The Book Of ROMANS.....A Systematic Teaching

crossnote said:
Speaking of seeker friendly, when we lived in Redondo Beach, where there was a Lutheran Church that had a motorcycle in the narthex/foyer with a challenge 'to those who invited the most people to church would win the bike'.
(now Major, don't go getting any crazy 😜 ideas).
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OK. I promise that I wont!

I actually understand that idea and I did it a long time before Rick Warren did it. I just did not call it SEEKER FRIENDLY!

I called it....."ALL ARE WELCOME"!

Crossnote......the last church I was at and retired from was in Deland. It was 17 miles from Daytona Beach International Speedway right off Interstate 4. Do you know that for the last 75 or so years, they have had "CYCLE WEEKS" at Daytona. It comes right after the Daytona 500 in Feb.

For the last 25 years we put up a HUGE sign on the highway that says........"BIKERS WELCOME".
We sponsored a free lunch after the noon services on Sunday and we always had about 100 bikers come and fellowship with us. That was a two week event and we made thousands of really good friends that made coming to church with us a regular yearly event.

They would make Sunday an event and come as a convoy. It was and still is a great day BUT.......the friends they brought were NOT SEEKING GOD. They were just looking for a motorcycle trip with their friends and a FREE MEAL.
However that got fed the Word of God and we saw many convert to Christ.

That then is the "rest of the story".
 
Romans 3:13........
"Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips:'

I am not trying to be goolish or harsh in any way. If you do not like that kind of words. STOP READING HERE!

Have you ever smelled decaying human flesh? I DO NOT ADVISE IT. Having been in war and combat I can promise you that I have done so more times that I want to think about. It is something that YOU will never forget.

That is what an OPEN SEPULCHRE is like. That is how we look to God. He is the great physician and when we looks into our throats He sees our sickness....SIN.

We are quick to say........But I have never killed anyone or committed adultery! That may be true but YOU have LIED!

"with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips:'!!!!

Gossip....rumors, slanderous reports. May I say to you very frankly.....one of the worst places to hear those kinds of sins is at Wednesday night prayer meetings in churches all over the land.

Many a reputation has been slaughtered by a bunch of people giving a report of the health of others.
 
Major said:
Gossip....rumors, slanderous reports.
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Lies, excuses... God sees our thoughts. God knows our very being. We cannot lie to God, neither can we even attempt to lie. So, to coin a phrase, God calls BS. Hence the importance of confession. We do well to acknowledge our sin to God before God pulls that knowledge out and dumps it on the floor before us and with raised eyebrow asks, 'what about this?'
 
LearningToLetGo said:
Lies, excuses... God sees our thoughts. God knows our very being. We cannot lie to God, neither can we even attempt to lie. So, to coin a phrase, God calls BS. Hence the importance of confession. We do well to acknowledge our sin to God before God pulls that knowledge out and dumps it on the floor before us and with raised eyebrow asks, 'what about this?'
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Amen!
 
Major said:
They would make Sunday an event and come as a convoy. It was and still is a great day BUT.......the friends they brought were NOT SEEKING GOD. They were just looking for a motorcycle trip with their friends and a FREE MEAL.
However that got fed the Word of God and we saw many convert to Christ.
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Yes, I've been to a number of Missions, where it was 'preaching first, provender to follow.'
 
crossnote said:
Yes, I've been to a number of Missions, where it was 'preaching first, provender to follow.'
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Ya know........it is hard to concentrate and absorb preaching if you are hungry. Many years we have had a BREAKFAST and then invite our cycle friends to stay. It really has been a blessing to do.

When we started many years ago, the cycle bunch were pretty rag tag. Over the years we have seen them become very articulate.
Now they are individuals with incomes and good jobs who take a vacation every year and come to Florida in the winter.

The race track now.....This is what reaching out will do>>>>now has begun to ask for our Baptist association to come to the racetrack during Feb. and March and set up tents!!!!!

We have been asked, can you believe it.............to give out Christian tracks. We have manned these booths and along with tracks we give out bottles of water, Gatorade, peanuts, toothbrushes and tooth paste.

I have been involved in NASCAR since 1966. I used to race at a track in Barberville Fl. and I was at one time a part owner in a NASCAR team. Did you know that NASCAR is the ONLY professional sport that DEMANDS that a prayer said by a Christian minster will be done at every race event.

Did you know that NASCAR is the only professional sport the DEMANDS the anthem be played before every event and every single person on Pit Road must stand for both!!!!!!

A couple of years ago when Pro football teams allowed their teams to knell or stay in the dressing room for the anthem ..........several owners, Richard Petty, Richard Childers, Joe Gibbs and Rick Hendrick to name a few signed a letter to NASCAR that if any of their employees did not STAND for a prayer and the national anthem, they would be fired on the spot!

To this day to my knowledge that have never happened.

What has all this got to do with this thread.............NOTHING what so ever!
 
Romans 3:14..........
"Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness:"
Under the tongue of men is mischief and vanity. Also.........he is prone to cursing.

If you listen to what is being said today, you know that cursing is in the vocabulary of all men. Whether it is a ditch digger, a doctor, a college professor or an stay at home mom, we are all better at cursing than we are at any other language.

WHY?

Personally I think that it is due to TV and Movies. Exposure to words that were never said has encourage people to accept those words now as "normal".

Are we becoming less and less moral?............YES!

Is it due to the company we keep?....................YES!

Swearing is a natural part of human speech development. We have learned which words are taboo and which words are not through our normal childhood development. We also learn that not all swear words are equal, and some represents a greater level of anger than others. We then learn that we may be able to say a swear word in one social context, but not another.

We as a society has made cursing NORAMAL speech!

Isn't that exactly what this Scripture says???????????
 
Romans 3:15.........
"Their feet are swift to shed blood:"
Is that a strange phrase or not????

Isaiah 59:7 gives us a better perspective.............
"Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood: their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths."

If you will recall, Paul has been quoting from the Old Testament to back up his statement that all people are under sin and deserving of God's anger. Feet, as used symbolically in Scripture, are representative of the intentions and actions of men.

Where a person's feet go, they go; the feet are simply the mechanism by which a person "goes to" certain places to do those sins which are against God.

By nature, people are quick to hurt each other when we think it will help ourselves. Causing pain to others is a barrier we are willing and ready to cross if we think that it will give some kind of gain or profit.

James put it this way in 4:2..........
"You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel".

This is normal human behavior, but it rightly earns for us the angry judgment of God.
 
Romans 3:16.........
"Destruction and misery are in their ways".
A person goes where their feet go, so when a person's feet rush to violence, it means they are quick to aggression and vengeance.

Man/humanity leaves desolation and distress wherever he goes.
 
Romans 3:17........
"And the way of peace have they not known".
Do you think that man knows the way of peace. If I was to ask you how many wars men have fought going back to Genesis to today......
what would be your guess?????

What if I told you that since the United States was founded in 1776, she has been at war during 214 out of her 235 calendar years of existence. In other words, there were only 21 calendar years in which the U.S. did not wage any wars.
* Pick any year since 1776 and there is a 91% chance that America was involved in some war during that calendar year.

* No U.S. president truly qualifies as a peacetime president. Instead, all U.S. presidents can technically be considered “war presidents.”

* The U.S. has never gone a decade without war.

* The only time the U.S. went five years without war (1935-40) was during the isolationist period of the Great Depression.

We DO NOT know the way of peace! Look around you today. It is sad to say, but there are currently ongoing wars or conflicts in three dozen countries, most of them in the Middle East, North West Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

**********************WHY*************************
 
Romans 3:18............
"There is no fear of God before their eyes."
AND HERE IS THE ANSWER TO *******WHY*******!

Man has NO fear of God at all! Man defies God! What Paul said 2000 years ago is even more true to the point that it was then.

When we speak, sin comes out. Everywhere we walk, we leave sin behind. And now, he points out that we never use our eyes to look at the fear—or "respect"—of God.

This final quote comes from Psalm 36:1, where David describes "the wicked" as having no fear of God before their eyes. Paul insists that all of us, every human being, Jew and Gentiles alike, meet this description (Romans 3:10).
We are not righteous. We each deserve God's angry judgment for our sinfulness.

Our sin, in this case, is that we ignore or trivialize God. We bring Him down to our size in our hearts. Perhaps we pretend that He does not exist, in spite of the fact that God has revealed Himself and His nature by what He has made (Romans 1:20).

Or we might deceive ourselves into thinking that God cannot find out our sin (Psalm 36:2), or that He will not judge us for it. That lack of respect for God's righteousness, His power, and His willingness to act, is eternally fatal.

May I tell you why the sin of stealing is like the sin of Rejecting God? Well I am anyway.

You see, the little 10 year old goes into the store. He has NO money but he wants that candy bar. So his SIN NATURE says...............
"Go ahead and take it. No one is looking". He does just that and he gets away with it. What next...he take TWO candy bars.
Then he steals a Pepsi and a moon pie along with the TWO candy bars. He gets aways with it. The he steals a car and gets away with it. Then he robs a liquor store and as he leaves.....A POLICEMAN MAN SAYS STOP OR I WILL SHOOT!
You see, his days of GETTING AWAY WITH HIS SIN JUST CAME TO AN END.

Rejecting Christ is the same way. We reject Him and nothing happens. Our sin nature says......SEE, I told you no one was watching.
So the Sin keeping adding up and adding up and we get deeper and deeper IN SIN and then all of a sudden, GOD SAYS, IT IS OVER, TODAY IS PAYDAY!
Be careful, your sin will always find you out!

However, Paul will soon show that there is hope for us through faith in Christ.
 
Romans 3:19..............
"Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God."

Man can not attain righteousness by the Mosiac Law. It is as if humanity in its desperation grabbed for the Law as the proverbial straw when drowning.

The Law will not lift a man up! The Law will not save a man. It fact the opposite is the truth.

To hold onto the Law is like unto a man jumping out of an airplane, and instead of taking a parachute, he takes a sack of potatoes.

The Law will pull you down. The Law will condemn you. The Law is a ministration of death.
 
Romans 3:20...........
"Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin."
With this verse, he concludes his argument that every single person deserves God's angry judgment against our sinfulness, even those who live under the law of Moses....the Jews.

The law was indeed God's gift to Israel, but it was not the path to being righteous in God's sight.

Paul puts it bluntly: No human being will be justified in God's sight by works of the law.

Why is this? Because no human being is able to keep the works of the law perfectly.
We are sinners by nature. Every single person, without exception, chooses to do what they know is wrong, at least sometimes.

The law is a gift because it proves to us, to Jews and Gentiles, just how sinful we are. The Law convicts us of our sin!

Without God's written description of human righteousness in the law, we might be tempted to argue that we are pretty good people. When we compare our lives with the rules of the law, however, we must finally admit that we are desperate sinners. We violate God's law in more ways than we can count.

The law brings knowledge of sin and the ultimate conclusion that we deserve God's judgment. That's not the end of the story, though. In the very next verse, Paul begins to describe a path to righteousness for us that is available "apart from the law."
 
Major said:
Romans 3:19..............
"Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God."

Man can not attain righteousness by the Mosiac Law. It is as if humanity in its desperation grabbed for the Law as the proverbial straw when drowning.

The Law will not lift a man up! The Law will not save a man. It fact the opposite is the truth.

To hold onto the Law is like unto a man jumping out of an airplane, and instead of taking a parachute, he takes a sack of potatoes.

The Law will pull you down. The Law will condemn you. The Law is a ministration of death.
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The law gives directions but imparts no power to follow it.
 
Romans 3:21.........
"But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets;"
The words "but now" that begin this verse may be two of the most important words in all of the Bible.

In verse #20 Paul just said in the previous verse that "by works of the law no human being will be justified" in God's sight.

He has told us that Nobody can keep the law perfectly, and no person lives a life worthy of God's righteousness.

SOUNDS BAD FOR US DOSEN'T IT?????

If even law-followers cannot escape God's angry judgment, what hope do any of us have?

So then, Paul turns the page to the main point of Romans: "But now."

Something crucial has changed in human history. The thing none of us could live up to—God's righteousness—has now been manifested, or "made known," apart from the law. In other words, Paul will go on to say, there is hope. There is a path to the righteousness of God which does not require us to keep God's law. HOORAH!

Paul adds that this new thing has not been unexpected.

The Law and the Prophets have been pointing to God's righteousness all along.

In fact, it was always God's plan to arrive at this "but now" as a way for humans to be saved. Paul describes how to come into this righteousness in the following verse.
 
crossnote said:
The law gives directions but imparts no power to follow it.
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Amen!

The Law was a road map to lead us to Christ.

Gal. 3:23.......
"Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed. So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith."

When you see the impossibility of the life that God is calling you to live by the Law, then you will see your need of a Savior.

The law will do one of two things for you—
it will convince you that you are a sinner or make you a Pharisee.
It will humble you or make you an unbearable snob.

The world often sees Christians as self-righteous snobs, who call others to be as righteous as we think we are. How sad that is.
 
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