All right, we're gonna read from
the book of Romans, chapter one, verses one through 17. 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,
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. By whom we have received grace
and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations
for his name. Among whom are ye also the called
of Jesus Christ. To all that be in Rome, beloved
of God, called to be saints, grace to you and peace from God
our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. First, I thank my God
through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken
of throughout the whole world. For God is my witness, whom I
serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing
I make mention of you always in my prayers, making requests
if by any means now at length I might have a prosperous journey
by the will of God to come unto you. For I long to see you, that
I may impart unto you some spiritual gift, to the end ye may be established. That is, that I may be comforted
together with you by the mutual faith, both of you and me. Now
I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes I purposed
to come unto you, but was left hitherto, that I might have some
fruit among you also, even as among other Gentiles. I am debtor
both to the Greeks and to the barbarians, both to the wise
and to the unwise. So, as much as is in me, I am
ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also. 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. For therein is the righteousness
of God revealed from faith to faith. As it is written, the
just shall live by faith. Now, what is the gospel? Gospel
is a declaration of God. to people, and those people are
His. And what it is, is it's an accomplished
work of salvation. If you go back into the first
book, Genesis chapter three, verse 15, After the fall in the
garden, Adam and Eve, God came to them and told them what was
gonna happen as a result. But he also gave them a promise,
and that promise was in Genesis 3 verse 15, when he told Eve,
and I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between
thy seed and her seed. It shall bruise thy head, and
thou shalt bruise his heel. So what that's talking about
is that in a nutshell, basically God's gonna save his people.
And as far as men that are born of women, there's two different
lines of people that come from Adam and Eve. There are the children
of God, which are the children of promise, and that they're
natural children that are born in sin. And we're all born in
sin, but the difference is that some are chosen in Christ. So
that's the, the gospel is, it's the power of God unto salvation.
because it says in Romans 1, 17, for therein is the righteousness
of God revealed by faith. So that's the first promise that
we have. And if you read the scriptures,
it's written all throughout. All of God's promises are yes
and amen. So my next point is gonna be,
well, I just said it actually, it's the power of God and salvation.
And we know also that in Jonah 2, verse 9, the Bible says that
salvation is of the Lord. We hear nowadays that there's
a bunch of different ways that people can be saved, but there's
only one way that a man can be born again, and that's if the
Spirit of God moves upon him and draws him to himself. So the title of this message,
actually, I should have said in the beginning, it's called
The Gospel of Grace. So we know that if you go to
Ephesians 2, verses eight through nine, we'll go there right now. It says, for by grace are ye
saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the
gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. So that's
telling us it's a gift. A gift is something to be received.
We cannot, of our own free will, take a gift. A gift has to be
given. If we take something that's not
ours, it's stealing. And the scripture tells us that no flesh
is gonna glory in God's presence. So if it's not a gift received, it's not a gift. It's not yours
to give, it's not yours to take. So if you go all the way back
to Exodus chapter 33 verse 19, Moses was asking God some questions
as he was leading the children of Israel out of Egypt after
they already left the Passover. And he told them, he said, Lord,
show me your grace. I want to see your glory, actually,
he said in verse 18. And then the Lord said to him,
I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim
the name of the Lord before thee. and will be gracious to whom
I will be gracious and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.
So this is God's choice. It's up to him. I mean, if you
think about it, if you read that narrative in Exodus where the
children of Israel were in Egypt and they came out of Egypt, why
wasn't it that God saved Pharaoh or he saved all the people of
Egypt? Scriptures tell us that he made a difference between
them. For example, when the plagues came, the 10 different plagues,
they didn't affect any of the people of Israel. yet they affected
the Egyptians. So now we'll go to my next point.
My next point is, what is grace? Gosh, I'm messing up. That's
part of what grace is. God says, I will be merciful.
I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious. And I will show
mercy on whom I will show mercy. So who's the one showing mercy?
Is it us that are saying, hey, I know God's going to be merciful
to me because I'm a good person, or I honor my mother and my father. I help people around the town.
Is that the reason why God shows mercy to us? Is it something
we do? Or is it his choice? Right here, it tells us that
it's God's choice. We call that the sovereignty
of God. And sovereignty means that he's
in control of everything. song we heard when we were kids
he's got the whole world in his hands and that's the truth he
does have it all so going on to my next point my next point
is what is faith and once again we'll go always go to the scriptures
if you go to Hebrews 11 chapter 11 verse 1 it gives us a pretty
good definition of it And it says, now faith is the substance of
things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it,
the elders obtained a good report. Now, how is it that the elders
obtained a good report? It was because of the faith that
they had. And we know that from Ephesians, faith is a gift and
it's not a work. And a lot of people will tell
you that you have to do these things. in order to be saved,
whether it's bearing fruit or assurance or evidence, but the
Bible tells us that salvation is of the Lord. Paul goes on
to say in Hebrews that that Jesus is the author and the finisher
of our faith. So if he begins a work in you,
he who has begun a good work in you will perform it until
the day of Jesus Christ. He's gonna finish it. That's
why Paul said in his epistles, and Jude said as well, now unto
him who is able to keep you and present you faultless before
his throne with exceeding joy, the only wise God, our Savior,
be power and dominion and glory both now and forever. So God
is the one who is the author. He creates faith in a person,
he preserves that person in faith that he gives them, and he brings
them home to him eventually in the end, whether he takes them
home in death or That's it. Yeah. And he comes
back when they're still alive. You know, he returns after the
last child of God is saved. So we know that faith is given
by God. God has to give someone faith.
If you go to Psalms chapter 110, verse 3, He tells us that my people shall
be made willing in the day of thy power. He says, thy people
shall be made willing in the day of thy power. And David goes
on to say also in the Psalms that blessed is the man whom
you choose and cause to approach you. I want to say, I think that's
Psalm 46, but The thing about the gospel is
it's a declaration. It's not an offer. It's not something
you can sell people on because people don't always believe.
Going on to after defining faith and how faith is given, it's
a gift that comes from God. And that not all men have faith.
People will tell you, oh yeah, you just gotta believe, you gotta
believe, you gotta have faith. And yeah, it might seem encouraging
to people, In the end, we know that there's a true faith and
there's a false faith. And if you're in a false faith,
then the assurance that you have is false as well. And I don't
want people to find out truth the hard way in the end because
either you're gonna if it's true because God is a spirit and they
that worship him worship him in spirit and in truth and he's
looking for true worshipers i'm gonna and when it says the scripture
says he's looking we know that he sees all scripture says he's
all of creation is naked in his sight so god knows because you
go to second timothy also i believe it's second timothy 119, where
it says, nevertheless, the foundation of the Lord stand is sure. The
Lord knoweth them that are his. So God knows who his people are.
Well, we don't know who God's people are. We look at things
from the outside, really, because that's just how we see. When
we see something, we see it as it is. What's that? There is no second Timothy 119.
There is not. So let me see. Is it 1 Timothy 219? Let's see.
No, 2nd Timothy, it is 2nd Timothy. Let's go there. 2nd Timothy 2.19. There is no
2nd Timothy 2.19. There's no 2nd Timothy 1.19.
Oh, no, no, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Thank you. Thank you,
Mrs. Gonzalez. I stand corrected.
2nd Timothy 2.19, which says, nevertheless, the foundation
of God standeth sure, having this seal, the Lord knoweth them
that are his. Let everyone that nameth the name of Christ depart
from iniquity. So we know that not all men have faith. And we
go to 2 Thessalonians chapter three, verse two. And that tells
us that Paul was telling the Thessalonians to pray for them
and that the word of the Lord may have free course. I'll just
read through to verse three or to verse two. It says, and finally, brethren,
pray for us that the word of the Lord may have free course
and be glorified, even as it is with you, and that we may
be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men. For all men have
not faith. I mean, that's telling you right
there, not everybody has faith. And the faith that the scripture
speaks of is faith in God, which is a gift from God. And everything
always goes back to God. Salvation doesn't lie within
us. It's a work that is done outside of us. So either the
work is in God, done by you, that's why it's called a work.
And we're not saved by works, not like the old hymn says, not
the labor of my hands can fulfill the law's demands because God
gave us the law. He gave actually the children
of Israel the law, the 10 commandments. It's also called the Decalogue,
but that law could not be fulfilled because if you broke one of the
commandments, you've broken them all. So if you stole, you broken
all 10 commandments. If you coveted your neighbor's
house, you broke a commandment. If you blaspheme the name of
God or you had another God, you've broken a commandment. So we know
that the law was meant to to cause us to look for grace. I
mean, you think about it. Say you have to drive every day
and everywhere you went, there was a police officer following
you. And if you didn't obey the law, the speed limits, you got
busted. But we're no longer under the law, we're under grace. So
to tie it all in, the gospel is a declared message. It's a
finished work. When Christ died on the cross,
I believe it's John chapter 20. We can go there real quick. It's actually chapter 19, verse
30. Jesus said, it is finished. No, John. John chapter 19, verse
30. This is when Jesus died on the
cross at Calvary. Are you there? Alright, so he said that it's
finished. So as I said earlier in the beginning,
the gospel is good news. Because all men are sinners,
we're all born in sin. So if I'm a sinner and someone
tells me some good news, about Christ and God caused me, because
you tell a lot of people these things and they don't believe
it. Oh man, there's no such thing as God. You know, the atheists will tell
you there's no such thing as God, that's a liar, that's all
old, ancient book. They say all kinds of things.
How do you know it's true? It was written by men. But that's not
the case because God is eternal and he's given us his word. It
doesn't change. It'll never return void unto
him. And the scripture says that the
flower fades away, and the earth is going to dissolve, but the
word of the Lord will endure forever. So we have his word,
which is a sure thing, and we believe it. So when we tell people
the gospel, how it's a declaration of an accomplished work, it's
the power of God and salvation, it's good news. It's telling
all men who are perishing that, hey, God died, God died for people. He died for his people, right?
Matthew 1, 21 said, he shall save his people from their sins.
The angel had told that to Mary, that he'll call his name Jesus
for he shall save his people from their sins. So we know that
he's gonna do that, but it's not all men. Scripture tells
us it's his people, just like Israel, is a type of God's people
in the Old Testament scriptures. The Israel of God are his people
from every nation, kindred, tribe, and tongue. And that's in Revelation
7, 9. Go there real quick. And this is when people are in
heaven, worshiping the Lord. And it says, After this I beheld and lo, a
great multitude, which no man could number. of all nations
and kindreds and people and tongues, stood before the throne and before
the Lamb, clothed with white robes and psalms in your hand."
We'll go to verse 10, and cried with a loud voice saying, salvation
to our God, which sit at the point of throne and to the Lamb.
So we know that God saves people from every nation, kindred, tribe,
and tongue. Not the whole world, but from
all over the face of the earth. Wherever they are, if they're
His, He's gonna save them. So like I said earlier, we don't
know who they are, but He does. That's 2 Timothy 2.19, is that
what it was, scripture? That's awesome, that's grace,
that's the gospel, that's good news. But the only way that a
person is gonna believe it is by faith. Scripture says, the
just shall live by faith. That's in Habakkuk 2, chapter
two, verse four. So if God has given you faith
to believe in his word and in the promises of the gospel, That's
good news, and that's the gospel of grace. We'll close in prayer. Father,
we thank you for your word. We ask that you would help us
to believe it and to stand on it, and by your grace, through
faith, and we give you praise. Go with us now, Lord, throughout
the day. Be with us as we do the things that we normally do
these days. And keep us and protect us. And
we give you praise. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.