Address—P. Jennings
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I like to use in the introduction of the presentation of the foundational truth of the Gospel.
In Romans.
Exodus chapter 13.
And verse 17 it says, and it came to pass when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God them LED them not through the way of the land of Philistines, although that was near, for God said less peradventure the people repent when they see war.
And they return to Egypt. But God LED them, LED the people about.
Through the wilderness of the Red Sea and the children of Israel went up.
Harnessed out of the land of Egypt.
And so.
I like to think of these truths that we have in the book of Romans as bringing us into the blessing of deliverance, not on the ground of the energy of the flesh, but on the ground of death and resurrection. Now we know that the Red Sea is not the most.
Profound.
Type in the Old Testament of death and resurrection and blessing that has come.
Of us being brought.
I'd say out of the wilderness into the land of Canaan and us seeing ourselves dead and risen with Christ. But if we remember what I said before, when the children of Israel passed through the Red Sea, they looked down.
And they saw their enemies dead on the seashore. And so in that sense they had passed through death and resurrection, and they've come up and they saw themselves deliver. Now the book of Romans are the truth.
Of salvation, Let's just turn to.
But before we do.
I would like to turn to one other verse because I I've I've grown to love this verse.
As a verse that establishes the Saints when we open the word of God.
And we we take up doctrinal truth. It's very important that we realize we are in a relationship. So let's turn to Romans chapter one.
And verse 7.
And then we can go on to verse 16.
Romans One and verse 7.
To all that be in Rome, beloved of God.
Called to be to be Saints. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
So as we as we take up these foundational truths of the gospel, we want to do so with the realization that we are in a relationship with God our Father.
That is the first thing is you recall me saying last time that that a child of God comes to understand is God is their father.
Enrollment in first John chapter 2 it says of the little children.
That they had, that they have known the Father.
And so before even we take up these truths of deliverance, before we really begin to understand how full the salvation is that has come from the cross of Christ, I want each one of us to remember our relationship with the Father.
God is our father. We're going to go, we're going to learn, and I don't know that we're going to get into it this, this series, this part of the series, but we're we're going to take up the truths of deliverance from law.
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And again, I don't think we're going to get there this time, but the law puts a distance between ourselves and thought.
So if we find ourselves under law, we find ourselves at a distance. We're not on the ground of grace.
And God can't bless on any other ground.
And so we have to get free.
From that.
Situation of being under law. So as I begin again to take up these truths of salvation, of deliverance, I want to remind each one of our hearts that we are in a relationship with the Father. And what does it say here? Grace and peace.
From God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
I just want to ask us, are we in the enjoyment of that?
Grace and peace.
Through God our Father, you know we can take up truths, we can take up doctrines all day long and not be in the enjoyment of the relationship that the work of Christ has brought us into.
And so I just want to make sure that as we begin this epistle, we begin it as it were, as God begins it.
Bringing us into the enjoyment of His presence, into His nearness. Is that where we are as we continue on in the truth of Romans?
Chapter verse 16 of our chapter. It'll help us to get a little bit of a of a review.
Of where we have been.
It says for I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for is the power of God.
Unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew 1St, and also to the Greek the Apostle Paul knew.
The value of the truth of the gospel. If we were to turn back to the first verse, it says Paul and a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel.
Of God.
God had given him the specific purpose of explaining the gospel. Romans is the book where the gospel is explained to believers. You and I have spent hour after hour, which has been wonderful.
In the under the sound of the word of God preached preaching the gospel to those who are unsaved. Now those who of us are saved enjoy the blessings.
Of our sins forgiven. The purpose of gospel preaching is to reach souls that have not had yet had their sins forgiven. Yes, it is for the enjoyment of those who do have their sins forgiven. But the teaching of the Gospel takes us far beyond, and it gives us the truth that's unfolded in the first eight chapters.
I again want to remind the the Saints this afternoon that God positioned the book of Romans as the 1St letter in sequence of letters. It was not the first letter that was written, but it's the first one as we open the scriptures and as we get through the book of Acts.
We come to the 1St letter that's written and it's to the Romans, and the instruction in the first eight chapters is to set forth the elementary truths of deliverance or salvation and so.
He says I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. Or it is.
The power of God unto salvation. What is that salvation?
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Is it only deliverance from the penalty of our sins?
That's usually the emphasis that's placed in our Gospel meetings, and rightly so, that we want souls to come into the enjoyment of their sins forgiven. We want them to escape eternal judgment that their sins require of a holy God. We want them to put their faith and trust in the Lord Jesus.
Who is the one whom God has said as the the truth?
In the life.
But.
The gospel goes much farther. There are other aspects of salvation that you and I need to become very familiar with in order for us to be able to enjoy all of the blessing that has come from the Lord Jesus going to the cross and suffering under the load of our sins. God's deliverance is complete.
And total but you and I.
Grow in our enjoyment and appreciation of the value of that work. And that is a process that is not going to end after this meeting. And you're going to have all the answers and you're going to understand how valuable the work of Christ is with regard to all the aspects of salvation that you need and I need to come into the enjoyment of.
It really is a lifelong process, but if we do not have the foundational truths and still in our soul from the first state chapters.
Then we will be handicapped, like I mentioned that before, we will be believers walking through this world hobbling and and falling and crippled. But God doesn't want that and so he says, Paul said. I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ because he knew.
It was God's power for salvation, salvation from the penalty of our sins.
That brings us into a condition before God, which is permanent, as we mentioned before, a permanent condition of being justified. That's a condition in which God sees us as.
Being in a condition of abiding, never changing righteousness before Him.
We are another aspect of salvation we're going to get into today.
Is salvation from the penalty of our sins?
That truth is unfolded in the middle part of Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, and it ends in Chapter 8. Today we're going to take up the truth that's given to us in the last part of Chapter 5. And if you do not begin.
Here you'll never understand.
How we are delivered from the power of sin and so.
This chapter is a chapter and and I will just say I'm not ashamed of the fact to say that when I share these truths as I do wherever the Lord opens doors.
I'm sharing my own journey. I'm not sharing something that I've just gotten out of a book.
I'm not much of a student and you're probably able to tell that.
Sharing something that God has made good to my soul and by His grace it has changed my life.
And so that's my desire as I share these truths. Now, the last part of chapter 5 is one of the most important chapters in my own journey.
Of bringing me into the liberty of deliverance from the power of sin. So let's take it up.
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Romans chapter 5. It starts in verse 12.
It says wherefore as by one man.
Sin entered into the world, and death by sin. So death was passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.
We understand that there's a pretty marked.
Division in this chapter at verse 12.
From everything that was previous to this, it was, it was Speaking of the work of Christ and its power to deliver from the penalty of sins. And so it was actually Speaking of our sins, that which we had committed, those offenses that God demanded a penalty for, and God's remedy for that penalty.
As we take up from chapter 12 on from verse 12 on.
We're going to take up the question as to how God has brought us into the blessing of salvation from the power of sin. Now we can say actually.
That.
The work of Christ.
Is sufficient.
For delivering us from the power of sin, whether we understand it or not, we may not enter into the enjoyment.
Of deliverance from the powers and now this is the nature, the fallen nature that you and I have received so I'm going to give an example for the little children we've all heard it but.
A pig as a nature, doesn't it? And it likes to roll around in the mud. It loves to get dirty. I guess maybe there's something about, I don't know, it keeps it warm or something. But it loves to be dirty. And you know, we have a nature.
Fallen nature, we received it from our Father Adam.
And that nature.
Loves to sin.
And it doesn't have any regard for the glory of God. So if left to itself, if left to the nature that we have as born as the children of Adam.
We will do our own way, our own will, and that is sin.
So you don't have to tell a child of Adam to sin, because that is what they will naturally do.
And there is a power connected with it that if you want to get out from underneath the influence of that old nature.
Without knowing God's deliverance.
You never will. You can put yourself under the law as we as we're going to see. You can say, OK, I'm going to keep certain.
Standards.
Because I want to be able to regulate that nature in such a way that I won't displease God, but that nature is going to do it anyway. And the more I try to solve the problem of my sin nature, the more I see it at work.
It just seems like the more I try to stop it, the stronger.
It gets and we all know this, don't we? You know, I've got a three-year old grandson and that little boy has come to know the Lord Jesus as his Savior. And the other day he was praying and he was asking the Lord, Lord, help me to be good today.
Help me to be good today.
This three-year old knew.
That he had a sin nature and he also knew that God has all kinds of power, and so if that sin nature was going to be controlled, he was going to have to go to the Lord and he was going to have to ask him for help.
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And you know what? That's a wonderful start.
That is a wonderful start because God, even a little child who might never know what's in these four chapters that we're going to take up, which teaches us the power of God through the cross to deliver us from the from the power of sin and the flesh that that energy that is in us to do the deeds of.
Our old nature.
He he knew.
He could pray. So if there's a young boy here and you've accepted the Lord Jesus as your Savior or a girl and you, you don't want to live according to that old nature, you can ask God for help. And I believe God's going to come in in tremendous ways to be a help to you, but.
There is.
There is a plan.
God has a plan to teach us that He has brought deliverance over the power of this in nature.
But first.
Let's just go a few more verses.
512 and then 513 four until the loss it was in the world. But sin is not imputed where there is no law. So there was a time when there was not there were no rules. God had not set out a a, a a standard of rules for men to follow and and so he wasn't under.
Certain guides to do this or not do this. He was just left to his conscience before God.
And his conscience would tell him that's wrong. And so it's saying here that.
Those that didn't have the commandment like Adam and Eve had, let's just read on because we're going to find that.
Says nevertheless verse 14, death reigned from Adam to Moses even after them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression. When I stopped there, Adam had disobeyed a known commandment. God said, do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. What did he do?
He ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and Evil, so he disobeyed.
A known command. Now all those that went after that, up to a certain point, they didn't have known commands to not do certain things. And so sin wasn't charged, you might say, in the same way it was to Adam. But what happened?
It says death reigned. You know, the wages of sin is death.
And so the effects of sin when man disobeyed God, even though when he wasn't he wasn't disobeying a known command, it still resulted in one thing. What death?
So that's what always what happens when sin is committed. The result is always death.
And so it says now I'm going to read the rest of verse 14. Who is now this is speaking about Adam. OK, When it says who at the end of this verse who is speaking about Adam? Who is the figure of him that was to come? Let me read the whole verse just to get the context. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses even over them that did not sin after the similitude of.
Transportation who is the figure of him that is to come now when the when when the Lord began to open my eyes as to the truth of deliverance this was the first verse that really began to.
Give me.
White as to the truth of deliverance from the power of sin, and I'm going to explain it. It says who is the figure of him that was to come?
You know, as we look at the history of Adam and we say, well, why in the world did God introduce a man that wouldn't be a faithful man, and God's blessing was so hindered by this man?
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It was impossible for God to fully open up the blessing that He had for the human race, because the man that He had put in charge of the human race fell immediately.
And we might say, wow, what a disaster, Why in the world?
Did God choose to have things happen that way? Here comes this man, and he's blessed of God, and he's given special.
Privileges and he was, he was given, he was in charge of all the animals and and almost immediately it turned into a disaster.
And we're going to read how everything after him was affected by what he had done.
And we might think, well, that was that was not very wise plan. Well, let's just read this first again, who was the figure of him that was to come?
That verse tells me.
That it was never God's intention for his flow of blessing.
To come through pattern.
Adam was just a figure of him that was to come.
We need to see this and we need to see it clearly.
Because if we continue in any of the likeness of Adam in our Christian lives, we are in the wrong manner.
And God can't bless.
And this is what God showed me, that His intention was never to bless the human race under the first man. Do you remember when?
Jacob asked Joseph to bring his sons and.
Joseph brought his sons to Jacob, and you remember what Jacob did with his hands. He crossed them and the younger one.
Was the one that got the blessing and the older one and Joseph said don't do that. That's the younger one.
Well, Jacob said. I know what I'm doing.
He's going to get the blessing. The blessing is going to flow through him.
And this is this was the light that came to my soul, that if I was going to get the blessing, the deliverance, the salvation that God has for me, it's going to have to be in connection with Christ.
I'm not going to be able to draw anything from what I am in.
And this brought it brought deliverance. If, if this is all the truth I ever got, when the Spirit of God gives it to us, it changes that briefly.
If there's any tendency for me to use the old man and take up the rule of law, which is the only option?
Because if I take up the rule of law, I'm actually using the old man to do it because the law wasn't given to the new one.
And So what a deliverance that was to my soul, to realize that God's intention was never to channel as a blessing through a through, through Adam. Adam was just a figure. He was a useful figure because what God wants to do is bring us into the blessing that he has for us on the ground of who he is, not on any ground of us creating merit in ourselves.
And so.
We find ourselves what on the ground of grace?
And that's what Paul told Timothy says girl and grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus, you know, if there's any.
Merit that we ever tried to give to ourselves. It's not coming through the 2nd man. It's not the blessings not flowing through Christ.
There's still some disconnect of us not understanding the blessing God has for us in Christ.
And so let's go on.
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I just want to reiterate.
That.
As soon as God takes up the question of deliverance from the power.
Of sin, he introduces a new man.
As this is, this is, we have just gotten two or three verses into the portion in which God is setting forth the truth of deliverance from the power of sin, and he's already introduced Christ.
What a tremendous thing for us to get ahold of.
As we, as our souls lay hold of this, our souls rest on the ground of grace. It says verse 15. Now this is where I have to go to Darby's translation, if you don't mind. Since I don't have my Bible, I have to go to my phone.
Verse 15 says, But shall not be active favor be as the offense? For by the offence of one that many have died, much rather as the grace of God, and the free gift in grace, which is by the one man, Jesus Christ, abound unto many.
The rest of this chapter is a contrast.
The rest of this chapter is contrasting the 1St man.
His deeds and the results of those deeds.
The second man, his deeds and the results of those deeds.
So it says.
But shall not the act of favor be as the offense? So when Adam sinned, what happened?
It affected his race.
His race came under the condemnation.
His race received the nature, the fallen nature. His race became just like him. Shall not the act of the offense, excuse me? Shall not the act of favor be as the offense? God is taking us up now.
On his own provision shall not be realized. It's it. It brings in the act of favor first.
The act of favor is going to be on the same ground as the act of the offense. So when God chooses to bless through Christ, He is going to bless everything that comes into contact, as it were, with identification with the Lord Jesus.
That's what happened with Adam. He sinned. Everything that was connected with Adam ended up with the same curse, the same judgment, the same condemnation. But God says the act of favor works the same way.
You and I now could God come out in favor before?
Could God act?
In connection with what his heart really desired under Adam.
He was hindered.
And then when man put himself under the law, that hindered his ability to come out in favor until the law was set aside.
That God says I've got a new man now.
I found one who I can channel my blessings through and there's never going to be a hindrance of my favor flowing through this man. Never going to be a hindrance. There's never going to be an act that's going to hinder my favor.
From flowing.
And let's see here.
Sorry, I find the King James translation to be very difficult.
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It says in verse 16, And shall not as by that, as by one, that sin be the gift.
So because one send death reigned, the result was death.
Because of one gift. What came through the gift?
What's the opposite of death? Life.
So through this one man, you and I come into the blessing.
Of life.
Through Atom.
Just read it again.
And shall not as by one that sin be the gift.
For the judgment was of 1 to condemnation.
But the act of favor of many offenses unto justification.
The result of Adam's sin was God having to act in judgment. You know the opposite of that.
The result of the Lord Jesus acting in obedience.
Open the gate for God's favor to flow, one brought of necessity because of God's holiness, judgment. Holiness demanded that God execute judgment, but because of the act of the Lord Jesus in his obedience, the result was God.
Acting in favor.
Isn't it wonderful that you and I have been brought into connection with the One?
Who's who's favor flows through?
So we're getting a contrast that we don't want to forget. This is important that we see this God sets this contrast before us so that we will never in our practical everyday Christian lives.
Reach back and try to get anything from what we are in.
Or.
In Adam's energy, which is the flesh, we're not even going to get into the the teaching of the Spirit of God. That's the energy for our new life. We're not going to get there. But what we want to understand is God first sets the contrast before us and says all blessing has always been intended to flow through.
The Lord Jesus.
Because that's where my favor, you know, if we.
In our practical everyday life, begin to understand what deliverance and liberty is. It's always going to be a result of God's favor. It's always going to be a result of who God is. Not because of who I am, Not because what I have accomplished, not because of what I have done.
Not because of the determination of my will that I have set to please God. It's going to be because God's favor flows through Christ and I am in him. God says you're dead. You're risen in newness of life. That is the place of blessing and that has a very, very practical everyday.
Result.