The Gathering Surf City

Alright, so here's the question.

This morning,

before I read the passage,

the two verses that we're
going to look at here,

the question is just simply this,

why study the Bible?

Why study it?

Right? I mean,

if you really want to ask ourselves about
the priority that we undertake

in studying the Bible,

then we need to answer the question,

why are we doing it?

What's the reason for studying what
we refer to as God's Word?

Or maybe some people don't study it,

some people read it.

Yeah. But they don't really start
to dig in to figure out kind of,

well, what does it mean?

To me,

part of the thing that I've enjoyed
most about preaching and being a

pastor is making the Word
of God applicable.

How does it affect me if
I read this verse or,

or I dig into that word or I seek
to understand this theme?

What impact does that
have on my life?

How does it affect me?

How does it change something
about me and who I am?

So after we answer the question
of why study the Bible,

being that,

guess what?

I want to know God better.

The Bible is the revelation of God
himself in written form to us,

to his people,

to the people who want to know him,

to the people who are
called according to,

to his purposes.

And so then this year we're
asking the question,

why the letter to the Romans?

Why is it important?

Why should we study
the Book of Romans?

Well, if you'll think back
two years ago to 2023,

we did the whole year in a series,

sort of topic called Faith
and Discipline.

We talked about the disciplines
of our faith.

And then we looked at three books of
the Bible in sort of a survey.

We looked at Ecclesiastes,

where after looking at the
disciplines of our faith,

Ecclesiastes was really
how not to do it.

Okay, it was like a bad example
of discipline and faith.

And then we went into Romans
for three months,

we did a survey of the Book of
Romans and then October,

November, December,

we did a survey of the
Book of Hebrews.

And I began praying through those
last six months of the year.

And I was like,

this is backwards.

You know what,

we need to go back through
this whole process again,

except we need to start with Hebrews
because the Book of Hebrews

identifies for us the
object of our faith.

Book of Hebrews just reveals Jesus
to us that he is son and heir and

Creator.

He's the radiance of God's glory.

He's the exact expression
of the essence of God.

He is high priest.

He upholds and holds together
all things.

He's the King of Kings he's
the Savior he's our Lord.

See, so that's what Hebrews
told us last year.

Glad you were here.

If you weren't,

go read Hebrews.

And now this year we're going to spend
the whole year and most of next

year probably in the book of Romans.

Because where Hebrews
identifies Jesus,

Romans identifies us.

It tells us who we are in Christ.

It gives definition to our faith.

Alright, so here's the two verses I want
to share with you this morning.

And we're going to kind of break,

break them down just a little bit because
in about three weeks we're

going to be right back
on these two verses.

Just so you know,

Romans 1,

16 and 17,

I happen to believe are kind of the outline
or the thesis statement for

the letter to the Romans.

For I am not ashamed of the gospel.

For it is the power of God for salvation
to everyone who believes.

To the Jew first and
also to the Greek.

For in it the righteousness of God is
revealed from faith to faith as it

is written.

But the righteous man
shall live by faith.

Alright, let's pray.

God, thank you for this day.

Thank you God that we get
to hang out together.

God, we've enjoyed hanging
out with you all week.

And now we just come together
for this family reunion.

Time to be able to sing,

to be able to celebrate,

to pray,

to consider together your word,

God, to seek to understand and to help
us understand that which we need

to know about you.

How it is that our lives can be what
you desire most for them to be.

So God,

help us to listen.

God help us to hear,

help us to pay attention,

help us to surrender,

help us to obey.

We pray it in Jesus name.

Amen. Alright,

so there's a phrase in these two verses
that I want to focus on this

morning. It's just simply
faith to faith.

We're going to call the messages through
the book of Romans faith to

faith for the next year and a half.

At this point,

I think it's either 69 or 89 weeks that
the outline is working out to.

All right,

because I can't get it
all done at once.

But this idea of faith to faith.

And so I was prompted to ask
myself a few weeks ago,

is your faith enough?

Is my faith enough?

Certainly if we confess with our mouth
Jesus is Lord and believe in our

heart that God raised
him from the dead,

we shall be saved.

I mean,

that's in Romans.

Okay, so we understand that
that is a faith position,

a belief position.

And yet when we see this Phrase the righteousness
of God is revealed from

faith to faith.

What does that mean?

What's faith to faith?

I mean,

I've got faith.

I believe in Jesus.

I believe Jesus is the son of God and
he is Lord and Savior and King of

kings and wonderful counselor,

mighty God.

All that stuff that we say,

I believe that.

Okay, so I've got faith,

but to what?

To faith.

Alright, so Nick did this little study
and it was kind of interesting.

Ready? He went through a lot of versions
and since he's preaching this

same message up in Burgau at
10 o'clock this morning,

we started talking about
this yesterday.

So the American Standard Version of the
Bible says from faith unto faith.

Okay? That,

that gives a little different
nuance to it,

right? The common English Bible says
from faithfulness for faith.

Okay? The ESV says from
faith for faith.

The NIV says from faith.

No by faith,

from first to last,

okay? The nlt,

which is what Nick likes
to preach from,

says start to finish by faith.

Okay? And then the New Revised Standard
Version says through faith for

faith.

Alright, we all confused now.

Well, if you think about,

and remember I've said it over
and over and over again,

translation is an art form,

not a science.

Because when you start translating
from Greek in this case,

or from Hebrews or Aramaic,

even what you end up with
the English is.

All right,

here's what the Greek
word looks like.

In English,

it could be 12 different words.

How do you know which word?

How do you know which conjunction?

How do you know which
preposition to use?

Well, you've got to take
it from the context.

You got to understand what it is that
God is revealing that God is

pouring into,

in this case,

Paul, to,

to put down in a written form.

For us to what?

Understand Paul?

No, for us to understand God.

See, all of it's got to point us back
to understanding God revealing

himself to us.

So faith to faith.

All right,

so I actually,

this year I'll go ahead
and tell y'all,

I am using a Bible that you
can't even get anymore,

okay? I AM using the
NAS 1977 version.

It was my textbook in Bible college,

okay? And that's the one I've
decided to use this year.

Now, if you want to get
as close as you can,

because somebody asked
me this last week,

if you want to get as close as
you can get you a 1995 NAS,

it's about as close as you're
going to get to the 77 NAS.

I'm just,

just warning you ahead of time now,

you're all probably going now.

Why would you pick a
Bible we can't get?

Because I want you to read whatever Bible
you got and let's understand it

together. Okay?

Alrighty.

So here's the idea from alright,

so our text says revealed
from faith to faith.

So when we get back to these
two verses in a few weeks,

we're going to really focus in on.

For in it the righteousness of God
is revealed from faith to faith.

So in all of these translations,

here's what I want you
to understand.

From faith to faith simply
implies faith progression.

You might have faith unto salvation,

faith to believe that
Jesus is the Christ,

the son of the living God,

as Peter said,

somewhere on a hillside somewhere.

But is that where it stops?

Is our faith supposed to remain?

I got saved when I was 8 years old.

Is faith supposed to stop at 8 years
old and never be any more than that?

No, see,

our faith is supposed to grow
from faith to faith,

from faith for faith by
faith through faith.

All of those different translations simply
imply that faith in salvation,

our fire insurance,

the sweet pie in the sky and
the sweet by and by faith,

right? No,

no, it doesn't stop there.

And yet I know I grew up
in a generation said,

well, long as you said the words,

long as you dunked your head,

you know,

and that's the generation
I grew up in.

And it led us to this sort
of easy believism,

as one of my professors
used to call it,

that said,

well, just so long as you,

you've done this and you can
act any way you want to.

That is not the Bible,

folks. You cannot claim Christ
and live like the devil.

Sorry, but we don't work for
our salvation either.

There is a progression of faith.

So here's my question.

Outside of is your faith big enough?

Is your faith a growing faith?

Do you see God growing
you up in him?

Because Romans is pivotal
for believers.

Matter of fact,

there's some quotes I want to
share with you this morning.

This was all compiled by Liberty University
in an article that was

written Martin Luther.

Now, I'm going to read to you
and I don't like doing this,

but I'm going to Martin
Luther said this.

The Epistle,

the letter to the Romans is really the
chief part of the New Testament.

It is truly the purest gospel.

It is worthy not only that every Christian
should know it word for word

by heart,

but also that he should occupy himself
with it every day as the daily

bread of the soul.

We can never read it or ponder over it
too much for the more we deal with

it. The more precious it becomes
and the better it tastes.

Martin Luther said that.

John Calvin said,

when anyone understands
this epistle,

he has a passage open to him to the understanding
of the whole scripture.

J.I.

packer says,

all roads in the Bible
lead to Romans.

And all views afforded by the Bible
are seen most clearly from Romans.

And when the message of Romans
gets into a person's heart,

there is no telling what may happen.

John Piper said Romans is the most important
theological Christian work

ever written.

And this last one,

I never even heard of him.

But it's in the article
I was reading,

Ben Merkel.

No other letter in the history of
the world has received as much

attention or has been given as much consideration
as Paul's letter to the

Church at Rome.

Paul's letter to the Church at Rome is
the greatest letter ever written

because of its great
impact in history,

its grand theology about Christ and
its practical instructions for

Christian living.

And in that article,

Liberty University actually sort
of summarized the most profound

discussion that Romans is the most profound
discussion about the most

profound subject in
all the Scripture,

God's plan and purpose
for saving sinners.

Romans gives definition to
who we are in Christ,

y'all.

So we're going to spend
a long time in Romans.

Matter of fact,

we might be in Romans
when Jesus shows up.

You see,

I think it's important Paul undertakes
to write to the Romans and we

believe, or scholars tell me,

because I'm not smart enough
to know it myself.

But scholars say he was in Corinth
when he wrote this letter.

You can find that in the Book of Acts
that he wrote as sort of the

precursor to his intended visit.

As a matter of fact,

when we start dealing with who Paul is
and his journeys and his letter to

the Romans and all that
sort of thing,

he says,

I can't wait to get to Rome because
I want to go to Spain.

You know,

this idea of Paul,

Paul was motivated first and
foremost by the Gospel,

the good news,

the message of Jesus Christ.

He wanted to get as many places as he
could get to tell as many people as

he could tell about salvation
in Jesus Christ.

I wish the whole body of Christ throughout
all the world today had that

same kind of drive,

right? To tell as many people as
we could tell about Jesus,

right? That was Paul's.

That was his call.

That was his motivation.

It was the priority of
not just his life,

but who he was.

I mean,

God slaps him off a donkey
on the way to Damascus,

right? And he go,

who are you,

Lord? I'm Jesus,

whom You're persecuting.

Why are you kicking
against the goads?

Right? That's a translation for you.

So why a book to Romans?

All right,

so in a.

In a day and time where there is
no Internet or television or,

let's say,

reliable mail service,

right? Paul knows that
if the gospel,

the good news of Jesus Christ,

is going to go out to
the known world,

then it needs to have an
anchor and a root,

a deep system of belief in the
capital city of the empire.

I want to get to Rome now.

He's writing to Christians in Rome.

So there are already
Christians in Rome.

And more than likely,

if you go back and read
in Acts at Pentecost,

it says there were Romans
in the crowd.

And when they left after the whole
celebration in Jerusalem,

at that time,

they went home to Rome and started telling
others about Jesus and started

sharing the gospel and started bringing
people into their homes.

And so really,

we don't know at this
point of a quote,

First Baptist Church of Rome,

but they were having house churches,

they were doing small
group ministry.

Y'all connect groups.

How about that?

Bringing people into their houses
and telling them about Jesus,

offering them some.

Some of them little hot.

Them little sausages in
a little biscuit,

you know,

those things.

But you see what I mean?

They were excited,

having learned about Jesus,

to get home to Rome and grab their friends
and family and tell them about

Jesus. And so Paul's writing this.

We call it an epistle.

It means a letter.

He's writing a letter to Christians
in the capital city of Rome,

and it'll be passed
around among them.

The topic of the letter
is the Gospel.

Paul undertakes to write the most detailed
explanation of what God has

accomplished in the death,

burial and resurrection
of Jesus Christ.

That's what Romans is all about.

Okay, so we're going
to hear big words.

We're going to hear big words like sin
and forgiveness and justification

and. And we're going to get all
that good theology in there,

right? And so we're going to hear.

So that's why.

That's why there's a
book to the Romans.

We call it.

It's a letter,

but we call it a book of the Bible.

There's a book to the Romans.

That's why Romans is not
just for Romans,

it's for us.

You need to know Romans.

Listen to all those smart people.

Martin luther,

John Calvin,

J.L. packer,

John Piper,

I guess Ben Merkel.

Smart. But anyway,

you see what I mean.

The idea is that Romans is for us,

we should pay attention to Romans.

I Love it that God and I got
to give him credit for it.

Because the idea is that two years
ago when we were doing faith and

discipline and we got toward the end
of the year and we were working our

way through Hebrews and I was like,

man, there's a lot of
stuff in Hebrews.

We need to spend a lot
of time in Hebrews.

So we spent nine months in the book
of Hebrews and it just kept coming

back and just rolling it over and rolling
it over and rolling it over

that this is who Jesus is.

And then Romans says,

this is who you are in Christ.

That's why the book of
Romans is for us.

So I want you to read it.

A couple weeks ago I said,

you know,

we're going to take a week before
we get into Romans,

so just read Romans,

read it and then read it again.

It doesn't take long to read
it from start to finish.

I mean,

you know,

if you've read like War and Peace,

this is cakewalk.

Read Romans and when you finish it,

read it again.

Now some interesting things are going
to happen this year and I think

it's kind of interesting because next
Sunday is deacon ordination Sunday

when we celebrate those that you guys
have observed and pointed out as

just servant hearted men
in the congregation.

We're going to ordain five
new deacons next week.

A couple of them at 9:25 and
a few of them at 10:40.

But all morning long we're going to
talk about what it means to be a

servant, to have a servant's heart.

So guess what happened?

Because we inserted that
into the schedule.

All of the gathering in the Word videos
are off sync with the dates.

If you get the gathering
in the Word devotional,

that comes out by email every
morning at 4:30 thereabout.

It follows,

typically I'll preach and then Monday
through Friday you get it in the

morning devotional all week long.

Well, after next week's deacon
ordination week,

the next Monday,

you're going to get the message
before it's preached.

So you get to spend time in Romans before
we get here on Sunday about

what we're going to talk about.

And I started praying
about that thing.

I thought,

oh man,

I got to go back in and redo all those
videos because we're about five

weeks ahead.

I never know what's going on,

you know,

with traveling and stuff.

But so I got way ahead
and then I was like,

no, maybe that was planned.

Maybe God wants us spending time in the
Word in the letter to the Romans.

And then we get together on Sunday
morning and we can talk about it,

we can share it together.

And I was just like,

God, you're so smart,

right? There's a plan,

God's at work.

We just have to be surrendered
and obey.

Alrighty, what's it about?

You know,

what I share with you all the time.

I am not a very trusting individual
when it comes to news,

right? I pick and choose my news.

I try to be very discerning in who
I listen to and what they say,

right? The gospel.

And we'll talk about this
throughout this week,

next week and the week after.

Gospel comes from the
word God spell.

Now, every one of you that
grew up in the 60s,

go, oh,

that was that musical they
did on Broadway,

right?

God spell.

Well, that's where the word
gospel comes from.

Because the word spell in Saxon,

Anglo Saxon means story.

So God's spell means God's story.

So gospel means God's story.

It's a good news story.

That's why we translate the word gospel
or we sort of define it as good

news. All right?

So I want you to think a minute
before we dig deep in,

deep into this realm,

really. You know people
that don't know Jesus,

you know people that have never surrendered
anything of themselves to a

plan and a purpose that God
may have for their lives.

Now, there's a reason why so many people
in my generation grew up with

this evangelism outline
called the Roman Road.

Because Paul undertakes to explain from
start to finish what it means to

acknowledge and recognize
that we're sinners,

we're fallen,

we're broken.

And the only real means,

healing, redemption,

correction, life,

fullness, whatever words you want
to stick in there is Jesus.

So you live in a world
that needs Jesus.

Paul identifies the gospel
as the death,

burial and resurrection of Christ.

But what we know is,

is that Jesus,

from birth,

actually pre existent eternity,

is God's good news for our broken,

fallen, sinful state.

We need to tell people
the good news.

People need to hear it.

Do they need to hear it from me?

Not really.

Do they need to hear it from Paul?

Yeah, that's a good idea,

Right? Who they going to listen to?

You got friends and family members
that will hear it from you.

Okay. Why a book to the Romans?

Because Paul,

God wanted Paul to spread
the good news.

Why Romans for us?

Because we need good news.

We live in a world where
there's not a lot,

right? We need good news.

What's it about?

It's about Jesus and it's about
who we are in Christ.

If you don't know Jesus
this morning.

You need Jesus.

You know,

it's funny,

we just came out of that whole gift giving
season that we call Christmas,

right? You know,

people always call me up early.

My family calls me up and goes,

what do you want for Christmas?

And I go,

I don't want anything for Christmas.

Be honest.

I mean,

typically, if I see
something at Ross,

I'll buy it,

right? I mean,

that's discount shopping,

y'all. Anyway,

you see,

ask somebody what they need.

What do they need?

I read a book years ago,

and I finished the book ultimately,

because I walked with somebody
through the book.

But in the introduction
of that book,

the author was just broken.

Life was a mess.

This author got before the Lord and in
the prayer understood that God was

saying, what do you want?

And so they made a list.

Made a list.

All the things in this life
that was a disappointment,

all the things in this life
that were a hurt.

All the things.

And this is what I want.

And in the prayer that this author
describes in the introduction,

God's answer was,

is that all?

Because you can find all that in me.

See, if you don't know Jesus,

you need Jesus.

We're going to sing one last song.

You get to respond.

You can respond right
there where you are.

If you want to know Jesus,

just reach out to him.

Admit your sin.

Ask him to forgive you and save you.

Maybe you want to pray
with somebody,

turn to your neighbor.

Pray with somebody that
you don't know.

That's cool.

You know,

last week when I told you to look
around and pray for somebody,

Somebody came to me later and said,

I picked somebody out.

And I went to them after
worship and said,

you're the one I picked out
and prayed for you.

What can I pray for you about?

He just had a bad diagnosis.

God said,

pray for me about that.

So they prayed.

Pray with your neighbor.

If you want me to pray with you,

I'll be standing right here.

Really, though,

we just get to respond
to God and his word.

Okay, let's pray together.

God, thank you for this morning.

And God,

all that you're doing,

things that you're doing around us and
things that you're doing in us and

the things you want to do in us.

God, help us to acknowledge and
recognize that we're not much.

And yet,

God, you love us and you choose us and
you call us and you make us yours.

And so,

God, my prayer would be
that 2025 is a year,

God, where the gospel goes forth and
where we're the ones who take it.

That God,

we are boldly proclaiming God,

the life that we have in Jesus.

God, if there's somebody this
morning doesn't know Jesus,

God just move their hearts
to bow before youe.

And God,

if there are Christians here this morning
that just need the strength and

the boldness and the willingness to
go out and live it in a loud way,

God, that'd be my prayer.

God, help us to respond to youo.

We pray it in Jesus name,

Amen.