Gospel—D. Gorgas
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Book of Romans, chapter one. Romans chapter one, verse one.
Paul.
A servant of Jesus Christ.
Called to be an apostle.
Separated unto the gospel of God.
Which he had promised afore by his prophets in the Holy Scriptures.
Going to go back and read the end of verse one again because verse two is parenthetical and so we keep it.
In our minds as to how it reads.
Called to be an apostle. Separated under the Gospel of God concerning his Son.
Jesus Christ our Lord.
Which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh.
And declared to be the Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness.
By the resurrection from the dead.
Verse 15.
So as much as in me is I am ready to preach the gospel.
To you that aren't Rome also, for I am not ashamed of the Gospel.
I believe the words of Christ are added words in this particular passage. Go back to verse one, you'll see it's the gospel of God. Is it the gospel of Christ? Of course it is. But the theme of Paul here is that it's the gospel of God concerning his Son Jesus Christ. For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation.
To everyone that believeth.
To the Jew first.
And also to the Greek, for therein is the righteousness of God revealed.
From face to face, as it is written, the just shall live.
By faith.
Beloved brethren, very often in an open ministry meeting, we.
Have what?
I believe is rightly.
That which the Saints often need, which is exhortation.
And consolation.
But there is the aspect of.
Building up and encouraging.
To take hold of the doctrine.
And I have been very concerned in my.
Moving a bit among the Lord's people to find that even the fundamentals of the gospel are being let go. And I'm not talking particularly about those gathered to the Lord's name, but I believe.
We're certainly included in the danger.
And many strange notions are entering in concerning the gospel.
Some are teaching an easy believism.
And some are.
Teaching corruptions of the doctrine of election.
And I believe this book that we have opened before us the book of Romans.
Was given by God as a fundamental treatise.
As to the gospel.
Particularly the 1St 8 chapters.
This book is concerning the Gospel of Jesus Christ, The gospel of God concerning his Son Jesus Christ.
And if you want to get your doctrine straight as to the gospel as to.
Its impact on the ways of God, as we have in the 9th, 10th and 11Th chapters. As to its impact on our lives as believers, as we have in the 12Th through the 15th chapters. This is a wonderful book and one we ought to understand.
And my purpose here this afternoon is not to.
Occupy the Saints with a.
Lecture on that would be inappropriate a lecture on the book of Romans, but rather to encourage you to dig into that book and to understand it concerning the Gospel of God.
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God's good news. It's interesting that God has given us this book in the place that it is in the Scriptures.
After the facts of the Lord's life.
After the.
Four books which.
Touch on his life in ministry after the book of the Acts, which has to do with the circumstances concerning the leading out of the remnant into a Christian position.
And the establishment of the Christian assembly or the church, then God is careful that we understand thoroughly.
What the gospel is, I don't think.
That.
The Apostle Paul, great mind that he was, could have possibly put together a book like this. I know that he could not have put together a book like this with all the studying that he could have done, all the background he had in the Jewish scriptures. He could not have put a book like this together on his own.
It has the marks of divine inspiration on it on every page. The.
And it's a wonderful treatise.
Well laid out.
And I just encourage the young brothers and sisters that are here and us older ones too.
To know what Romans teaches.
And if you don't know what Romans teachers, you don't know what the Gospels about.
Paul, as we know.
Lays out our lost condition in a masterful way in the.
First, second and third chapters and concludes, and we'll turn to that presently, but he concludes that we're all going out of the way, absolutely every one of us lost and ruined before God. Guilty, guilty, guilty, whether it's the heathen.
And sometimes it amuses me.
In a solemn way, but it amuses me to hear people get excited about the heathen when you begin to tell them the gospel. Well, what about those that are out in such and such a place that have never heard? But it's interesting that God takes up their case, first in the book of Romans, and then he deals with the Gentile moralist, the civilized Gentile world, and finally with the Jew in that wonderful place of privilege.
And concludes all under sin.
Now what does the gospel take up?
What is it that Paul is not ashamed of?
You know, sometimes you'll bring a.
A view to people, and you're not entirely convinced of its effectiveness, but you talk fast and you convince people anyway. And then later on something breaks down in what you've said and you're ashamed.
But this passage that we have before us here sets out that the apostle Paul was not ashamed of the gospel, for it's the power of God unto salvation. In other words, it works. The gospel works, and we don't need to be ashamed of it from that standpoint.
If you've never seen anybody saved, and it's a sad thing if you haven't, it sometimes says something to me about.
Where I am in my own soul, how few I've seen saved.
But when someone comes to God through the Lord Jesus Christ.
And his turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, and you see a change in the life. Your heart is overjoyed.
But Paul says here, I'm not ashamed because it's the gospel of the gospel, for it's the power.
Of God. The root word I understand is the same word from which we get our word dynamite.
And there's.
There's an apartment connection there that helps us to understand what it does. It's a great.
Power affected in the human life that changes, turns the life completely around and brings them.
Out of darkness into light. It's the power of God unto salvation.
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To everyone I wish it were, but it's not. It's to everyone that believe it.
I say I wish it were. God's wisdom is that it isn't. It's to them that believe.
Only from my heart standpoint, there are some people that I just.
I could weep that they you bring them the gospel and they have the need, but they don't.
It doesn't do anything in their lives. Why? Because they don't believe it's the power of God unto salvation.
Into everyone that believeth.
Now the next verse is important, the 17th verse. It says for therein in what in the Gospel is revealed.
The righteousness of God is revealed.
It's revealed opened up.
What is the righteousness of God? And that disturbs me too. And I urge you to get ahold of what the righteousness of God is because it's it's misunderstood on every side.
As I talk to people who are Christians who love the Lord, and there's very evident that they've received the Lord Jesus Christ and they're saved, but you ask them what is the righteousness of God? Very often the answer will be how the Lord Jesus lived down here in his life. That's not so.
That's the righteousness of Christ, and without that, there's no Savior.
But the righteousness of God is God's consistency with what He is in Himself, with what he does for the Sinner. May I repeat that.
The righteousness of God is God's total, absolute consistency with what He is in His own nature, in what He does for the Sinner, and that is revealed only in the gospel.
We would not have it opened up to us except for the gospel. It's revealed in the gospel God's total and absolute consistency with what He is in his own nature, in what he does for us, for the lost and ruined Sinner.
And it's revealed in the gospel. Now I'll just mention that this is one of the most orderly books. Every book, of course, is orderly in Scripture, but for the human mind to understand a little bit of it, it can be outlined. And I believe when God deals with the gospel, he made particular.
Particularly plain the divisions of the book. The 1St 17 verses are an introduction the authors.
Introduction God's introduction to the book through the apostle Paul.
And then he begins to take up in a doctrinal way, the book the the gospel in the next chapters, finishing with the 8th chapter. And I'll tell you a little clue. If you're reading through, if you want to see where there is a break in the book, look for a doxology. What's a doxology? That's a word of praise.
That's simply a fancy theological word for a word of prays.
If you go to the end of the 8th chapter, you'll see very plainly a doxology as the apostle bursts forth into praise to God.
Then the question comes up if this is true and God is justifying on the basis of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and faith in Him alone.
What about the Jews place? How does it fit into the ways of God? Where does it, Where is it? How can we fit everything God's dealings with his ancient people as he cast them away forever? And what what is the place of the Gentile and the Jew in regard to that? And so he takes 3 chapters, the 9th, 10th and 11Th chapters.
I once asked a brother who was in the process of giving up dispensational truth. I said dear brother. I named him by name.
Brother very dear to me, we spent two hours by a lake one afternoon.
Just talking and talking. And finally I said to him, what do you do with the 9th, 10th and 11Th chapters of the book of Romans? He says. I haven't thought that through yet.
I said you'll never think it through, dear brother, because that is clearly, if anything sets forth God's dispensational ways. And when I mean when I say by dispensation his his administrative ways. It's those 3 chapters so clear.
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God's blessing upon them in the past as ancient people, Israel.
They are setting aside Where does the Gentile come in? How did he come in?
It's an unnatural grafting in what will happen if gentile profession is unfaithful. It'll be broken off.
And the Jew will be brought back in. But it's all in relation to the gospel.
Now I want to make another remark before we move beyond that point.
Verse three clearly says that of our chapters clearly says.
That the Gospel of God is concerning his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Don't ever go at the gospel in a theological way.
I often remark to people who are steeped in theology. Theology is a science invented by man to make the plain truth of God.
Confused.
I don't believe theology ever added anything to the truth of God.
I believe theology has only made it a craft, a profession.
And it puts it in the hands of a certain few who go to some seminary or some college and they have superior knowledge. I'd rather hear, and I'm sure you would do. I'd rather hear the truth of God expounded by a man who walks in communion with the Lord than to hear the best school theologian on the face of the earth.
One speaks with unction from the Spirit of God, the other speaks out of his head.
And He may say right things and He may be a good speaker, but it isn't what It isn't the same as what God would give us through His servants that are schooled at the feet of Jesus and in the assembly too. What a wonderful place to get the truth. And that's one of the things that lays heavily upon my heart. Whatever time the Lord leaves me here, I want to say to my younger brother, and I've said it before, I want to repeat it.
Whatever breath the Lord gives me.
I want to layout God's truth that I receive so wonderfully from men who have gone before. I want to lay it out in such a way that you can get a hold of it.
Whatever little bit the Lord has given me, I want to share with you while I'm here.
Concerning his Son. That's it. Don't ever detach the gospel from the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no gospel apart from that. It's concerning his Son. That's God's purpose and all the schooling in the world. If you're not in communion with the Lord Jesus Christ and you've lost sight of him as the central figure in it all, you've lost everything.
You've lost everything. The gospel is concerning his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. How beautifully it's put for us in this chapter. I want to go over to the third chapter. We have a marvelous summary of the condition of man.
Beginning in verse nine of the third chapter, Paul has indicted and arraigned before the bar of justice by the Spirit of God.
Not only the heathen, but the gentile civilized moralists.
And finally, the Jew.
Begins with a Jew, by the way, in chapter 2.
And verse 17.
Runs through.
Through chapter 3 and verse 8.
And then he begins to summarize, and he says, what then? Are we better than they?
No in no wise, for we have before proved.
Proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all.
Under sin, I don't have time to read the intervening verses that indict.
Uh. The uh.
The human race with its guilt.
And we come down to verse.
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19.
Now we know that what things, whoever the law, Seth, it set to them who are under the law.
Legalist. Pay attention. Who did it? Say it to? Us, the church?
No.
Says to those who are under the law.
With what purpose? That every mouth may be stopped, and all the world.
May become guilty before God.
That's the heart.
Of man's condition that's where man is guilty before God some.
Some particular group, some particularly blessed group, were more guilty.
But all the world is guilty before God go down to verse.
23 We often quote 23 without 24, but I just love the connection between those two verses.
For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.
Solemn truth.
All all have sinned. I'm not preaching the gospel here right now.
But I just say a word that if there's anyone here that has not come to realize that God wants your attention.
With thoughts being said here, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.
Now verse 24 being justified freely by his grace.
Through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, when we come to God, the first thing that concerns a man that concerns you or me is not our sinful nature. I don't think that comes to mind in the beginning of our awareness of things. The beginning of our awareness of things is that we have a multitude of sins to our charge.
If we're honest people, we have to admit there's a multitude of sins to our charge.
And the first thing that Paul takes up through the end of chapter 5 and verse 11 is how God deals with that multitude of sins.
How he removes righteously?
Those sins from our record in justifies us.
Justifies us.
Freely by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. You know the grace of God is one of the most wonderful things.
And a sense of it in our souls is important to have a sense of the grace.
Of God that has been shown to us, we've been justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth to be a propitiation.
Through faith in his blood.
Now there's two things that the cross declares and concerning the righteousness of God, and let me illustrate it this way. In the Old Testament we have a man.
Who wrote many of the Psalms?
A dear man, but who sinned grievously.
And yet he wasn't stricken dead.
And we're going to see him in glory.
What a wonderful thought.
And yet what a terrible thing. He not only committed the sin of adultery, but took.
The man whose wife he had stolen and sent him to his death.
He killed.
He killed.
That those two heinous sins were on his record.
How could a holy and righteous God pass by that sin? You might say that that is a mystery until the cross.
And then it says here to declare.
His righteousness.
For the remission of the sins that are past all those sins from Adam on down.
To the cross. How could a righteous God pass them by? The cross shows how he could.
He forbid and all those sacrifices that were offered that set forth Christ.
Would have never removed those sins. For the apostle Paul, I believe in Hebrews, says it is impossible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sin. It was impossible. What was the purpose of them to set forth Christ in the figure. And when the fullness of time was come, God sent forth his Son. The Lord Jesus went to the cross of Calvary.
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And God's righteousness in having passed David's sin by is declared.
And made plain that God made no compromise. God made no.
Passing over something that he could not have passed over as a righteous God. It was all dealt with.
But it was dealt with at the cross of Calvary, and that was revealed and declared through the death of the Lord Jesus Christ there on the cross.
Sometimes I've said to people, if you want to.
Understand 25 and 26. Put a little cross.
In between the two verses, because that's where the cross comes, is right there the remission of the sins that are passed. And then verse 26 says to declare, I say at this time his righteousness that he might be just and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus.
I illustrate it this way.
Here's a man.
Who goes through his life?
An alcoholic or whatever other kind of Sinner you might want to say. That's only one type of sin.
But this man staggers into a gospel mission.
He's 63 years old and his body's wasted and he's ruined. His family's gone. Everything's gone. He sits there bleary eyed under the sound of the Word of God, and somehow the Spirit of God gets through to his conscience and soul, and he puts his trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.
He falls down before the Lord and.
Comes to the Lord and he's saved.
And that man is instantly assured that he'll have a place with the Lord Jesus Christ.
In Glory.
He doesn't have to go back and make amends for all the mess that he's made. As far as his soul salvation is concerned, there may be a lot of amends to make in his life in a governmental way.
But as far as his soul is concerned, he's saved gloriously, completely, truly.
And here there is a man who lives all his life on the right side of things as far as man is concerned.
Never with a thought of God and goes into eternity without God.
Without Christ.
And God sends the one into eternal judgment, and the other one is received into glory. How can God be a righteous God and do that? And that's a puzzle to many, isn't it?
Many people stumble at that.
To declare, I say at this time, his righteousness that he might be just and the justifier of him that believes in Jesus. That's what it is. Do you believe in Jesus and you're justified?
There's more. The end of Chapter 4 says we were. It was delivered for our offenses.
That's all those sins that had piled up against us. He was delivered for them and raised for our justification.
And then chapter 5 and verse one says, therefore being justified by faith, we have peace towards God through our Lord Jesus Christ, peace with God. What a wonderful thing, every sin removed and righteously removed from before the presence of God, but now.
The story of the apple tree that my grandmother had in Albany, NY.
Knobby, horrible apples only good for the boys to fight with, and we used to throw them back and forth at one another and hit each other with them and that's all they were good for. Finally, my grandmother said cut that tree down.
Than we did.
Previously we gathered up all those bad apples every year and thrown them into a cider press or something, but they were not good for anything really.
Put out the garbage.
Now the tree was cut down, but something happened after a few years. I went back to Albany as a tree. Grown up. Flowers on it. Apples coming out. Oh, maybe we're going to get good ones this time. Same old gnarled rotten worm eaten hard apples.
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Why? Because the nature was the same that produced them. And so in chapter 5 and verse 12, the apostles attention changes from the offenses, the individual sins to something else that's called sin, that which produces the rotten apples, so to speak.
What's God do with that? Does he forgive it? No, God never forgives that.
He condemns it chapter 8, and I'm going to sit down with that verse, verse chapter 8 and verse 3 for what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin. What did He do with that nature? He condemned it.
Condemned it.
And in the death of Christ, not only were my sins put away, but all that I was is forever removed before the presence of God. What a wonderful thing.
So God deals not only with the fruit, but He deals with the root, and that brings you then to the end of the doctrinal part of the book. May the Lord encourage us. The reason I spoke on this, Beloved, is not to reach souls in the gospel so much as to stir our hearts that we might get the doctrine of the gospel clear in our minds. It's under attack everywhere.
And we need to know what it teaches. And may I just say this is a wonderful little book by Mr. Stanley. I don't know if Bruce has it in there called Life Through Death.
On the book of Romans. I very much recommend it to our younger brothers and sisters.