Latest / Admonition Podcast / 2017-05-19 - Romans Se... | Jan 02, 2026 005
Transcript
- 0:03Once more, reflections on Romans.
- 0:10oh First 17 verses.
- 0:14Introduction.
- 0:18Then 18 through 32, the faithless non-Jewish world.
- 0:30Then two, one, to three, 20.
- 0:36the faithless Jewish world.
- 0:43with the summary remark in 320.
- 0:47Now we know that whatsoever things the law said, it said to them that are under the law, that every mouth might be stopped and the whole world brought under judgment before God.
- 1:02So stamp across the entire human family.
- 1:07faithless.
- 1:10Then 321 all the way through 511, it's dealing with the faithfulness of God.
- 1:20We're calling the lessons a beloved rebel.
- 1:30The human family is rebellious, faithless to God.
- 1:36but not unloved by God.
- 1:42ah We need to make up our minds to this.
- 1:46Why?
- 1:47We either hear the gospel on this matter or we're not hearing God.
- 1:53The human family rebelled.
- 1:56And see, that knee's developed.
- 1:58I'm not talking about babies.
- 1:59I'm not talking about children who have been hurt.
- 2:02I'm not even talking about every single individual.
- 2:06It's true that every single individual that grows to what we m
- 2:10characteristically call the age of accountability.
- 2:15And then at that point we've all sinned.
- 2:17But that's not what the Scriptures are dealing with.
- 2:23It's dealing with the holistic, the whole human family as a human family.
- 2:30Rebelled against God and the rebellion spread and the corruption spread like fire in a paint factory and we were all in it.
- 2:41And then we were overwhelmed with the power of the corruption that being reduced.
- 2:45So that our habits, our shaping, our nature by the practice became overwhelmingly strong and it was no getting us out of it.
- 2:56And what did God do?
- 2:58He didn't obliterate us.
- 3:01He pursued us.
- 3:03And why did He pursue us?
- 3:08redeem us.
- 3:10So in 321 through 511, we're talking about the beloved rebel.
- 3:22Once more, God did not come into the world in and as Jesus Christ to damn the world.
- 3:38It come into the world that the world might have life.
- 3:48Look, if that one truth is true!
- 3:55are few then of the human family.
- 4:00Our view of the human family must change.
- 4:06If we don't think God loves the human family, he does.
- 4:17Sir Paul in then 321 says, in the light of the unfaithfulness of the human family, let me now talk to you about the faithfulness of God.
- 4:28oh Is this some new thing?
- 4:31No, no, he said, this thing is born witness to by the law and the prophets.
- 4:38I'm only saying what the Old Testament called for.
- 4:41And number two, this faithfulness of God does not depend on the Mosaic covenantal structure.
- 4:54Prior to the Mosaic covenantal structure,
- 4:58the Mosaic Covenant, there was the Abramic Covenant.
- 5:02Abraham wasn't a Jew.
- 5:03He was a Mesopotamian, for petty sake.
- 5:07He lived between the rivers down in Ur of the Chaldees.
- 5:10He and his kinfolk worshiped gods.
- 5:14That's what Joshua 24 says.
- 5:17God called him.
- 5:20He made a covenant with him long before Moses came along.
- 5:25God made a covenant.
- 5:27He made a covenant that would be with the physical children of Abraham, but for the world.
- 5:35And so when God fulfills the Abrahamic covenant, He's not fulfilling something that hung on the Mosaic law.
- 5:45He's fulfilling something that was prior to the Mosaic law.
- 5:51All of that is spelled out in Galatians 3.
- 5:55and mentioned here as we'll see.
- 5:59So he said, let me tell you about the righteousness of God.
- 6:02Do you know what it's based on?
- 6:05No, where is that?
- 6:06Is it based on the law?
- 6:07No, no.
- 6:09Is it based upon some good guys and some good girls in the Jewish world and in the Gentile world?
- 6:17No, no.
- 6:18What's it based on then?
- 6:22And he points to Jesus of Nazareth.
- 6:25and says it's all based on his faithfulness.
- 6:34so that God shows his faithfulness in one place, in one person, nowhere else.
- 6:43Well, see that phrase, nowhere else, is an overstatement.
- 6:47But it's not an overstatement in this respect, that it's in Jesus Christ, altogether, flawlessly, perfectly.
- 7:00He shows his faithfulness.
- 7:01He showed his faithfulness, for example, when uh he brought Israel into the promised land as he said he would.
- 7:08So he showed his faithfulness.
- 7:10But that's not what Paul is dealing with.
- 7:13Paul is dealing with, and here's a funny word, I'm not even going to develop it.
- 7:16Paul is dealing with eschatological matters and time issues.
- 7:22He's not denying that God loved people way back then.
- 7:25He's not denying that God kept His word way back then.
- 7:28But He sums the whole thing up in one big, all-encompassing, overarching purpose.
- 7:39And it all depends on, one, Jesus Christ.
- 7:45And in his faithfulness, God was showing how he was keeping faith to the human family.
- 7:57Yeah.
- 7:58And if you looked at Jesus and rejected him,
- 8:06You are rejecting God.
- 8:08So God is faithless.
- 8:11God is not faithful.
- 8:13He says I'm doing it in Him, but I don't believe that, so...
- 8:211 Peter 1 21 says, God, God raised Him, Jesus, from the dead.
- 8:31That through Him, the one God raised from the dead, you might believe in God.
- 8:38That's 1 Peter 1 21.
- 8:39Take a good look at that and reflect on it for a while at some point.
- 8:42Will you do that?
- 8:44So, it's Jesus who is the faithfulness of God embodied.
- 8:50And anyone who embraces him uh in faith, he experiences.
- 8:57Nah, not fully, Mark you, for fully is for another day when the Lord returns.
- 9:03But in Christ Jesus right now, one experiences it in life and transformation and new vision and all of that kind of thing.
- 9:13But we're all waiting, says Paul, as we'll see if we're still alive when I'm done here.
- 9:19uh In Romans chapter 8, Paul says, we wait for the redemption of our bodies.
- 9:25I mean, there's stuff to come, even though it's happening right this minute.
- 9:31So those who by faith lay hold on Jesus Christ are embracing the faithfulness of God.
- 9:40And we put our arms around him when we whisper in his ear, is God faithful?
- 9:44And he says, yeah.
- 9:47And we say, how?
- 9:48uh
- 9:48How do we know?
- 9:50And he says, do you know me?
- 9:53We say, yes.
- 9:56He says, I am the faithfulness.
- 10:03In John 14, he will say to Philip and the rest, I am...
- 10:09Well, he said to Martha, I am the resurrection and the life.
- 10:13He will say to the apostolic group, I am the way, the truth and the life.
- 10:21I'm everything.
- 10:23You see the Sabbath?
- 10:26See the feast of tabernacles when God threw His tent over you and protected you in the wilderness?
- 10:32You see the Passover?
- 10:34I am the Passover.
- 10:35Everything, everything I meant.
- 10:39And I am the faithfulness of God manifested in my faithfulness.
- 10:50So, he said, there is no distinction.
- 10:53Jew and Gentile, it's all one story.
- 10:57And then he said that God set him forth.
- 11:00as propitiation, other versions render it as an expiatory sacrifice, an atoning sacrifice.
- 11:10That's better, but it's...
- 11:14Well, forget the discussion on it.
- 11:15That's better, but it's not the best.
- 11:18And if it took too long, they're going to need a discussion to say how the word should be rendered here.
- 11:26But one thing we're sure of is God
- 11:30is not saying, I set forth Jesus as the one I'm punishing so that I can get to forgive you.
- 11:38What kind of a God is that?
- 11:40Would you tell me that?
- 11:41What kind of a God is it who can forgive you without punishing somebody innocent?
- 11:48Tell me that.
- 11:51Tell me that.
- 11:52What kind of a God is it who can forgive without punishing sin out of it?
- 12:00Jesus Christ, we're told by some people, Christ takes all our sin on Him, off, off us, on us, and God punishes sin away?
- 12:15Punishes it away?
- 12:17He doesn't forgive it.
- 12:19He punishes it away.
- 12:24That's bad doctrine.
- 12:26So I don't care what scholars say.
- 12:29Well, it's a good metaphor.
- 12:31It's not a good metaphor.
- 12:32But if it were offered as a metaphor, that wouldn't be so bad.
- 12:37The people who offer penal substitution aren't offering it as metaphor.
- 12:41They say it actually, literally is true that God punished Jesus for everybody's sins.
- 12:53Well, if Jesus was punished for everybody's sins, then how can anybody be punished then?
- 13:01Ah, and that's where some people with a distorted theology enter.
- 13:07They say, he wasn't punished for everybody's sins.
- 13:10He was only punished for a certain group's sins.
- 13:14There you go.
- 13:16There you go.
- 13:17This is where penal substitution leads.
- 13:20It either leads to universalism
- 13:24or least to
- 13:28limited atonement where Christ does not die for everyone.
- 13:33He dies for only an elect few that God has in eternity determined, well, I'm going to have them and I'll get him to die for those.
- 13:41The rest will, you know, they'll go down.
- 13:46That's not Bible.
- 13:47Never was Bible.
- 13:49Very popular though, but it's never Bible.
- 13:53Never mind.
- 13:54Forget all lexical work.
- 13:56Forget all the lexical work.
- 13:57Forget the grammar.
- 13:58Forget the syntax.
- 13:59Let other people worry about that.
- 14:01We're glad they worry about it.
- 14:02We're glad they give us a Bible that we can read.
- 14:05But once that's done, it's your view of God that makes all the difference.
- 14:15It's how McIntyre said, no it was George Adam Smith that said, he said, the issue is not so much is there a God.
- 14:25What kind of a God is there?
- 14:29Yeah.
- 14:31We're in Romans 3.
- 14:33God set Jesus Christ forward as a by his death, by his blood, to deal with sin.
- 14:45Set him forth as a propitiation by his blood through faith.
- 14:54Do we believe him?
- 14:57Do we believe that faithful one on whom everything depends?
- 15:01Yes.
- 15:02Well, by faith in him then, we grasp God's faithfulness and righteousness.
- 15:10And God set him forth to show sin is dealt with.
- 15:22He said he wanted to demonstrate his righteousness, God's own righteousness.
- 15:29God says to Christ, this we need to do, and he sets Christ forth so that Christ will exhibit God's own faithfulness, God's own righteousness, God's own being in dealing with
- 15:48sin.
- 15:52He said he set him forth to demonstrate his righteousness because in his forbearance, God had passed over the sins that were previously committed.
- 16:11Did he pass over the sins that were previously committed?
- 16:18What does it mean he passed over them?
- 16:25that he pass over the sins of Gomorrah
- 16:30Did he?
- 16:31Does it look like he did?
- 16:35Did he pass over the sins of the world and Noah's his day?
- 16:41Does it look like he did?
- 16:44That he passed over the sins of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, and subsequently 40 23,000 Israelites who rebelled and all the exiles.
- 17:01Does it look like he passed over them?
- 17:08He didn't pass over them.
- 17:13He dealt with them.
- 17:18Where people exalted and would have nothing to do with him.
- 17:25They died in judgment when God saw fit.
- 17:31For those who were not part of that exulting in evil,
- 17:38and who experienced forgiveness.
- 17:42They were forgiven the animal sacrifices.
- 17:50They dealt with the issue.
- 17:57But they were not dealt with and shown to be exactly what they were, precisely what they were, and fully what they were until God had Jesus come and expose them for what they
- 18:20were.
- 18:20Now, the people who sinned in the Old Testament and were
- 18:27repentant and offered sacrifices under the Mosaic deal.
- 18:36Or if they weren't Jews, they were Gentiles whose conscience rebuked them and they, you know, whatever, they, I hate that.
- 18:48Those sins were forgiven, but repentance couldn't show.
- 18:56how bad the sin was that was forgiven.
- 19:01The animal sacrifices couldn't expose the depth and the nature of the sins that were forgiven.
- 19:09The depth and the nature and the size and the dimension of the grace of God were never shown until they were shown in Jesus Christ.
- 19:23So were people forgiven?
- 19:25pre-Christ, yes.
- 19:28On what grounds were they forgiven?
- 19:30The grace of God.
- 19:32It was always by the grace of God.
- 19:36Yes, but then they didn't need Christ.
- 19:39but they did need Christ.
- 19:41For only in Christ was sin shown for what it was.
- 19:48God forgave them.
- 19:50Yes, yes, it's okay.
- 19:54The animal was offered up by someone genuinely repentant.
- 19:58And when they offered up the sin offering, they said, sorry, abidant, would give to you what I know you should have more.
- 20:07And I'm sorry I'm sinned, but you see this spotless animal that I'm offering?
- 20:14It represents me.
- 20:16I would give you me as spotless all my life.
- 20:23I would give you myself as this lovely little animal, spotless.
- 20:32It's my confession.
- 20:36It's me identifying with it.
- 20:39I lay my hands on it and I tell you, this is me, I'm sorry.
- 20:43I can't give you me like that, but I give that representing me and my heart and my remorse and my repentance.
- 20:54and they got forgiveness.
- 20:55Scripture says so.
- 20:58Says so.
- 21:01Says so!
- 21:04But sin was never known.
- 21:08Sin was never exposed until Christ came.
- 21:14The grace of God was never appreciated.
- 21:19Well, wait a minute.
- 21:20If the whole Gentile world, if the whole Jewish world were as bad as you're saying it was, he should have obliterated us.
- 21:31Instead, he forgave us.
- 21:36And Paul said, yes, he did.
- 21:39But sin was never fully exposed.
- 21:43Sin was never fully.
- 21:46dealt with and shown for what it was.
- 21:48And the grace of God was never seen.
- 21:52The hunger in God's heart, the desire for reconciliation, the longing for life for you in God never was seen.
- 22:05And the love of God for all the nations of the earth was never seen until Christ came.
- 22:26Isn't that a great gospel?
- 22:34And all of that good news, all of that good news, it was as surely for the Jews who'd been faithless as it was for the Gentiles who had been faithless.
- 22:48It was as much for the Jew and the Gentile as for the other.
- 22:52It was for all the families of the earth.
- 22:56That's why 1 John 2.2 will say,
- 22:58And he, his blood, is an atoning sacrifice, not for our sins only, the church, the Christians, but for the sins of the whole world.
- 23:10Only in Christ is the width and the depth of the grace of God may it known.
- 23:16And Paul will say in Ephesians chapter 3, I want God, I pray all the time to the Holy Father, that God may open your eyes, that you may be strengthened by the Holy Spirit.
- 23:28that you may be strengthened by the Holy Spirit to have your eyes opened, that you might come to know the love of God which passes knowledge, that you might know the height and
- 23:40the depth and the length and the breadth of the love of God, which just goes beyond knowing.
- 23:49Only in Christ!
- 23:52Others who offered animal sacrifices in genuineness mark you.
- 23:58They offered it.
- 23:59Or the Gentile who didn't have sacrifices, who offered his heart and thought, I'm sorry about this, whoever it is I'm talking to, I don't know, but I'm sorry about this.
- 24:11They were genuine, but they didn't know what it was, the depth, all the horror and the ugliness and the whole cosmic connection of it all.
- 24:22They didn't understand it all.
- 24:24And therefore they didn't understand the love of God, the depth of God, the size of God, the greatness of God, the mercy of God, the richness of His mercy and His grace.
- 24:35None of that was ever known until God set forth Jesus.
- 24:41And he explains that Jesus being set forth by God, that explains ah why Christ's death, and part of it anyway, why Christ's death is necessary.
- 24:55He alone shows God to be God, and therefore life to be life, grace to be grace, and sin to be sin.
- 25:05Sin was dealt with, and people got forgiveness, but it wasn't fully.
- 25:12identified wasn't fully exposed.
- 25:15Though for these people, forgiveness was there.
- 25:20Christ comes, says, you want to know what forgiveness is?
- 25:25You know, you want to know what you're forgiven of?
- 25:28You want to know what kind of a God is that forgives?
- 25:34You want know about the height and the depth and the length and the breadth of His love?
- 25:40Only in Him, only in Christ.
- 25:45you want to know who we love?
- 25:49Only in Christ do you know.
- 25:55You who sit glaring or sneering see the other?
- 26:05the one you're clearing at.
- 26:12all of this only in Christ.
- 26:14And then he says, because that's true.
- 26:19God set Christ forth and expanding all of that to demonstrate at the present time his faithfulness, his righteousness, his righteousness, he might be just, that he might be
- 26:37righteous.
- 26:37The word just, it's the same word.
- 26:40It's the same word.
- 26:45It's a nice discussion or a long discussion how we ended up with the word just, justified, the justifier, and righteous, righteousness, and the like.
- 26:57but it's not worth our time right now.
- 27:02But he did all of that in Jesus Christ that he might demonstrate at the present time his faithfulness, that he might be indeed righteous and the justifier.
- 27:16We don't have an English word, a righteous-er, so we use the word justifier, you see, of the one who has
- 27:27faith in Christ.
- 27:29And then he says, where's the boasting then?
- 27:33It's excluded.
- 27:36By what manner of law then?
- 27:37Of works?
- 27:39No, but by the law of faith.
- 27:42Well, uh nobody can boast then.
- 27:46That's true.
- 27:48Well, how come they can't boast?
- 27:52What is it that excluded?
- 27:55Well, there is only one answer.
- 27:57There isn't any law that says you can't boast.
- 28:04Well, you know, I've done what is right.
- 28:05I've up to my, as best I could, lived up to my, none of that kind, says.
- 28:12The only thing that excludes boasting is Jesus Christ.
- 28:18You know what will happen?
- 28:19The Jews will continue to look and brag.
- 28:23The Gentiles will continue to look, sneer and brag.
- 28:27Both of them depend on Jesus.
- 28:29He's the one.
- 28:31He alone is the one that says the Jews and Gentiles alike, not about you.
- 28:39about me.
- 28:40I'm nearly done here.
- 28:44He wants to know 29, or is he the God of the Jews only?
- 28:51Is he not also the God of the Gentiles?
- 28:54Well, yeah, why is he the God of the Gentiles?
- 28:57Yes, of the Gentiles also, since there is one God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcision through faith.
- 29:05Shema Israel.
- 29:07Every day said, here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
- 29:12Well, if there's only one God, how many creations are there?
- 29:15Just one.
- 29:17And if there's only one God who created it, how many human families are there?
- 29:22Well, there's just one.
- 29:23So you're all the creation of God.
- 29:26You're all God's sons and daughters.
- 29:29You're all one.
- 29:30It's got nothing to do with the law.
- 29:32It's got to do with the creation.
- 29:34And Paul's doctrine of the creation, see what he did with it.
- 29:37He took the creation doctrine and he turned it into...
- 29:44supporting truth.
- 29:46And then he says in 31, do we then make void the law ah through faith?
- 29:52Certainly not.
- 29:54We confirm the law.
- 29:57We act foundation for the law.
- 30:00He said we only teach what the Old Testament taught.
- 30:03We're only teaching what the Old Testament all the way through with the mosaic set up.
- 30:08The Gentiles not having a spelled out prescription and all of that.
- 30:13We are talking about Abrahamic covenant.
- 30:16All of that.
- 30:16The creation.
- 30:18All of that we get from the whole of the Torah and the teaching of Moses and everybody else.
- 30:24You think we're undermining the law by preaching this kind of gospel?
- 30:30No, we're confirming the law.
- 30:36So, I'm not non-Jewish.
- 30:38I'm not against Judaism.
- 30:40I'm not against the Old Testament.
- 30:41I haven't turned from my people.
- 30:44And when I speak of God bringing in the Gentiles, independent of the Torah, I'm getting up in the Old Testament.
- 30:51So, relax.
- 30:53Thank you for being with us.
- 30:55Will you come back again sometime?
- 30:57Please.