Romans chapter 16. I titled this message, What Have
We Learned? What have we learned? Our Lord said in the gospel,
all thy children shall be taught of God. God is our teacher. And what
has he taught us? We've been going through this
epistle to Romans for a few months now. And Paul says in verse 17, mark
them which cause divisions and offenses, contrary to the doctrine
which you have learned. Now the first 16 verses of this
chapter are mainly made up of salutations. Paul says, salute
different ones who helped him in the ministry. He mentions
several women who were a great help to him in the ministry.
Some of the ones he mentions even hazarded their lives for
the sake of the gospel. He gives honor to whom honor
is due. He gives credit to whom credit is due. You know, scriptures
teach us to do that. Give honor to whom honor is due.
You know, Lord willing, if my parents pass away before I do, by God's grace, I plan on doing
their funeral. And I plan on honoring them.
It's called a memorial service, a memory service. You know, I
know that often we say, well, we don't want to say anything
about them. Well, I'm going to. I'm going to honor them, because
the scripture says, honor your mother and father. And I'm going
to give honor to them, give them the opportunity. I'm going to
preach gospel to my family there. I'm going to preach the gospel
to them. I don't know how to say this,
but I'm not gonna turn that into a preaching service to where
somebody's trying to get, you know, I've been to them where
they try to get people saved, they try to get them come, get
them at their weakest moment. You know, you got them, you got
them, you got them at their weakest moment, now jump on them. No,
I'm gonna present Christ, but I'm gonna honor my mother and
father that God's given me. And that's what Paul's doing
here. Paul's saying, and I'm gonna do that if I do your funeral.
You can say, don't say anything about me. Well, you're gone. What are you going to do? What are you going to do? That
might have been a bit much. But anyway, that's what Paul
does. Paul is an apostle, but Paul
never held himself above those who served with him, who helped
him. And he gives them some honor here. He says, Salute Priscilla
and then greet them. And you can go down through there,
I'm not going to read all those names and stuff. But in verse
17, he warns of false teachers coming in and teaching things
contrary to the doctrine, and the doctrine means teaching.
That's what doctrine means, teaching. The teachings of the Lord Jesus
Christ, the teaching that Paul gave, that the Lord Jesus Christ
gave to him. He says, I'm going to give you
warnings that they are coming. They are coming. And they're
going to come and they're going to use good words and fair speeches. And they will deceive the hearts
of the simple-minded. That is, they will deceive the
hearts of those who are young in the faith, those who are immature,
they'll deceive them. You know, one thing about being
deceived is this. If you're being deceived, you
don't know it. You wouldn't be deceived. You
can't say you were deceived if you know it. And so, he's saying
here, they will come in and they will deceive the simple-minded. They won't even know it. You
know, Satan doesn't come in the door like he's like a red lobster
with horns. He comes in in a suit. You won't
even recognize him when he walks in the door. He'll come in in a suit, and
he'll use good words and fair speech. I mean, he'll just flatter
you, and I'm telling you what, flattery, somebody said flattery
gets you nowhere. With the human nature, it gets
you everywhere. And he'll flatter and put a little twist on the
word, and you won't even recognize it. Unless God gives you ears to
hear, because the scripture says, if it were possible, he would
deceive the very elect of God. If it were possible, aren't you
glad it's not possible? But I tell you this, you can
be deceived for a little while. I've seen that. You can be deceived
for a little while, then it's like, oh, there's something not
right here. But he'll come and they'll use
good words and fair speeches and deceive the heart. And here's
what's so dangerous, they come in the name of God. Most people, when they come and
they say, God has sent me or God has called me, most people
are like, oh. But now you who are wise, you
say, really? You don't take right up front
somebody that God sent a person. A man told me one time, he said,
God's called me to preach. And I've never said this to anybody
else, but I said it to him. I said, no, He hasn't. He has
not called you to preach. He thought I was going to say,
congratulations. He thought I was going to congratulate
him. And I said, I'm telling you the truth. God hasn't called
you to preach. Because you don't know the gospel. The gospel you
know is not the gospel of God. And that's why Paul is telling
us here, there's only one gospel. And don't move from it. And God
does not call anyone to preach who preaches another gospel.
That's why John said, try the spirits whether they are of God.
Because when a man stands in this pulpit, listen to me, he's
preaching by a spirit. either the Holy Spirit or another
spirit, but he's not standing here by himself. I'm not standing
here this morning preaching by myself. Try the spirits, whether
they be of God. How do you do that? By the Word
of God. The only way you can do it is
by the Word of God. If what he says matches the Scriptures,
if the Scriptures He's using can be interpreted by the Scriptures. The Scriptures interpret the
Scriptures. I don't interpret the Scriptures. The Word of God
interprets the Word of God. And we expound it as He gives
us understanding of it. And so He says here, you know,
you beware, I beseech you and beware of these guys. And listen,
and He says, mark them, mark them and avoid them. Mark them because they're going
to divide the sheep. You know, the gospel never divides
the sheep. It divides the sheep from the
goats. But the gospel doesn't divide the sheep from the sheep.
It doesn't. Christ says, my sheep hear my
voice and they follow me. They won't follow a stranger.
They follow me. And you mark and avoid them.
That is, listen, we welcome We welcome sinners to hear the gospel.
I welcome anybody in this community, anyone in this community to come
in here, sit down, and hear the gospel. I do. I do. But I don't
welcome those who will come and divide the sheep. I don't. Listen to 2 John. Listen to this Scripture. In
2 John, let me read to you verse 9 and 10. Well, let me go to verse 8. Look
to yourselves that we lose not those things which we have wrought
or which we have learned or gained, but that we receive a full reward. Whosoever transgresses and abides
not in the doctrine of Christ, the teachings of Christ, he does
not have God, he hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine
of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son. Now listen, if there
come any unto you and bring not this doctrine, Receive him not
into your house, neither bid him gospel." Don't tell him to
have a good day. You say, that's harsh. That's
Bible. That's Bible. If he comes into
my house, if he comes to my house, and he starts to tell me of another
gospel, and he starts to lie on God, I'm not going to tell
him, well, have a good day. That's what he says. That's what
the Scripture says. I welcome sinners to hear the
gospel. but not those who would divide
the sheep and lie on God. It says in Romans 12, 18, "...if
it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all
men." But now listen, it's not always possible, is it? It's
not always possible. You know, we need to have a lot
of tolerance, but not to the point where tolerance becomes
acceptance. If it's wrong, it's wrong. And
if it's right, it's right. Now, he says in verse 18, For
they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ with their
own belly. They serve their appetite. They
don't serve the Lord Jesus Christ. He's not the reason they show
up. He's not the reason they show up. You're the reason they
show up. Your pocketbook is the reason they show up. I tell anyone,
and you hear anybody on television or radio begging for support,
don't send them a dime. Don't send them a dime. God will
put it into the heart of his children to support the ministry,
whether it's a TV, radio, or in here. God puts it into the
heart of his children to do that. But here's the question that
I started with. What have we learned from this
epistle? What have we learned? What have
we learned sitting here over the years under the gospel? What
have we learned? I mean, and when I say learned
here, I mean something that has really sunk down into your heart
and it's your life. It's your life. Because what we have learned,
first of all, is something of the mystery of the gospel. And
Paul calls it a mystery of the gospel over in verse 25 because
it has to be revealed. There's no way to know unless
God reveals it, which makes it a mystery. No one comes into
this world knowing and understanding the gospel. No one comes into
this world understanding who God is. In fact, we come into
this world dead to God. And just as sure as we come into
this world, we imagine God to be that which He's not. Because
the natural mind, the natural mind will always whittle out
of God as it sees itself. That's the only thing you got
to work with. You know, you can only work with the tools you
got to work with. And if your understanding is darkened, if
you're spiritually dead, that's all you got to work with. So
for us to have a right understanding of God, God must reveal Himself. He must reveal Himself. And He
reveals Himself through the preaching of Jesus Christ, as Paul said
there in verse 25. Now to him that is of power to
establish you according to my gospel, because God gave it to
him, God saved him by it, and the preaching of Jesus Christ.
Listen, you didn't learn, you and I, if God has saved us, you
and I did not learn Jesus Christ, we didn't learn Him through the
doctrines of grace. We learned the doctrines of grace
through the preaching of Jesus Christ. He's the doctrine. He's the teaching. He said, take
my yoke upon you and do what? Learn doctrine? He said, learn
of me. It is in Christ that we learn
right doctrine. You can learn right doctrine
and miss the Lord Jesus Christ. You can miss Him. You can learn
Calvinism and perish. You can. But you cannot learn
of Christ and perish. You can't learn of Him and from
Him and perish. Now here, what have we learned?
Well, we've learned in the beginning of this epistle that all are
guilty. The Jews didn't see themselves
guilty. They did not see themselves guilty. They were born. After
eight days, they were circumcised. They considered themselves to
be automatically in the covenant. They were automatically the children
of God. Everything was fine. And Paul comes along and he says,
all are guilty before God, Jew and Gentile. All need a Savior. All are guilty. We have learned
this in this epistle. We have learned that we are guilty
two ways. First, we are guilty through
the fall of Adam, our connection to Adam, representation. We fell
in Adam. And we are guilty by the things
that we do. We're guilty by our own choice.
We're guilty by nature, what we are. We were born sinners. We were born at enmity against
God. We died in Adam. We were born
spiritually dead. It says, by one man sin entered
the world. That's how sin came into the
world. We understand why this world is in the mess it's in.
I mean, you've got educators, scientists, they're all trying
to figure out You know, why in the world is this thing like
it is? Well, we've got a book here that just gives us a simple
answer. The answer of it, the answer is simple. By one man,
sin entered the world. Is that hard to understand? What's
hard to understand about that? I tell you what's hard to understand
is that you don't want to believe it. Now when you don't want to
believe something, the understanding goes out the door. It just goes
out the door because you shut your mind to it. When you shut
your mind, you can't teach a shut mind. It is impossible to teach
a shut mind. It's like trying to go into a
room with a locked door. Sin came into this world by one
man and death entered by sin. And all have sinned. All are
guilty before God. And the scripture says, there's
none good, no, not one. They said, well, I know some
good people. I know people say that. I know some good people. Let God draw his hand back a
little bit, and you'll understand something about sin and human
nature. God Almighty exercises sovereign
constraint over the human race. or we wouldn't be able to live
here. That's the truth. The wrath of man shall praise
Him. And what does it say? And the
rest He will restrain. He'll let it loose here and there. And He gives humanity examples
of itself here and there. And the rest of it he restrains
or the church couldn't live here. We couldn't live on this earth
if he didn't. And then we've learned that the
whole human race is under condemnation because of the curse of the law.
The soul that sinneth shall surely die. And we've learned something
of the inflexible justice of God. God is a just God and every
believer here is glad that it's so. Aren't you glad God is just? The last thing you want is a
corrupt judge on the throne. The worst thing that can happen
to a nation is to have corrupt judges on the bench. When you
have, I tell you, when you have corrupt judges on the bench,
it's gone. It is gone. Our God is a just God and he
will by no means, he said, clear the guilty. Now, you say, that's
a conundrum. There's a difficult situation
because I'm guilty. If God will by no means clear
the guilty and I'm guilty, then how in the world can God be a
just God and save me? I'll tell you how. He put this guilty wretch to
death 2,000 years ago on Calvary Street. He killed the guilty. The guilty was put to death.
The guilty was dealt with. I was dealt with in Jesus Christ.
And that new man, now listen, that new man that's born of God
is not guilty. Not guilty. That which is born
of the spirit is spirit. That which is born of the flesh
is flesh. Not guilty. But we have learned
that God is inflexibly just. When sin was found on God's only
begotten son, what did he do? He put him to
death. If a crime was, if a crime, let's
just say for an example, if a crime was found on your child, a death
penalty crime, would you put that child to death? I don't
think so. I think we would just say, you
know, we'd start finding excuses. We would find some way not to
do it. God didn't. God put him to death. And in
his death is my death. God's justice executed on him
was God's justice executed on me. That's how God can be just
and justify me, because he's already dealt with me. My sins
are gone. That's how he can justify clear
of all charges because all the charges have been dealt with.
They were transferred to Jesus Christ. That's real substitution. And then we've learned how we
are justified. How are we justified? Well, in Romans 5.9 it says,
"...much more than being now justified by His blood, we shall
be saved from wrath through Him." I'm justified by His blood. His
blood, listen, His blood answers for my sins. The very sins that I ask forgiveness
for, I say, Lord, forgive me. Let's say I've stole something. Let's say I stole something.
And I say, Lord, forgive me for stealing that. And I mean it,
and I ask Him to forgive me. There's the blood that was shed
for that sin of stealing, and he's able to justify me because
he's already dealt with that in him. The blood. The blood,
the blood, the blood. Some call this a bloody religion.
It is. You remember Moses' wife, whenever he circumcised their
son? Remember, God told Moses, I'm
gonna kill you. God said, I'm gonna kill you
if you don't circumcise your son. And Moses did. And his wife,
boy, she didn't like it. She didn't like it at all. And
she said to Moses after he did it, she said, thou bloody husband.
She called him a bloody husband. Jesus Christ is our bloody husband.
He is our bloody husband. He was crucified and His blood
was shed for our transgression and for the remission of our
sins. And we've learned also that through faith in Christ
we are justified, apart from anything that you and I can do. Listen to Romans 3.28, "...therefore
we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of
the law." Now, justified by faith. Faith is a gift of God. Faith
is in the Lord Jesus Christ whose blood was shed for our sins.
They all go together. They all go together. And then we learn we are justified
by grace. It is grace who put me in the
number of the Savior's family. I didn't put myself there. I
did not put myself in the family of God because God gave me a
chance, He gave me an opportunity, and I took it. No, I wouldn't take anything
like that. God is light and I'm darkness. I wouldn't do that. But by grace,
by grace, God has loved us, chose us, called us, redeemed us, given
us a new birth. By grace through faith in the
blood, we are justified. They all go together. They go
together. And then we've learned that sin
shall not have dominion over us. It's not our master anymore.
Sin has been dethroned, that sin nature which reigned over
us as a king. You know, it's just like a master
whistling to his dog. You know, he whistles and that
dog comes running. Our old nature. It just whistles
and we come running. And we bow to it. Well, that
old nature has been dethroned. It doesn't rule you no more.
It does not rule you. It's not your master. Jesus Christ
is enthroned in the heart. Jesus Christ is our master. And
we're glad of it. It says in Romans 6.14, For sin
shall not have dominion over you, for you're not under the
law, but under grace. You're not under that law. Listen.
The teeth of sin, so to speak, has been taken out by the law
being satisfied. Sin could reach to the law and
then it would condemn me. But sin can't reach there no
more. That sin nature can't reach there no more because the law
has been taken out of the way through Jesus Christ. By His obedience, by His righteousness,
by His death. God deals with me by grace which
reigns, how? Through the righteousness of
Jesus Christ. Grace reigns on me, not because
I'm a good boy now, not because I live right, whatever that is. not because I do this or don't
do that. Grace reigns on me because of
the righteousness of Jesus Christ, because of that one that sits
at God's right hand. That's why grace reigns on me.
That's why when I sin, I'm not just cast into hell. I know people
who believe that you could be lost and saved, lost and saved.
You just better hope you're not on the lost end of it when you
die. Like that daisy, she loves me, she loves me not. She loves
me, she loves me not. You just better hope you're
not on the love me not part. I've did that before. You just
pick another daisy and keep going until she loves me. That's human
nature, isn't it? We just keep going until we get
it the way we want it. No, it's just not like that.
Grace reigns on me when I have a good day and bad day because
of the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Boy, that's good news. That's
good news to a sinful, wretched creature. That's good news. Grace
reigns through righteousness. I can go on with that for the
rest of the service. But we've also learned there's
no condemnation to them that are in Christ. There's nothing
to condemn me. All that was condemnable was
dealt with. There's no condemnation to them
who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but
after the Spirit. They've been born of God. And
then we've learned that all things work together for good to them
that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose.
We've learned this. We've learned this. That all things work together
for our good. You can live a happy life if you learn that. If you learn that. My dad, when I was visiting up
here a week ago, he said, I told the kids, I think John and Vicki
are the happiest of all the kids. He said, I think, he said, they
just seem to be so happy. And he was talking about some
different things. I said, I'm happy for one reason, dad. I said,
I'm happy because I believe I'm doing the will of God. And I
believe I know the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm not happy because
of this or that. I said, I'm happy because I believe
the Lord has saved me. And that makes me happy. That
makes me happy. And that makes Vicki happy. And
we know, and it's what makes me happy. I know that all things
work together for my good. And I know it's according to
God's purpose. God saved me on purpose. God saved you on purpose.
Did you accidentally hear the gospel? Did you accidentally
one day stumble in here and hear the gospel? No one, no one hears
the gospel by accident. No one. God purposely has crossed
your path, whether you believe it or not. He's crossed your
path with the gospel. And by grace, when He crossed
mine, He saved me by it. He saved me by that gospel that
Paul speaks of there in verse 25. And then we've learned this,
that nothing can separate us from the love of God which is
in Christ Jesus. Nothing can separate us from
His love. David commits adultery and murder. Paul, who consents to the death
of God's saints, which is the same as murder. Paul did that. He speaks of that. We looked
at that Thursday night. He consented to the death of God's Son. He
wasted the church. He made havoc of it, and he tried
to destroy that name. And he did everything he could
against Jesus Christ, but he never... I'll tell you what he
didn't do. He never diminished the love of God for him in Christ.
Even in his breathing out threatenings, even in his greatest anger, even
in his fire-breathing hatred of Jesus Christ, the Lord never
loved him the less. Never loved him the less. See, for God to be God, nothing
can ever be less with God. Someone said this, they said,
Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated. He's saying that he
loved Esau less. Can God do anything less than
be God? God cannot do anything. He can't love less. It's impossible.
God can only do perfectly. His love is perfect love, which
means it's all out. It's all out. As I've heard said
here before, wide open. All out wide open. It never diminishes. We can't diminish it. Nothing
can separate us from the love of God. We've learned that. That's
good news. We've learned that the righteousness
of the Lord Jesus Christ is all the righteousness we need. I
need no more than Christ. I need no more than Jesus Christ.
And we have learned that salvation is of the Lord. And I've heard
this preached several times from Henry back home. In its planning,
in its execution, in its application, in its sustaining power, in its
completion, it's of the Lord. Jonah said salvation's of the
Lord. Who better to know that than
somebody got swallowed by a fish and way down there at the bottom
of the ocean. If it had spit him out, he'd have drowned before
he got to the top. He knew if he came out of there alive. He
said this, in the belly of hell, cried I. And he knew, he knew
that salvation's of the Lord. And he knew that he was told
to go preach to Nineveh. He was running not because he
was called to preach. You know, people use that as
a thing, well, you know, you're called to preach and you run
from it. No, he was running because he
didn't want to preach to those Ninevites. He hated them. He hated them. There was a lot
of just animosity between the Gentiles, Ninevites, and the
Jews. And when God had mercy on them,
remember that king bowed down and he said, who can tell? Maybe
he'll show mercy. And God showed mercy and he didn't
destroy that city. And Jonah said, I knew you'd
do that. That's the reason I didn't want
to go there. I'm going to paraphrase for Jonah. I knew you'd have
mercy. You're a God of mercy. And that's
the reason I didn't want to go there, because he didn't want
to see God have mercy on him. That's sad, but it's so. It's
sad. Aren't you glad God has mercy
on whom he will? Because there's some people you wouldn't have
mercy on, and I wouldn't either. The fact that he had mercy on
me should encourage me that he'd have mercy on anybody else. Salvation is of the Lord. I'm
telling you, it's of the Lord. In His planning, He purposed
it. In His execution, He sent His
Son. In His application, He sent the
Holy Spirit. You're born of the Spirit of
God. In His sustaining power, kept by the power of God through
faith. In His completion, He's coming to get us. Now, don't
let anyone turn you from the doctrine, the teaching of the
gospel that you have learned. from the Word of God, from God's
man whom He sent to you. Don't turn from it. You say,
I never do that. You and I would be so fooled
if God let us. We'd be so deceived if God let
us. I tell you He would. We would. Listen, never turn from the truth. Truth, and you can mark this
down. Here's your landmark. Here's
your landmark. Truth never changes. It never changes. That's something you can stand
on. The truth of the gospel. And
you've learned this, as Paul said, through the preaching of
Jesus Christ. You didn't learn it through the
preaching of doctrine. I know some that they believe they were
saved under a false gospel under Arminianism or a false gospel
and they've come to learn the doctrines of grace. Well, you
ain't learned Christ yet. When you learn Christ, then you'll
learn the doctrines of grace. When you really come to know
Jesus Christ, I'm not here to preach just doctrine to you,
I'm here to preach Jesus Christ to you. And through Him, we learn
the truth. Because you know why? He said,
I am the truth. So whatever you learn from him
is the truth. It can't be anything else. All
right.