• hace 2 meses
Sermon by Mike Mazzalongo

Video Title: Renouncing of Grace Part 1 (Romans 1) – Mike Mazzalongo

Creator: Bibletalk.tv

Original Video: Renouncing of Grace Part 1 (Romans 1) – Mike Mazzalongo | BibleTalk.tv https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58BqqJ__kOI&t=1s

License: Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed)
Transcripción
00:00So here we are, Grace in the Book of Romans. That's the title of this series.
00:04This is lesson number two and the title of this lesson is, The Renouncing of Grace,
00:11part one, where we're going to break up this material into two parts. So last
00:17week we began our series in the Book of Romans and I told you that we'd be
00:22tracing the idea of grace as Paul explains it in this epistle. So this
00:29particular class, this particular study, we're not doing a line-by-line,
00:34paragraph-by-paragraph study of the Book of Romans. It's called a thematic study.
00:40So we're picking up a theme, we're picking up an idea and the idea is the
00:45idea of grace that Paul talks about throughout this epistle.
00:51We could study the idea of Christ. What does Paul say about Christ in Romans?
00:56What does Paul say about faith in Romans? So there are so many themes
01:00that we could look at and continue to go back through this wonderful epistle, but
01:07we've chosen the idea of grace. So we've said that our course is divided
01:16into different sections. We're going to look at different sections to cover the
01:20Book of Romans. Five parts. Part one, renouncing of grace, chapter 1 verse 1 to
01:27chapter 3 verse 20. The next part will be the response of grace, chapter 320 to
01:34725. The request of grace, chapter 8. The refusal of grace, chapters 9 10 and 11.
01:42The result of grace, chapters 12 to 16. So that's kind of our
01:47outline, the outline of the study that we will use for this book. So this
01:54week we begin with the very first section where Paul explains how mankind
01:59has renounced grace, God's grace, and how this renunciation has led to universal
02:06sin. That's chapter 1 verse 1 to chapter 3 verse 20. That whole section
02:12is about this point. So in the opening verses of the book Paul greets his
02:18readers by establishing his credentials as an apostle, by summarizing the gospel
02:25itself, and he offers a blessing upon the readers themselves. He also states his
02:32own objectives in ministry and that is to preach to all men the gospel, both
02:38Jews and Greeks, and that the gospel is God's power to save them. Then he
02:46begins his effort to show that all men need this gospel and he does so by
02:52explaining this idea of the universality of sin. So before we examine Paul's
03:00teaching on the universality of sin we need to look at an opposing view called
03:06the universality of salvation or by its more modern name pluralism. Universalism
03:15or pluralism is a popular idea in the religious world today that says that the
03:22love and the grace of God virtually ensures that everyone will be saved no
03:30matter what path they choose. In other words, God is so good that just nobody
03:36will be lost. It's impossible that anybody can be lost because God is so
03:40good. If I were to make a diagram, the old story, all roads lead to
03:47God, all roads lead to heaven, all religions lead to God, that's the idea of
03:55universalism, that's the idea of pluralism. When explaining this people
04:01say, well, each religion is distinctive because of culture and geography and
04:07history. Hinduism, it's been affected by the culture in which
04:13that religion developed, that's what people say, right? But then people say all
04:20of these religions are capable of leading a person to God and thus
04:25salvation. So you can get to God through Hinduism or through
04:30Islam or through Buddhism or through Jainism or through whatever is
04:35Christianity, Mormonism, all the roads they lead, as long as you're on
04:41one of these roads they lead to God. Now some Christian pluralists teach that
04:48every religion is really a form of underdeveloped Christianity and when
04:54that religion matures it actually leads a person to Christ. So they say like
04:59Hinduism, for example, is a primitive kind of Christianity and they say that when
05:06the Hindus follow their religion to its maximum ideal eventually
05:12they'll find Christ. Now major Christian denominations, Presbyterianism
05:21and other Catholicism, major Christian denominations
05:29have a smaller version of pluralism that says this, it says all churches lead to
05:38heaven but not all religions. So certain Christian pluralists, they say well
05:46Buddhism doesn't take you to heaven and Hinduism that doesn't take you to heaven
05:49but all forms of Christianity take you to heaven and in a diagram form they
05:57say that every religion is just a branch on the tree of Christianity, just
06:04different way to get to the same thing. It's the same pluralistic
06:15idea but it's restricted to Christianity and people who believe this, people who
06:20accept this, they use language like well of what religious expression are you,
06:26what Christian expression are you or what fellowship of believers do you
06:32belong to and so on and so forth and this is just code for hey underneath
06:37we're all the same, it's all the same business, we all believe in Christ in one
06:43way or another and we're all going to the same place anyways. Now these ideas
06:49they're easy to understand right, all roads lead to heaven or all Christian
06:53denominations part of a tree that's all the same thing, very easy to
06:59understand, actually very attractive and very comforting, no arguing here.
07:04I mean if everybody's going to heaven there's no debating, there's
07:07no arguing, there's no working, it seems like a much more loving type thing
07:14doesn't it? I mean if you're able to say hey all religions everybody's going to
07:20heaven, I'm just full of love, I'm saying that because God is love, that must be
07:26the way it works. Well it's the way a lot of people would
07:31like it to work until you begin to examine it, that's the problem, when you
07:38examine it it doesn't hold up for a couple of reasons. Number one, this is
07:44illogical, it is illogical that God who is perfectly logical would give
07:51different and even contradicting information about Himself and how to
07:57reach Him to different people simultaneously. It's like saying to two
08:04people at the same time the way to reach me and you say to that person I'll be in
08:09New York on January 1st and to this person you say I'll be in Los
08:13Angeles on January 1st, contradicting information. Eastern
08:20religions like Hinduism and Jainism and Buddhism so on so forth they teach that
08:26man is responsible to reach a state of perfection or as some call it nirvana
08:31and union with the force of life through either a cycle of reincarnation, personal
08:40effort and or acquiring special knowledge and insight through meditation
08:44and self-denial, that kind of summarizes the ideas of Eastern religions. Western
08:51religions that include Judaism, Christianity, even Islam, they teach
08:56basically that God helps man to come to Him, that He dies once and then God
09:01judges each man, well that's not reincarnation is it?
09:07Eastern religions see God as a force without personality or will, Western
09:13religions see Him as sovereign, intelligent, Lord, well that's not the
09:17same thing is it? Eastern religions are inclusive for all religious beliefs,
09:22Western religions are exclusive, only one religion is the true religion, again
09:28contradictory. The point here is that the information about Hinduism will not lead
09:35a person to the same God and the same result as the information on Islam for
09:41example or the information on Christianity, it won't get you to the
09:45same place, it will not create in you the same idea, the same concept of who God is
09:51or what God wants or what God does. A logical God does not purposefully give
09:59conflicting, illogical, and confusing information about how to find Him, that
10:06would be cruel. Another problem, universalism is unbiblical from a
10:17Christian perspective. The Bible and especially the book of Romans has a very
10:23exclusive view of the Christian religion, it does assure that all Christians that
10:30they are positively and completely saved forever and ever, absolutely, but the
10:36Bible also emphatically declares that those who are not Christians will perish,
10:41that's pretty clear in the book of Romans and other places in the Bible. It
10:47is for this reason that the Christian religion was so despised at
10:52the beginning, when it started in the first century. When all
10:57religions were inclusive you could be a collector of gods and
11:04religions, the more the barrier. This is the world that
11:09the Apostles were in and in the world that they were preaching to,
11:15they were preaching to a world where people had many gods, the more gods the
11:20better, bring them on. They come up and say, sorry about that, there's only one
11:29God, only one. Then Peter says, and there is salvation in no one else for
11:38there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we
11:42must be saved. That's why they were hated. They weren't hated because
11:47they were taking care of orphans or because they lived a moral life,
11:54like they were striving to be sexually pure in their life. They
11:58weren't hated because of that. They were hated because they stood up and said,
12:04well, I'm sorry about your ten gods, but none of them are gods. There's only one
12:08God and that's Jesus that's coming in person and that's
12:14Jesus Christ. Only through Him can you go to heaven. People didn't like
12:18that. I know there are a lot of other political reasons
12:23for the persecution, but certainly the hatred of the
12:29people was based on that. You know what? Nothing has changed today. If you
12:34declare that only through Christ can you be saved, oh my, that is so politically
12:40incorrect today to say a thing like that. So nothing has changed. They weren't
12:47martyred because Christianity was a new or different religion. They were despised
12:51because the disciples of Jesus dared to say it was the only religion. The
12:57first three chapters of Romans explains why and how this is so. It sets the
13:04stage to explain why Christianity is the only religion that deals
13:09effectively with man's basic problem, which is the problem of sin. So in
13:16Romans chapter 1, 2, and 3, among other things, Paul describes man's true
13:22condition. His true condition is he's fallen from grace. He's renounced the
13:28grace of God. Now we know that man began as good. He was the recipient of God's
13:35grace as the head of creation, the partaker of the divine nature, an
13:40intimacy with God that he shared. This was God's very first expression of grace
13:47towards man, the creation, and putting man at the head of creation. That was God's
13:54initial expression of grace. Man, through disobedience, fell or renounced
14:03this grace and came into the condition that Paul describes in Romans chapters
14:111, 2, and 3. So he begins describing this fall from grace by describing the
14:17process of sin itself and how this leads to judgment and death. So let's read
14:23chapters 1, verse 18. Like I said, this is not a line-by-line study. I'm just
14:28picking certain passages that support and describe our theme. So verse 18, it
14:34says, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and
14:39unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. So Paul is
14:47explaining here that God will punish all those who refuse and willingly suppress
14:52the truth. Well, what is the truth? Well, the truth is there is a God and this God
15:00can be known and this God is to be obeyed. This is the truth. Paul says
15:08man has willingly suppressed this truth. The best example I can give you is,
15:13you ever take a beach ball in a swimming pool? If you just throw it
15:19into the pool, what will happen? It'll float, right? It'll float on the surface.
15:22You have to hold the beach ball underwater to get it underwater. You have
15:28to suppress it to get it underwater. Well, this is what Paul is saying. The truth
15:33has a buoyancy. It wants to rise up. The knowledge that there is a God and He's
15:38the one who's created everything and that we ought to obey Him,
15:43that truth has buoyancy. It wants to rise up. Paul is saying that sinful men
15:49have suppressed this truth, have kept it down willingly, because if they didn't do
15:57that the truth would simply rise up. In verse 18 to 20 he continues and says,
16:03because that which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it
16:09evident to them. For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes
16:13His eternal powers and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood
16:18through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. So God or the truth
16:25is known in two very natural ways that Paul mentions here, through conscience
16:30and through creation. Every person can come to know God and His attributes
16:39through either or both of these means. A person who is blind and cannot speak
16:45can still know there is a God through conscience. So these two witnesses, Paul
16:52says, the creation and our own conscience, are so overpowering that no one can
16:58plead ignorance. No one can plead ignorance. You're driving along and
17:07every quarter mile there's a sign that says 45 miles an hour, 45 miles an hour,
17:12and you're doing 63 and you get pulled over and you say to the policeman,
17:16I didn't know. Really? You didn't see all those 45? You think that was
17:23just a suggestion? Same thing. Paul is saying nobody can say, I didn't know
17:30there was a God. Really? The stars in the heaven, you never had the thought, who
17:37put those there? So in verses 21 to 23 we continue, he says, for even though they
17:44knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in
17:48their speculations and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise,
17:52they became fools and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an
17:56image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and
18:02crawling creatures. So rather than responding to a fundamental truth that
18:08man has always known, a fundamental truth that was always there, man, historically,
18:17collectively, and individually, has chosen instead, Paul says, not to
18:24acknowledge or honor God, refused to be grateful, even when he did acknowledge
18:30God, chose rather to worship baser things expressed in pagan religions,
18:37seeing in these a wisdom devised in their own minds. In other words, you'd
18:42rather worship things that you created yourselves than worship the God that
18:46created you. So instead of letting the truth emerge, Paul says, man has chosen to
18:56pursue the course that I've just described, not to acknowledge God, not to
19:01thank Him, not to worship Him, but rather to create his own gods, his own way. Then
19:08in verse 24 and 25 he says, therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their
19:12hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them, for they
19:17exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather
19:22than the Creator who is blessed forever, amen. So the net result of all of this
19:28was that God did not intervene, God permitted them to sin to their hearts
19:33content, you don't want to know me, you don't want to obey me, you don't want to
19:37honor me, fine, you like sin, you like paganism, you like that, go ahead, fill her
19:42up, fill her up. So Paul in the final verses describes some of the sins that
19:52this fall from grace and this process of sin led them to. Now understand here, Paul
20:01is not describing a single person or a single nation, he's describing a
20:07natural progression of humanity that forsakes God, this is what happens.
20:14So the progression, there's the refusal to acknowledge God as God, it starts
20:20there, whether it's a person, a nation, or all of humanity, it starts there.
20:26That is followed by a refusal to respond with thanksgiving. So if you
20:32refuse to acknowledge that God is God, well, you're not going to give thanks for
20:36anything. Who are you going to thank? You're not acknowledging God and that
20:42will lead to a creation of personal gods devised by human minds to
20:49fulfill the need of the human soul for the truth of God. You know what is so
20:54strange, we're designed in such a way that we want to worship, we have to
21:00worship, it's part of our, we're wired to worship. And so the sad
21:06thing is, if we reject the true God, eventually the need to worship will
21:10find a way out and we'll end up worshiping things that are not God.
21:18Paul says the last step is a downward plunge into active evil. Now in an
21:26historical sense, the process is as follows, in a kind of a macro view
21:32of history, if you looked at history and if you looked at this
21:36kind of process here, this downward fall, this is what it looks like. You begin
21:43with grace, God's expression of grace. And then when you reject God, when you
21:53reject grace, the first thing to fall is your theology. So there's a theological
22:00fall, because you're not acknowledging the true God anymore. Well, a theological
22:05fall leads to a philosophical fall, because so long as you're acknowledging
22:10God, your philosophy, your thinking about life and how it works, it's orderly,
22:16because you understand there is God, there's the creation, there's me.
22:20You understand the relationship between yourself and your Creator, but if you
22:24reject God and there's your theological fall, well, then your
22:28thinking will also fall. And you're going to begin creating scenarios to
22:34explain how life is, where does it come from. And you start having all of
22:40these philosophical ideas that explain reality, that explain the world without
22:47reference to God. Well, there, that's a theological fall, a philosophical fall,
22:53and that philosophical fall is followed by a moral fall. People start acting in
23:01ways that are ungodly. So that's what Paul is talking about in a kind
23:10of a macro sense here. The rejection of values of right and wrong, by the
23:16time you get to a moral fall, you're at a point where as a nation you're saying,
23:21well, good is bad and bad is good. Are we there yet? Are we there yet?
23:29Wait a minute, the Christians are the bad guys in this society and those who
23:35promote immoral sexual lifestyle, they're the good guys. They get the headlines.
23:42They get the parades.
23:49We've seen this cycle in history, right? The creation, that's the... and
23:59then the garden, boom, the fall. Seth comes along and men once again begin calling
24:08on the name of the Lord. What happens? We get to the flood, where God
24:14destroys everything. Then post-Diluvian means after the flood, everything
24:19starts over again. What happens? We get to the Tower of Babel, where
24:27humanity wants to rise up. God has to spread him out. Then you have Abraham, a
24:33hope to the crucifixion. Then you have the Apostolic Age, the Apostles,
24:42the church is growing, things are happening, a kind of a great
24:46revival. Then we get to the Middle Ages, the Dark Ages. Then we have
24:53the Reformation, back to the Bible, back to God. Tremendous religious
25:00renewal in Europe. Then we get to the Enlightenment.
25:05The Enlightenment with philosophers who said, man is the center of
25:10everything. We can invent stuff. Technology will solve all our problems.
25:14The artists have been set free. We don't need God. We can explain how
25:22everything happened. It's called evolution. That's all the product of the
25:27Enlightenment. It's always the same circle going round and round. Then we
25:34have the Restoration. Now we're getting close to our own history, right? The
25:40Great Awakening, they called it. Another back to the Bible movement that swept
25:45across Europe, especially across America, for a hundred years, to the point where
25:51in the 1950s, and you've heard this before, the Churches of Christ, that
25:55Restoration movement, let's get back to the Bible, do Bible things, Bible ways.
25:59Fastest growing religious group in America. Now we're at the present.
26:06Where are we now? Good is bad. Bad is good. It's just a cycle. Some people say,
26:16why aren't you more excited? Why aren't you more afraid?
26:19Because it's just the same stuff going around all the time, round
26:24and round and round and round. So we see this cycle in modern history, don't we?
26:33The theological fall came with the rejection of the Bible and inspiration
26:38in most mainline denominations in the last 50 years, spearheaded by scholars of
26:44the higher critical method. In other words, Bible scholars were not looking to
26:49see what does the Bible teach and what does it say in context. They just saw the
26:53Bible as literature. No inspiration whatsoever. These scholars began to
27:04influence the writers and the ministers and the leaders, because ministers go to
27:10seminaries and seminaries are populated by intellectuals and
27:18intellectuals were buying into this stuff. So ministers brought this
27:22back to their churches. The fact that a gay woman can be a pastor of a
27:30Methodist Church, that doesn't happen overnight. That takes 75 years to happen,
27:36but it happens. I tell people, you want to send your kid to Harvard, sure, if you
27:41want him to go to business school there, but don't send him to the divinity
27:45department, because he'll come out, he won't even believe in God, let alone be a
27:48minister. So they influenced the writers and ministers and leaders to
27:55reject the Bible as authority and rely more on social and psychological
28:01sources for ministry models and church models and moral issues.
28:09Lutheran churches ordain active homosexuals because it no longer
28:12considers the Bible as an authority. Then we have the philosophical fall.
28:19I'm just talking about the latest cycle in our lifetime. This occurred
28:24simultaneously with great thinkers establishing relativism as the new basis
28:31for thinking about ourselves in our world. Relativism has many variations, but
28:36basically it says that the only rules that one is bound by are the rules that
28:40one creates for himself. As long as you don't hurt anyone else, that's the only
28:46rule. So we see this thinking expressed in the pro-choice movement.
28:53No one can impose a standard on the individual that he or she has, that has
28:59not been chosen by that person for themselves. So the ability to choose for
29:07yourself how you live and what you do trumps God's command. Social laws become
29:18valid because they have been chosen by the majority. They really don't have any
29:24values in themselves. We believe that basic laws should be there
29:31because they are naturally good. Thou shalt not steal. That's a good thing.
29:35That's why it should be a law, aside from the fact that God has given the law.
29:38But in relativism the law is there because it serves us somehow. When
29:44we don't like that law anymore, we get rid of that law. Now in our
29:49country we have an institution that helps us do that. What's it called?
29:53It's called the Supreme Court. Imagine one person's vote, one person's vote has
30:03changed 6,000 years of social conduct. One person's vote has said from now on
30:12every court in the land must permit two men or two women to be married. One vote.
30:21Government, politics, law, this becomes very important in a relativistic world
30:28because these are the only vehicles to establish what a society is
30:32to be. We need to be afraid of a society completely dependent on relativism. We
30:44need to be afraid of a country like Russia, for example, becoming a complete
30:47democracy without any religious conscience because fueled by our
30:51capitalistic system, a nation that is totally relativistic could choose to
30:57collectively destroy us and have the money to do it and feel absolutely no
31:02remorse because it was the will of the nation.
31:11It isn't that might makes right, that's what Nietzsche said, it's the majority
31:17has the priority. So in a relativistic world there's no such
31:25thing as loving your enemy because a majority of people would never choose to
31:30adopt such a policy. Only a religious people would adopt this type of policy
31:38and in our nation that group is shrinking.
31:43And then the philosophical fall always followed by a moral fall. So we are
31:51currently experiencing the moral fall of the West. The East fell with communism
31:58and secularism in Europe. When homosexuals march in the streets for
32:07their rights, when governments openly robbed their own people, when God's name
32:13is publicly blasphemed before millions of people in the media day after day
32:20after day with no outrage and no way to stop it, when we glorify and we pour
32:28adulation on liars, thieves, fornicators, and God haters as we do on many of our
32:34entertainers and sports people who publicly act this way without shame, no
32:41shame. A woman who is a mother will expose herself completely naked to
32:48millions of people and be considered a hero or heroine. When a man begins to
32:57dress like a woman and is given awards for that action. When this type of
33:06systemic immorality becomes clear and visible to all then three things are
33:12near. Number one, we are nearing the end or the bottom of the moral fall. You
33:21can't get much lower. You cannot get much lower that in your society that
33:32child molesters claim that they were born that way and asked not to be
33:40penalized because of that reason. Some of you might be saying, oh that's
33:44terrible that would never happen. Oh really? It's already happening. It's
33:48already the most common defense for paedophiles. I can't help it. I was born
33:54that way. That's just the way that I am. They're seeking mercy from
33:59the courts for their actions.
34:06Or we're near the beginning of another period of God's grace as the cycle
34:13begins a new phase in history. This is seen in the working of the Holy Spirit
34:18strengthening the church to grow dynamically. This is seen in spiritual
34:23and moral fervor for Christ among the people. Not just any revival of religion,
34:29not greater Islam, but the rise once again of the church that belongs to
34:34Christ. You understand what I'm talking about here? In this cycle here where are
34:39we at? I think, if you just look at society, we're at the moral
34:43fall part of society. The question is, what happens after the moral fall?
34:49Revival, hopefully. Historically it's always been revival. People kind of swing
34:56back. Or we're near the end of the world brought on by the return of Jesus.
35:04Because it is when there is the greatest challenge to God's authority
35:09and position, the Bible says that that's when Jesus returns. This is what II
35:14Thessalonians teaches. Without getting too spectacular here,
35:23the book of Thessalonians also says that the man of lawlessness has to be
35:27revealed to Christians before the end comes. I've not seen any sign of the
35:33man of lawlessness being revealed. So I doubt we are at this particular
35:38point yet. However, according to the Bible, this is how it's going to work. So this
35:45cycle, theological fall, philosophical fall, moral fall, and either the
35:52return of Jesus or revival, this just keeps going round and round and
36:00round. That's why the encouragement to the church is always, be faithful.
36:06Understand that you're living in a world that just keeps going round and round
36:10like this. Be faithful. So in chapter one, so you're saying, what does this have to
36:16do with Romans? Well, in chapter one of Romans, Paul is describing this cycle of
36:21falling from grace and how all humans are caught up in it in one way or
36:26another. In chapter two and three, he goes from a macrocosmic, in other words, a big
36:33picture view, which is what he gives in chapter one, to a microcosmic, a detailed
36:40view of the very same thing. So in chapter one, he describes this cycle on
36:46like on a worldview. And in chapters two and three, he's going to kind of narrow
36:52it down and describe it on a very personal view. So from the moral history
36:58of mankind to the working of sin in the heart of each individual person and the
37:04results of this in the lives of individual Jews and Gentiles. So the
37:09lesson for us so far is that this cycle continues and each of us is caught up in
37:15it, despite our advanced technology, despite our global worldview. And the
37:21moral collapse of society is played out in each of our personal lives as well.
37:26And in the end, there remains only one name under heaven by
37:32which we must be saved also, Jesus Christ. That's the thing that just remains
37:36throughout this history. The power of the gospel, which is the
37:42revealed grace of God, is just as powerful today as it was then and it
37:47will be just as powerful in the future. So when we study Romans or any other
37:54book in the Bible for that matter, we're handling that power, we're handling that
37:58spirit, we're handling that life that can lead us to a state of grace or can
38:04ignite a period of grace for the whole world, if we're not ashamed of it. They
38:11weren't ashamed of it in the first century and they were in the throes of a
38:14moral fall. I think we're similarly in the throes of a moral fall in our
38:20generation. And our response is not to worry or to be afraid, our response is
38:28not to be ashamed of the gospel as the power of God to save mankind, even in our
38:36age today. Such is the power of the gospel, as Paul will say, for I am NOT
38:42ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone
38:46who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. In our next lesson
38:53we're going to discuss part two, the renunciation of God's grace and His
38:57judgment. We're going to go into a more focused view of that. That's our
39:01lesson for this morning. Thank you for your attention. Appreciate it.

Recomendada