GYC 2014: At The Cross

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Romans: Power To Face The Final Conflict

Jay Gallimore

1. Romans: Power To Face The Final Conflict

This message was presented at the GYC 2014 conference at the Cross in Phoenix, Arizona.

For other resources like this, visit us online at www.gycweb.org.

Well my watch says it's that time so let's go.

Here we're going to have prayer in just a moment.

And what I am using is a teacher's guide that I put together.

This is something I put together some years ago.

You'll see that it says based on the New International Bible, but I'm going to revise it to go along with the New King James version at some point here.

We're going to put it up on the web, but I said I don't want you to put it up on the web until I get it revised a little bit.

It won't really matter what version you're using.

Actually the New International helps us a lot in, actually will in some places, helps us in the book of Romans.

So, I probably will not cover every question in this.

My goal is to do the first 8 chapters of the book of Romans, because they're kind of in themselves.

But I hope that we will make the kind of progress that I can get into Romans 9 and 10, and we'll talk about the Jewish connection, particularly as it relates to the mark of the beast and the end of time.

I think you're going to find that very fascinating.

There's some hint to that as you get into the first chapter of the book of Romans.

So you have that, feel free to fill it out.

This is a seminar, it's not a preaching service.

Obviously, we'll try to make some progress, so if I get too much, I'll try to narrow that down a little bit, but I'm happy for you.

I think every Seventh-day Adventist should master the book of Romans, and my suggestion to you is take the book and read it, and pray and read it, and pray and read it, and you will find the most glorious, powerful affirmation of the Adventist message that I think you will possibly get.

We have everything in the world to be excited about the book of Romans.

I love the book of Daniel and the book of Revelation.

We would do Revelation seminars, evangelistic meetings, Daniel and Revelation.

And then afterwards, I would put people into all the new converts, I would put them into a class on Romans, this class that you're getting here today.

And we found that that really solidified people in their faith.

In other words, it really grounded them in the faith and answers a lot of questions, a lot of stuff that you hear moving around in the Adventist church today, outside the Adventist church.

The book of Romans really clears it up as we go into it.

So let's ask God's blessing and we'll begin our journey together.

Gracious Father in heaven, we want our journey to end standing on the sea of glass.

We wanna be there with the Apostle Paul who gave so much for the gospel of Christ with the other apostles and All they contributed and the value that you've used through them to add to our life Thank you most of all for Jesus Romans would not have been written without you sending your only begotten Son and letting Him suffer at the hands of lawless men who treated Him as they deserve themselves.

But He allowed that so that we might be treated as he deserves.

We thank you, Father, for that's given birth to the book of Romans, and we praise your name.

May we understand it clearly, may we not only understand it, but we go out of here able to explain it to other people.

Well, without the book of Romans, there would have been no Martin Luther, am I right?

And without Martin Luther, there would probably have been no Protestant Reformation.

Or at least that's the instrument that God used.

And without the Protestant Reformation, there would have been no United States of America and all the freedoms that we have.

And the Constitution of the United States of America is a Protestant document based on a reaction to the horribles of the Dark Ages.

And the Book of Romans stands as 1 of the generators of the freedoms that you and I hold and appreciate right this very moment.

I wanna go to the note, the beginning on the introduction.

I could ad lib it, but I think it's worth reading.

The prophecies of both Daniel and Revelation predicted that the church at Rome, and the book is called Romans, so it's written to the Romans, and the church at Rome would have an enormous influence on the Christian world.

History for 2, 000 years has demonstrated these predictions to be true.

The gospel to the Romans has been carefully cherished down through the ages.

The Christian church would have avoided many problems.

The carnal nature, the desire for worldly greatness has always clawed at man's only hope, faith in God.

We'll get to that text, that glorious text in the first chapter where it says, the just shall live by his faith.

I'm gonna talk about what that really what that really means.

But notice this, the ancient church of the patriarchs wrestled with their human tendencies to evil.

I don't like its tendency to selfishness.

We'll talk about that when we get to Romans chapter 6.

The ancient church of the patriarchs wrestled with their human tendencies to evil and some decided to trust what instead of the Lord?

By the way, is paganism making a big comeback today?

The ancient Jewish church wrestled with human nature, And some decided to put their trust in the law and its rituals rather than the lawgiver.

The Church of Rome wrestled with human nature.

And some decided to trust the imperial greatness of the Roman Empire rather than their Jewish Messiah.

And thus began the dreadful union of religions and secular power.

Modern day evangelicals and Protestants wrestled with human nature and some chose to trust science, philosophy.

Do you know there's Sunday churches that have Evolution Sunday?

Choose to trust science and psychology and the wisdom of modern men, and thus we often see a diluted, directionless Christianity.

Each of these departures from true religion proves to be a tower of straw with a foundation of sand.

Today we're faced with the same decisions we will...

Will we trust the Lord or will we trust ourselves?

And it's the book of Romans that helps us to find completeness to the deepest longings of our human hearts.

My life has been wonderfully transformed by this book.

I'm not going to cover, as I said, every text or because I won't, I mean, we can, I have 6 sessions all together?

And if I'm going to get to Romans 9 and 10, and I think I want to do that, I'm not gonna, I'm gonna have to skip just a little bit, but you can pick some of that up and you'll see that.

Because of the microphone, the recording, a lot of times I like to have people help me do the reading but for the sake of that, I'm gonna do the reading.

If you'll follow along, then when you raise your hand, I'm gonna try to get close enough so that I can pick up your comment in this mic because that's just gonna get recorded and where it goes, I do not know, or at least repeat your question.

"'Concerning His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, "'who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, verse 4, and declared to be the son of God with what?

Jesus was not simply declared, It wasn't somebody that came up with some figment of their imagination and said that Jesus is the Son of God.

It wasn't somebody that said, I just kind of like calling him the Son of God.

No, Jesus is declared to be the Son of God with power.

According to the spirit of holiness, and his linchpin is by the resurrection of the what?

2. Romans: Power To Face The Final Conflict

If you're brave enough to get back in here, we will plunge back in and I will pick up where I left off.

And during the break, I had somebody asking me a very good question and I think I should follow through on that since this is a topic that is facing people everywhere in all kinds of places.

So We're going to go ahead and shut our doors there and we're going to plunge right back into it.

I'd like to ask if you'd be so kind to bow your head with me.

Our heavenly Father, as we continue this subject, We pray that you will be our teacher and our helper in all things and that Jesus might be our real leader and our real teacher here.

We want the Holy Spirit to illumine our minds, the spirit of truth in Jesus' name, amen.

I know that there are going to be people that will say, let me come back to this whole thing that we're facing, where Paul talks about how this downward thing into this vile, terrible behavior where people become focused on their reproject reproductive as a way of finding out their origins and all those kinds of things.

But let me just focus for a moment on this homosexual issue.

By the way, I really appreciate the Coming Out group.

We've had them at our camp meeting, and we're also having them at our ministerial meeting and they've got it right and they are an example.

They are an example of a power of God to change people's lives.

I know that in some places they you know, the big thing is you can't change.

People like this cannot change because it's part of their DNA.

And that's been the big lie that everybody has accepted that people are just made this way.

Well, I'm not going to argue the fact that there are people who have a predisposition toward this kind of behavior.

And in fact I had 1 time some years ago because I was teaching seminary students their ninth quarter, their practice, and this person was doing research and he came to me and he said and somebody gave me a heads up that he had kind of an agenda, and the course of the conversation, he said, so what should the church do as far as people who are homosexual?

And I looked at him and I said, well, you know, there are 2 choices.

Either people repent and change or they have to leave.

And that would probably make a lot of people angry today if they heard me say that.

He got really upset with me and he says, what do you mean?

I said, have you ever seen a newborn baby that had a hot temper?

They have all kinds of genes and every 1 of you have genes and you have predispositions to certain kinds of behavior.

Some people have more weaknesses in some areas than other areas.

It doesn't mean you have to behave that way.

It just means that you have a predisposition towards it.

1 in 10 people have a predisposition towards alcoholism.

Should we say to people who have a predisposition towards alcoholism, bless your heart, you can't help it.

And it's not wrong because you can't help it.

Well, first of all, the gospel is the power of God to salvation.

So just because somebody has a predisposition to something doesn't mean that they can't overcome it by the power of Christ and the power of the gospel.

That's the reason Paul, as I said earlier, would stand up to the entire human race, if you please, to all the wise people, and he says, I am not ashamed of the gospel.

I would stand up for the whole homosexual community and the whole lesbian community and all of it, and I would say, I am not ashamed of the gospel, For it is the power of God to change every 1 of you.

I would stand up before the whole Hollywood crowd and the whole perverted sexual generation that's messed up that we live in, heterosexuals, and I would say the same thing to them.

You can overcome because we have the power of the gospel of Christ.

So we have to understand this bigger picture here.

It's not that we're starting to be mean, but this is the community of faith, a community that believes that God has the power to transform me into His image.

And even though I'm born in an imperfect world and I'm degenerate, we're all degenerate.

But I'm still not ashamed of the gospel of Christ.

Where is the power of God to change us and transform us and to make us into new creatures by His power.

All right right in the back speak up good and loud.

It's interesting that Paul says, and here he says, because although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God.

We can look at homosexuality, we can look at individuals who then fell guilty of child molestation, and many times we wanna sit here and put people in a box and say, well, they're not fixable.

Not realizing that in saying that we're not glorifying God as God, we put them in a box according to the old paradigm that we have established ourselves.

I tell people all the time, God never healed anybody halfway.

If he's gonna heal somebody, He can heal them the whole way.

Okay, I'm going to keep plunging in here because I want to go right back to the text again if you have your guide that you're following us here.

If you look under verse number 18, let's read verse 26 and 27 if you don't mind doing that with me.

For this reason, by the way, somebody during the break was blessed here who asked me about why do people become fools, professing to be wise, become fools.

It's because they think they're smarter than God.

Didn't Lucifer think he was smarter than God?

He had the highest IQ of all created beings, and that led him to think he was smarter than God.

It's gonna lead him to eternal destruction, to the whole universe looking at him and rejecting him and his own followers rejecting him.

In the final analysis, his own followers will not follow him.

That's why I said that faith must trust 2 things.

All right, Verse 26, for this reason God gave them up to vile passions even as their women exchanged the natural youth likewise.

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind to do the things which are not fitting.

Verse 29, being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality.

Not talking just about homosexuals, talk about all sexual immorality.

Wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness.

They are whispers, gossipers in other words, backbiters, Haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventor of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy.

Anybody want to live with an untrustworthy person?

You want to do business with untrustworthy people?

Untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful, who knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of what?

3. Romans: Power To Face The Final Conflict

And we want to open our Bibles and we're going to move right into Romans chapter 3.

1 of the clearest statements of the gospel is in Romans 3.

And another 1 will be in Romans chapter 5, end of 4 and 5 will be another very, very clear statement of the gospel.

And 1 or 2 coming in, getting their seats, and then we will plunge in and go.

Gracious Father in heaven, thank you again that we can open your word and as we plumb the depths of this, We pray that Jesus will be our real teacher, the Holy Spirit, Spirit of truth will be here with us.

He opens up with chapter 3 and he starts with these words.

Verse 1, what advantage then has the Jew?

In other words, if everybody, if God is not partial and everybody is under the law, so to speak, then what advantage does the Jew have?

And then here is his answer, or what profit of circumcision, verse 2, much in every way because of them were committed the oracles of God, or the truth of God.

So is it an advantage, is it an advantage to have the law of God?

It's the law of life, and I'm gonna talk more about why it's the law of life and not arbitrary.

So to have, for the Jewish people to have both the ceremonial law as well as the moral law is a huge advantage because in the ceremonial law was held in essence the gospel and the law of God was the way of life, the way of truth.

Once again, this is a note if you have it in your book, and I'm under Romans chapter 3, and I'm looking at the note under number 1, verses 1 and 2.

Once again, Paul is in no way rejecting God's law.

The law of God serves a very important function.

Often people down the law or put it down when they should be downing its misuse.

It's the abuse or misuse of the law of God that leads to problems.

The law is to help us in our sinful condition to understand how much we need to trust the Lord.

Will their unbelief make the faithfulness of God without effect?" Who are the some who do not believe that is referring there?

It's not referring to the Gentiles, it's referring to Jews.

And because some of the Jews didn't believe doesn't mean that God is not going to be faithful.

Just because everybody didn't believe doesn't mean that it's going to nullify God's plan.

So will their unbelief make the faithfulness of God without effect?

I like the old King James that says, God forbid.

Indeed, let God be true and every man a liar, as it is written.

This is a quote from Psalm 53, and it's a mysterious quote, and in 1 sentence, it's a quote most people don't think about, but here it comes.

That you, God, may be justified in your words and may overcome when you are judged.

Why is it important that even though there are some people that are unfaithful and God judges them in the end of time for their unfaithfulness, why is God being judged?

And what reasons is God, for what reason is God being in judge?

And why is it important for God to be judged on His judgment?

If God, if God takes people that are in the end of time and he pronounces judgment against them, why is it important that God's judgment be judged?

If it's not just, what does that kind of problem, does that produce for God and his children?

If the devil had his way, no 1 would trust the Lord.

So the reason that God's judgment is judged, the reason God's judgment is looked at, and that's 1 reason there's a thousand years, the millennium.

We'll be able to look and see the reasons why God was just in making the decisions that He made.

And all the information is going to be there.

There's not going to be any information that's not there.

So the answer to that, if I get the right place there, in verse 3 and 4, number 5, it's number 5 under that chapter 3, why do you think it's important for God to be found righteous when He's judged?

Because fairness or justice breeds trust.

Does God want us to trust Him through the ceases and ages of eternity?

Are we going to be able to trust Him through the seasons and ages of eternity if we feel that His justice is unjust?

So the only way that God can make sure that we understand that His justice is just and build trust between us is to open the books.

So he opens the record and you have the right to go there, push the button or whatever it is, and you can get Aunt Susie's whole life or Uncle Bill's whole life there, and you'll find why God said no.

And that very ability to do that, that your trust in your Heavenly Father is built because the just will always live by faith.

Now I want to go down to, I threw another text in here and for sake of time I'm not going to read Ezekiel 18, 21 to 24, Ezekiel 18, 30 to 31, but I want to talk about it just a little bit.

And Ezekiel 18, you'll find something very interesting going on.

Israel is pictured as being very unhappy with God's justice because God said this.

He said, if a person is righteous all of his days and he ends up sinning at the end, he's going to be lost.

Or if a person is wicked all of his days, and at the very end, turns to God, he's going to be saved.

And the Israelites said, that's not fair.

Where were they coming from to say it wasn't fair?

Well, I'll tell you where, because in their concept, your good deeds, it was like a balance.

That your good deeds had to outweigh your bad deeds.

So if all your life you had more righteous deeds than you had bad deeds, you should be saved.

If you had more evil deeds than righteous deeds, you should be lost.

So they said it's not fair for a person who's wicked all of his life and at the very end he turns righteous and his wicked deeds are still more than his righteous deeds, he should still be lost.

If it's just the other way around, he's been righteous all of his life, but at the very end he turns wicked, he should still be saved because his deeds, his good deeds outweigh his bad deeds.

Series

Romans: Power To Face The Final Conflict

4. Romans: Power To Face The Final Conflict

Transcript

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