Morning all right We're going
to return to Romans now, and we'll pick up in verse 16. When
I prepared this message, I was going to try and make it through
verse 20, and if we do, we do, but it's likely going to be verses
16 and 17. Romans 1, verse 16 and 17. So I want us to see that the
Word of God teaches us that man must be justified by his faith. And I'll explain that more. By
his faith meaning as opposed to his works. A man is justified
by faith rather than his works. Like I said, we probably won't
get to verse 18, but verse 18 shows us that the wrath of God
is revealed from heaven against man's ungodliness and wickedness,
because man is ungodly and wicked, and he's full of sin, and so
he can't work his way into justification, he can't save himself, so it
must be by faith, and we'll see that that faith is a work of
our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for us. And so, our justification
is by faith, and we'll see that it's a revelation work by God
for the sinner who by this faith being revealed to them beholds
the faith of Jesus Christ for salvation. That is that Christ
works salvation for us. Our title is Salvation by Revelation. Salvation by Revelation. And
we're going to begin looking at the power of God. And verse
16 says, For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for
it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to
the Jew first, and also to the Greek. Now last week we had looked
briefly at verse 16 and we saw how Paul, Paul's not ashamed
of the gospel of Christ. He wasn't ashamed to preach Christ.
He wasn't ashamed to declare him and trust in him and to commend
the souls of his hearers to the Lord Jesus Christ. He's not ashamed
because all who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ shall not be
ashamed when they stand before God. God will receive us and
accept us because of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we saw how
there's many that are ashamed, but Paul wasn't ashamed. And
so this week, what I want us to notice is what Paul says about
the gospel there in verse 16, that it is the power of God unto
salvation to everyone that believe it. And so we see from the scriptures
that God uses, as a means, he uses the gospel to bring salvation
to us, to bring the knowledge of salvation, of what Christ
has already accomplished for his people who are dead in trespasses
and sins and condemned under the law, but God in grace and
mercy brings salvation to us and he does so through the gospel. He makes it known to us through
or by the gospel. All right, now the word power,
that word, it's the power of God unto salvation. That word
power is where we get our word dynamite from. Dynamite. I think
it's dynamis or dynamo or something like that, but it's where we
get our word dynamite from. It's the power, it's the explosive
power of God in salvation. He uses this Gospel to come with
power, by His power, to make known to us, to bring this Word
of Salvation to us and to be received by us. It's all His
work. It's all to His glory and praise. The thing to understand is that
God doesn't save a person just as they're walking through the
forest one day and suddenly they understand all things about God
or sitting on a mountaintop or on a cliffside looking out at
some beautiful bit of nature. He doesn't save us while we're
sleeping or walking through the grocery store shopping. It may
hit us at that time, but it's not until He reveals to us through
the preaching of the Gospel what He has accomplished. Again, He
may continue to burden us with the thoughts of it and cause
us to be wrestling with what we've heard, and it may hit us
sometime later. But it's through the preaching.
It's not without the preaching. It's not just doing the natural
things that we're going to know God in spirit and in truth. Alright, so Paul used this same
language in 1 Corinthians 1.18. 1 Corinthians 1.18, he said,
For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness,
but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. And that helps us to understand
that when When we preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified, when
we preach that cross, we're preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And
when we preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, it's to preach
the cross. It's to preach what Christ accomplished
and did for us on the cross there. And the Lord is pleased to teach
sinners Christ, that Christ is the one that accomplished our
salvation, that our hope, our hope of eternal life rests entirely
in Jesus Christ and what He did for us. When He shed His blood
there on the cross to put away the sins of His people. It's to know and to understand
that our reconciliation with God, our peace with God isn't
by something we've done. But it's through the reconciliation
that Christ has made for us, in grace, in mercy, to bring
peace between us and God, even though we sinned against Him
and Adam. So it's through His mercy, and
so we gain an understanding and a knowledge of what Christ has
accomplished for us through the hearing of faith, through the
hearing of this Gospel. God ministers that work of salvation
to us by His Spirit through the preaching of the Gospel. The importance there to understand
is that God doesn't leave us ignorant. He doesn't leave us
in the dark to what He's done for us and how He labored and
performed this work in grace and in mercy. He doesn't leave
us ignorant of that. He's going to make it known to
us so that we have an understanding that it's all by His grace and
mercy and power. James 118 says, of his own will
begat he us with the word of truth. That's when we heard what
Christ did for us, through that word of truth, the preaching
of the gospel. And Peter says it this way, but the word of
the Lord endureth forever. Well, that word that endures
forever, that's Jesus Christ. He's the word of God which endures
forever, and that salvation work which he did for his people,
endures forever. It's never going to fade away
and not be effectual for us. Our salvation and our standing
before God is through the eternal Word of God, who is Jesus Christ,
and His eternal work of salvation, which He wrought for us, brethren. He wrought that work for us.
And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you. See? And so that's how it's made
known. It's through this gospel which God preaches to you, which
he delivers to you so that you hear and know, wow, this is what
God has done for me. He's saved me. He's the glorious
one who did this work for me. And so we must preach the gospel. We must speak this word of truth. and preach this because when
it pleases the Father, the Spirit attends that word and brings
it to your hearts and your understanding, giving you a knowledge and an
understanding of what He's accomplished by His work of salvation there
on the cross. He's the one that brings it home,
home to you. So it's by this revelation that
He brings this life, this eternal life to us. It's by this revelation
of the Spirit making it known to us. Because you're all hearing
it, and there's many people that hear it, but not all believe
it. Not all understand until the Spirit reveals it in power
and makes it known to you whom He loves. Alright, now continuing
on with this gospel word being the power of God unto our salvation,
turn over to Philippians 1. We talk about these things a
lot, so I'm just going to try and use a few different scriptures
to make this point known to you and to help you to see the glory. I mean, I know that most of you
understand this to a good degree, but I just want to see the glory
and rejoice in what Christ has done and how he makes this known
to us. Philippians 1-9, and this I pray, that your love may abound
yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment. Alright,
so this love and this knowledge and judgment or sense These are
all gifts given to us, brought to us, and given to us and revealed
to us by Jesus Christ. They're for our life and our
godliness. They are to reveal continually
to us what has been accomplished for us by Jesus Christ. And so it's the Spirit of Christ
that ministers these gifts to you, and He does this through
the preaching of the Gospel. Turn over to Galatians 3.5 and
we'll see this. Galatians 3.5, through this preaching
of the word of truth. Galatians 3.5, this is Paul here
again. And he asks this question, and
he says, he therefore that ministereth to you the spirit, right? Through the preaching and the
ministry of the word, the spirit is ministered to you. God is
pleased to attend it. And he's working miracles among
you, right? Because there in the days of
the apostle, there was gifts where they were establishing
the word of God, establishing that this work is of the living
God, the true and living God. And he asks, doeth he it by the
works of the law or by the hearing of faith? Alright, now we know
the hearing of faith, what he's talking about there is the hearing
of the gospel. Is God pleased to minister these
gifts of life to you through your working through the law,
looking to the law to work a righteousness for yourself and to purify your
own hearts and sanctify yourself? Is He ministering these gifts
to you as you're sitting there listening, hearing the gospel
of what Christ has accomplished to you so that the Spirit ministers
that life to you. Gives you that knowledge of what
Christ has done. He gives you an understanding
of what Christ has done. He gives you judgment or a sense
of what Christ has accomplished for you. Because when you're
here and you're going through the week and we're beat down
through the week and our eyes and our minds are on other things,
And then you come here, and you may not even be ready to hear
it, but in grace and in mercy, the Spirit calms your heart,
calms your mind, and brings that word to you so that you hear
again and are reminded, Lord, thank you. Thank you for what
you've done, and thank you for your mercy, because you know
that I don't deserve your mercy and your grace. And yet, you're
pleased to bring this gospel word to me, a sinner, again,
And He grows us in grace, and He grows us in that relationship
and that fellowship that we have with the living God. It ceases
to be that dead letter religion to us, and He makes known to
us what Christ has done. And He brings it sweetly to our
hearts. Alright? And so we know that
the hearing of faith is the hearing of the Gospel, because listen
to how Paul worded it in Romans 10-17. He said, So then faith
cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. So the Spirit
is pleased It's what He pleases to do and He ministers or works
that faith, renews that blessing of faith and comfort and peace
and joy through the hearing of the Gospel. Through the hearing
of the Gospel. It's how He's ordained it and is pleased to
do it. It's all Christ. It's all His
work. It's all to His glory and praise,
but He's pleased to do it because through that Gospel work, feeding
upon Christ. We're drinking His blood, eating
His flesh, feasting upon our Savior, being reminded and rejoicing
what He's accomplished for us. So let me conclude this point
that we preach the gospel of Christ as faithfully as we've
been taught the gospel by the Spirit. We want to be as true
and as accurate as we can be as the Lord has revealed it to
us because we know that the Lord comes with power. He takes that
word, and as He's pleased, He lays it to our hearts, revealing
to us again what Christ has accomplished for us. It's all to the glory
and the praise of His Son, Jesus Christ, and He's not using, therefore,
a lie, right? I mean, He can take those things
which we say that aren't correct and remove them from our minds
and apply the truth, but we want to be as honest as we can and
as truthful as we can and as accurate because we know that
He's the one that ministers the glory of what his son did to
your hearts, to his people's hearts. And Paul said in Romans
1 16, for I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it
is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth to
the Jew first and also to the Greek. Now, I'm just finishing
this point here, but Paul's going to come back to this theme later
in Romans 10. If you turn over there, Romans
10, I wasn't going to read it all for time's sake, but it brings
home the point that we do want to hear the gospel. We need to
hear the gospel. There's a purpose for us hearing
it, and Paul says in Romans 10, verses 11 through 15, for the
scripture saith, whosoever Whosoever believeth on him shall not be
ashamed, for there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek,
for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon
him. All right, and that's what Paul's saying there in chapter
one to the Jew and the Greek. This salvation is brought. Verse
13, for whosoever, this is why we hear the gospel, for whosoever
shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then
shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how
shall they believe in him of whom they've not heard? And how
shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except
they be sent? As it is written, how beautiful
are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring
glad tidings of good things. I preach Christ and we preach
Christ here because there's no one greater that your souls can
be commended to. I can't commend you to anyone
greater, more perfect, more wonderful than the Lord Jesus Christ. So that's why we preach this
gospel to reveal Christ and we trust that the Spirit of Christ
will minister life and peace and comfort and joy to you in
the preaching and it's him that keeps your hearts looking to
Christ unto the end. Alright, now let's move on here
to our next point. This phrase I'm going to look
at in verse 17, from faith to faith. From faith to faith. So let's go back to Romans 1,
17. And Paul says, for therein, in
this gospel, in the preaching of this gospel, is the righteousness
of God revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, the
just shall live by faith. All right, so we're just gonna...
Go through this point here. Now first, we understand by the
teaching of the Spirit that salvation is a work of revelation. God
the Spirit reveals salvation. He brings it to your hearts,
to your minds with power to make you know it and to understand
it and believe it by faith as opposed to someone maybe sitting
next to you that hears the same thing and doesn't believe. It's
not a work of the flesh, but a work of the Spirit. Alright,
now, in John 4, John 4 and verse 23 and 24, we know that our Lord
went through Samaria, and he went there to reveal himself
to this Samaritan woman, to bring salvation to her, and it's a
help to us. And he says there in John 4,
23, But the hour cometh, and now is when the true worshipers
shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father
seeketh such to worship him. God is a spirit, and they that
worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." And
if we're honest, and we want to be honest here, we have no
idea what that means in the flesh. If God is a spirit and we must
worship him in spirit and in truth by this flesh, we are entirely
ignorant of God. We don't know the truth of God
or how to worship him because it's a spiritual work and we
don't have the spirit. We're dead. It isn't until we
have the spirit that we are made a new creature and then old things,
fleshly things, are put away and all things are become new
where we begin to worship God now in spirit and in truth. It's Christ that does that. And
so the Lord makes known to us through the gospel that naturally
we're dead to the things of God. We're spiritually dead. We don't
know how to please Him. We do religious things. We try
to work religious works and be good people. and be nice to one
another and do various things that we think are good and pleasing
to God only to find out through the preaching of the gospel that
all our works are not accepted and God isn't pleased with our
works because they're tainted with the filth of our sin because
we think that by these things we please God and have earned
a righteousness with Him and earned His favor and His forgiveness. And God says that's not how it
is. I'm a God of grace. I'm a good God who's a God of
grace, and I don't receive the filthy works done in sin. I bring salvation to my people
in grace and mercy apart from their works, and I reveal myself
to them and make them to know the truth. And so Christ makes
known to us how we are to worship God in spirit and truth. As he
said in John 3, 3, when he said, except a man be born again, he
cannot see the kingdom of God. And I don't know about you, but
when I was young, I was taught that that was something I did.
I made myself born again by accepting Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.
I made a decision to make Jesus Lord. And that's not what Christ
is saying. That's not being born again.
Man doesn't make himself born again, just like your children
wasn't something that they willed of themselves, right? It was
the parents that did something that brought about those children
being born. And apart from their will or
their thoughts or anything, they had no knowledge of it. And so
the Spirit of God makes us born again. It's His will, His choosing,
which He chose us by election back in eternity past and put
us, committed us to Christ. Gave us to Christ and had His
Son do all the work of salvation for us, to make us alive, to
know Him in the Spirit, to worship Him in the Spirit, and to know
Him in truth. And Christ added in John 3 saying,
The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof,
but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth.
So is everyone that is born of the Spirit. And that's just a
helpful picture in the same way that you can You can hear the
rustling of the leaves in the trees, and you can see them moving
and waving around. So is everyone that's born of
the Spirit. You don't see the Spirit come upon them, but you
see the effects. You see and know the Spirit has
done work in them, and they believe now. They trust Christ, and they
rest in Him. And so we see His work done that
way. And so Those that are born of
the Spirit, they're taught to worship God in spirit and in
truth. The Spirit of God leads us to
Christ, to know Him, to know what He's done for us, because
that's what the Spirit was sent to do, to reveal Christ to us,
to make us to know. Because if it was just a fleshly
work, we wouldn't know. We wouldn't rest in Him. We'd
go right back to the law, as so many religionists do, and
keep on working as hard as we can under that law, only to be
disappointed and frustrated and come to ruin in the end. And
in John 6, 45, it says, it's written in the prophets, and
they shall be all taught of God. Every man, therefore, that hath
heard and hath learned of the Father cometh unto me. And we come to Christ because
Christ is the propitiation. Christ is the means of our forgiveness. That's who God provided. If God
is a God of mercy and grace, and He's determined to be gracious
to us, but He can't just forgive sin or pretend that it didn't
occur. That sin must be punished. We must pay the price, the debt
that we owe. We owe God righteousness. That's
our debt to God. He's created us. He's given us
His word. He's made known to us what pleases
Him, but we can't do it. There's a gap that we just cannot
fill, that gap. We can't make up the difference
Because we ourselves are sinners. We ourselves are guilty sinners
condemned by the law of God. And we don't know how to please
God or how to worship Him. And so God provided His Son,
Jesus Christ, to be the means how He forgives us. And he did
this through Christ working righteousness for us, faithfully working righteousness
for us, so that when he came in the flesh, he left his riches
and glory and became poor just like we are. And yet in that
flesh, that weak flesh, he fulfilled all the law of God perfectly. And so that he himself was made
a fit sacrifice for us, the Lamb of God, by whom our sins are
put away. And he sacrificed himself unto
the Father, making himself an offering to the Father to put
away the sins of his people, to remit our sins. Remission,
when you look at that, it's silly because they say it's the act
of remitting. That doesn't make it known. What does remission
of sins mean? It just means forgiveness. That
remission means that our sins have been put away. God has forgiven
us of our sins. Another way of putting it is
we've been released from our debt. The debt has been paid. It's put away. Meaning that Christ
paid the debt. Someone had to pay that debt.
And since we can't pay it, with an eternity in hell, we can never
work off that debt. But Christ did, by the sacrifice
of himself, with the payment being his righteous blood being
shed for His people so that we are now washed in the blood of
Jesus Christ, made clean, made righteous by His righteousness. We're accepted with God because
Christ is accepted with God. And we who come to God through
Christ the Savior are accepted and received of God by Him, by
His mercy. Alright? And then we're told
that this is the righteousness of God, and it's revealed from
faith to faith. So it's a work of revelation
by the Spirit, making it known to us what Christ did there,
that it was Christ on the cross, bearing the sin of his people,
bearing his people, and we were in him as an ark, and he bore
that wrath of God to put it all away. And so that's revealed
to us by the Spirit. Now this faith unto faith, or
rather understand that the faith whereby we believe, whereby we
believe Christ and rest in Him and trust Him, that faith comes
from Christ's faithful work. It's from Christ's faith. It's
His faith, the faith of Christ. earned or worked for us, obtained
for us, all these gifts, including the gift of faith, whereby we
believe and lay hold of what Christ has done. So that from
faith to faith, that from faith part, that's Christ's faith.
It's His faith, His faithful work. Now let me show you a couple
places in Scripture where it distinguishes between Christ's
faith and our faith. Go to Romans 3, Romans 3, 21
and 22. It says, but now, verse 21, the
righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being
witnessed by the law and the prophets. even the righteousness
of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon
all, then that believe, for there is no difference." So that first
faith is the faith of Christ, it's His faith, and then it's
to us who believe, that faith that we have, which was given
to us by Christ. And so we're made the righteousness
of God by the faith and the faithful work of Jesus Christ. And so this righteousness is
given to his people, they're made righteous by him, by Christ's
faithful redemption work, whereby we believe, because that's one
of the blessed gifts which he obtained for us when he rose
from the dead. When he died and rose from the
dead, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men." When
his sacrifice was accepted and he rose from the dead, he gave
gifts unto men, which is his spirit, and faith, and love,
and knowledge, and judgment of these things, and resting in
him. It's all of his work. Let's go to one more, Philippians
3.9. Now Paul's desire, in this passage, Philippians 3, is to
win Christ. And he says in Philippians 3,
9, and be found in Christ, not having mine own righteousness,
which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of
Christ, the righteousness which is of God, by faith, by faith,
by our faith, looking to the faithfulness of Christ, which
all comes from Jesus Christ. All right? So the faith of Christ,
which is his faithful work, where he worked righteousness for his
people, and we receive the knowledge of what He's accomplished for
us by the faith which He's given to us. So you see how it's all
His work. He's given us that faith whereby
we lay hold of His faithful work and understand what it is. It's
brought home to us. Alright, so the righteousness
of God revealed from faith to faith as God revealing Christ's
righteousness and our righteousness in Him by the faith which He's
also worked in us and given to us. It's all to His glory and
His praise. All right? And then Paul, he
quotes at the end there, verse 17, he quotes from the prophet
Habakkuk saying, as it's written, the just shall live by faith. We shall live by faith. Now,
we don't live upon our faith, but we live by faith. We live upon Christ. We look
to Christ. He's our righteousness. He's
our life. He's our all. Christ is all in
all. And it's by the faith which He's
given us that we live upon Christ. We trust Him. So we're living
upon the Lord Jesus Christ. All right, now we've seen how
that God reveals the salvation in Christ to his people, and
it's a work by revelation. And so the gospel is the power
of God, which is the revelation of God coming to us in power,
making known to us what Christ has done, giving us faith to
believe, to believe God, that he has saved us in Christ, to
believe Christ, to rest there, to stop the beginning of repentance
from our dead works of religion, and to trust Christ, to rest
in Him, believing Him. So that's how we live. We live
upon Christ by faith. We live upon Him. The just shall
live by His faith, that is, looking to the Lord Jesus Christ. And
so we're not going to get to it, but what we'll look at next
time is when it says, for the wrath of God is revealed, it's
because we, by faith, we understand, we see and understand God's condemned
the works of man. It's got to be by faith. It can't
be by my own works. And we'll see how even natural
man, they don't have the spirit, they don't have spiritual life,
they don't understand how God saves, but they even have an
understanding, naturally, that they're condemned, justly condemned
by God. And he makes that known. So,
all right, well, we'll stop there. I hope it wasn't, well, whatever,
I pray the Lord will just make it known to us to rest in him
and to see it's his glory, his praise, his honor. All right,
let's pray. Our gracious Lord, we thank you,
Father, for your work, that you are our salvation. And Lord,
we thank you that Though it's a spiritual work which we can't
know naturally or understand, but we're thankful for Your power.
And Lord, we look to You and beg You and cry out to You that
You would reveal this work, that You would apply the blood of
Christ to us, that You would reveal His work to us, that we
would see what Christ has done for His people, and that You
would give us faith to look to Him, to rest in Him, to trust
in Him alone, apart from our works. Lord, we ask that you
would make this known to the hearts of your people here. It's
in Christ's name we pray and give thanks. Amen.