our teachers, our attackers. These things form, they shape us.

Not to mention the raw ingredients that we're born with. And God says, I use all that. And He does. He finds a vessel that is submitted to Him, as Paul was.

How do you submit? How do you become a vessel, a righteous vessel submitted to God? You have to empty yourself. Look, John the Baptist said, he must increase, I must decrease. Pour me out, pour him in.

It's a very simple formula. The Gospels gives us the Savior. Show us the saved in action based on what Christ did. Romans further explains it all.

Gives us more detail. Now we need to talk about that church in Rome because you're in the church right now physically sitting in a church in Mechanicsville, Virginia. They were sitting in a church in Rome, Italy.

It applies to us every bit as it applied to them. The Roman congregations existed long before this letter arrived and even longer before Paul finally got there about four or five years later after he wrote the letter. Paul wrote this letter before he was arrested in the temple in Jerusalem and that started that trek two years with Felix and then the time in between, the six months or so in Malta before he finally gets to Rome. And Gentiles were initially the minority amongst the Christian Jews that still attended the synagogues. In Acts chapter 18 we read that when Paul came to Corinth he found a certain Jew named Aquila, born in Pontus who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to depart from Rome.

Let me tell you, this is a courageous couple and I think Aquila was more the muscle and Priscilla was more the mouth. And I mean this in a good way and you'll see how it might have been because as time as Paul writes, Priscilla becomes the first one he addresses so he certainly bonded with her in a virtuous way. Roman historian Suetonius, a biographer of Roman emperors he has this little thing about the Christians and Jews in Rome and he says that it was because of Christus, which is a corruption of Christ probably unintentional but he refers to the disturbances within the Jewish communities because of Christus, because of Christ, Christus. And you had the Christians in Rome attending synagogue with their Jewish families and friends and they're saying Christ is Messiah and they were saying no he's not and he had this confrontation so much that the authorities of Rome said you know what, especially the ringleaders, get out, chase them out of Rome. There is no known Jewish male name by this in that time in history, probably in any time so we know that they're not talking about a particular Jewish leader they're talking about Christ. Remember when the pagans wrote about the Christians they didn't really understand Christianity so they just gave you a couple of tidbits, even Josephus, a Jewish historian when he talks about Christ he gives you a couple of tidbits but he doesn't really understand, a carnal man cannot receive or know the things of God they're spiritually discerned. So I think it was a limited action that the ringleaders were put out even though Luke says all the Jews were put out and the reason why I say that is because there's no historical evidence of the Jews being pushed out but it's a detail that is overcome very quickly when you understand the nature of writing and getting to the facts. From these two, Aquila and Priscilla, Paul began to fall in love with Rome. I say that because they're going to stick their necks out he meets them in Corinth once they're pushed out of Rome and they're going to tell him about, we got pushed out for preaching Christ he's going to tell, they stay friends the entire history of the scripture we have the New Testament scripture there's never a parting of the ways even though they go to Rome before Paul does but he writes this in the end of Romans when he's greeting everybody he knows in the church at Rome and you factor in how many did he not know Romans 1634, greet Priscilla you see now she's mentioned the head of Aquila, her husband later he will say Prisca in another letter because, you know, the bond greet Priscilla and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus who risked their own necks for my life to whom not only I give thanks but also all the churches of the Gentiles that's powerful these two Jewish believers if we didn't have them, God is saying if I didn't raise up Aquila and Priscilla you wouldn't have these Roman letters you'd just cut out, we wouldn't have the words of Peter talking about how Paul's letters are heavy duty stuff and you better not mess with them so where do you factor in in the life of others as a Christian? you're not going to get your name written in the Bible unless mom and dad named you after somebody in the Bible but you can get your name on the list of combatants we encourage you to subscribe to our podcast too so you'll never miss another edition just go to your favorite podcast app to subscribe on our website you'll be able to learn a little more about the ministry of Cross Reference Radio so make a note of it crossreferenceradio.com that's all we have time for today but thanks so much for listening Pastor Rick will be back next time in the book of Romans here on Cross Reference Radio
Whisper: medium.en / 2025-01-20 08:04:59 / 2025-01-20 08:14:17 / 9

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