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And so, once more, a very good afternoon to you. We are allowing ourselves this weekend the breathtaking exhilaration of attempting to survey the Epistle to the Romans in six sessions. As you will at once perceive, that has led us and will yet lead us to very arbitrary selections of some of the themes from this great epistle. By the extreme generosity of the Panton Hall community, I have been allowed the decision to take these arbitrary choices and select what I will from this epistle.
That will explain the oddities of the contents of the sessions as you will find them. Nonetheless, the sessions will be inordinately long, and you are therefore very wise if you attended to the advice that was issued last night, that you should have brought with you your cushions and bottles of aspirins and any other devices suited to easing the pain of sitting on the seat so long and trying to think so hard for such a long duration. Now, yesterday evening we surveyed, or attempted to survey, the general territory of this epistle to the, uh, Romans, and we proceeded as follows.
We selected from the early chapters of the book one of its leading themes, and we followed it, uh, through the r- the successive verses until we reached what we imagined was the climax of that theme for the time being within the book. Then we repeated the process, starting in the following chapters and selecting a theme and following that likewise to what we thought to be its natural climax within the book, and so on and so forth to the end. And the kind of scheme that we came up with as a practical device for getting our eyes over the...
the contents of the epistle. Now, electricity has refused to serve us. There we are. Oh, it's like my sermon's rather faint. I shall see. That's a little bit clearer. We started in the first chapter and asked the apostle that when he said that he was not ashamed of the, of the gospel because it is the power of God to salvation, we asked him to answer our question, why should we need to be saved anyway?
Let the gospel be the biggest power it can be to save people. It is irrelevant unless we need to be saved. Therefore, why do we need to be saved? And we found one of the reasons, the first reason, in fact, mentioned in that, uh, first chapter of Romans, that we need to be saved from the wrath of God. So we proceeded to trace Paul's references to the wrath of God throughout the chapters one and two and three and four, till we came to what seemed to us the climax of that particular theme for the time being, in the glorious and exultant statement of chapter five.
we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. And along with that, we noticed, as we came to that climax, uh, Paul pointing out that not only shall we be saved from the wrath of God, but on the basis of the work of our blessed Lord Jesus, we have certain assurance that we shall attain to the glory of God. And then we notice Paul's great emphasis at that particular juncture in his epistle to the love of God. The delightful ministry of the Holy Spirit as he takes the love of God, and as a man would pour out a tumbler of water on the ground until the rivulets of water trickled everywhere, so does the Holy Spirit take God's love for his people and pours it out into our hearts till it trickles everywhere through, underneath the doubt and the difficulty and the pain and the sorrow and the neuroses and what have you, and building into our hearts that assurance that
only the love of God can give. The assurance not only that God so loved us that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, but the logical implication of that, that if he loved us when we were sinners, he will certainly not abandon us now we have become his people and his saints, and therefore we may be even the more sure that if we have been justified, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. And in that glorious passage, as I say, we felt we found a climax for the time being of that particular theme.
Thereafter, we moved on to the next part of the epistle and found a second answer to the question why we need to be saved. We need to be saved from the wreckage caused by Adam's sin. And those terrible slaveries and servitudes that Adam's sin has brought upon us, the dominion of sin itself, the irresistible rule of death as a consequence. And just when we thought we could improve ourselves and perhaps liberate ourselves by the keeping of God's law, we discovered that that got law, good as it is indeed in itself, becomes a further tyrant, exerting its dominion upon us, demanding the impossible, and instead of curing matters, making them ten thousand times worse and provoking us to yet further rebellion against God.
So that we need to be li- delivered not only from the bondage of sin and the bondage of death, but in the end we have to be set free from the dominion of the law. And we thought further as we came to chapter eight of the wretched results and the wreckage that have accrued through Adam's sin. The whole creation around us groaning with frustration, groaning in pain to be delivered. And then once more we saw how, through the work of Christ, God will complete the glorious work of redemption, deliverance from the wreckage caused by Adam's sin.
And already the process is at work within us, and one day shall come to its triumphant conclusion. Or we wait for the redemption of our bodies, the time when the Lord shall come and our bodies be conformed to his glorious body, and more important, the people that will go inside the bodies, so to speak, they shall be conformed to the image of God's Son. And creation herself, oh, dance with delight at the prospect, creation herself shall be delivered from the bondage to corruption into the liberty of the now grown up sons of God, schooled by Christ to take over the overt, uh, government of the whole universe, as Christ in his great grace shares his coming kingdom with his redeemed people.
And when we got there, we felt we had found a kind of another climax, this time to this particular topic, God's answer to the wreckage caused by Adam's sin. And we found Paul once more emphasizing the matter of hope. We are saved by hope. What a man sees, what does he yet hope for it? But if we hope for that, we see not. Yet, uh, we wait patiently for it, and hope becomes in its turn, a saving element in life's trials, tribulations, pains, and depressions. The fact that we have the realistic hope serves both as an anchor of the soul and a power to keep us going when otherwise the wreckage of sin would drive us into the dust of despair.
With that, this climax too marked by one further glorious statement of the love of God and the love of Christ. I am persuaded, says Paul, in spite of all the tribulation and persecution and that comes our way, in spite of all the groanings of our decaying physical frame, I am persuaded that neither life nor death, neither things natural or supernatural, not all the great hosts of demonic powers that have rebelled against God and taken their part too in provoking our rebellion. None of them all combined or singly shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Two magnificent climaxes then about the love of God here in this epistle. And we moved on to, uh, the third major flow of thought in the epistle, uh, dealing with the topic of Israel, chapters nine, ten, and eleven. Uh, we asked ourselves, why should, uh, Paul bother to put this long discussion of Israel into this epistle at this juncture? We found there were several answers to that question, why? One of them, of course, will appear if we look at this simple layout here.
Uh, the third thing follows the second thing, yes, well, that's elementary, of course, but uh-huh, it's worth notice- noticing nonetheless. Here we have God's original work of creation, Adam, if you please. He went wrong in a very big way and ruined the whole creation. So God had a scheme of redemption, and at one juncture in history, to further that scheme, God began this exciting new development and called an old Gentile by the name of Abraham and turned him into a Hebrew, and from him built a special elect race that were witness to to witness to the reality of the true God and eventually point the way to the coming of God's great redeemer, king, and Messiah.
By the time Paul was writing the Epistle to the Romans, the vast majority of that nation were saying that Jesus wasn't, uh, the king, Messiah, redeemer, or savior. So what are we to conclude now? If I don't bother my head about that. That's the Jews, and I'm a Christian. Oh, half a minute. Paul has told us at the beginning of his letter that the gospel is based on those Old Testament prophets. And if the nation who gave us the prophets say that our Christian interpretation is a wrong one, a wrong interpretation of the prophets, it's a very serious criticism of Christianity, isn't it?
And even from our point of view, who believe that Israel was elected to point the way to the coming Messiah, who is Jesus Christ. What shall we say if the whole scheme has gone wrong? It were bad enough if Adam went wrong and the whole creation had to be redeemed. But if the initial stages of God's plan of redemption have gone wrong, what hope is there for the rest of the plan of redemption to be fulfilled? If you haven't got an answer to Israel's rejection of Jesus as the Messiah, then your gospel is holed below the waterline and would be in danger of sinking.
Well, when we had surveyed that, somewhere about the hour of, goodness me, it was getting dangerously near midnight, we came to the final passage here from chapter twelve onward and decided that that was about practical things, you'll see. For our purpose this afternoon, we might take just one feature from it and say, what has four to do with anything else? What you say, that's the practical outworking of the gospel. Up to Ten marks out of ten for the observation. But now, any closer links? We saw a number of links between that section four and the section one that made us think that here in the practical section of the epistle, Paul is pointing out how that the gospel puts right what, according to the section one of the epistle, sin has put wrong.
There's one little detail just worth, um, noticing before we proceed, isn't there? As Paul, in the initial verses of chapter one, describes the historic role of the nation of Israel, he mentions the fact that to them God gave the special privilege, the, the covenant, the revelation of the law at Sinai, the glory, that is the presence of God among them in a unique fashion in their tabernacle and then in their temple, and with it the service, Greek word latreia, the service of God. In those far off days, if you wanted to know what God was like, you could be well advised to come and visit Jerusalem and see the tabernacle or the temple of God, and watch how Israel, under God's instructions, served God.
Not with the ludicrous superstitions of paganism, nor yet with the cruelties of child sacrifice, nor yet with the indulgence of sex under the guise of religion. Here was the service of God, a testimony to the world of what the God was like who was thus being served. It is, of course, most for Paul, a heartbreaking tragedy that Israel, to whom that sacred service, that unique service was given, failed in its chiefest point. Bear that in mind when you come to the opening exhortations, won't you, of chapter twelve.
I beseech you, brethren, you who now are Christians and believe in the Messiah, I beseech you, by the mercies of God, you present your bodies a living sacrifice, which is your reasonable, your logical, your spiritual. Service, says he, using the exact same word. It won't do, will it, for us Christians to throw two bigger stones at Judaism for its failure in its service of God. If we are not being careful to show by our self-sacrificial lives our vigorous pursuit of the service of God.
What the true service of God is, and what that God is like, whom we profess to serve. Israel had a solemn responsibility, did she not? Given along with her unique privilege. Yeah, she was exposed to the whole world in her service of God, and the Gentiles could make up their mind what they thought of God as they watched the way Israel served her God. What should be the effect if Panton Hall were held up thus to the world?
You say we would not do too bad, Mr. Visiting Preacher, before you go ahead on that line of thought. We should score at least uh eight out of ten. Oh, thank the Lord for that, I believe you would. But some of us mightn't make eight out of ten, might we? But now we must move on to, uh, begin a little bit more detailed, uh, consideration of the, uh, first section of the book. And before we do that, just let me turn aside a moment to point out the frame of reference in which, uh, the epistle stands.
In chapter one, as Paul announces his theme, he describes his gospel in this fashion. Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God. You will notice not the gospel of Jesus Christ, not here, the gospel of God. And for Paul the Jew, the term God would be in very deliberate contrast to all the multitudinous gods of the pagan world. Paul is a Jew. He stands in Judaism's great tradition, their unique testimony historically to the one true God of the universe.
So when he talks about the gospel, it is first not the gospel of Jesus Christ that might give some people the impression that Jesus Christ was just one prophet, and he's among many, uh, other prophets. They all have an angle upon God, but God himself is bigger than the lot of them. No, the gospel that Paul preaches is God's gospel. And since it is the gospel initiated by and commanded by and originating in and flowing from God. It follows it is the gospel for the whole of mankind, without exception. That is a thing to be noted, not least in our present day.
And people are inclined to talk about the Christian gospel as insights that Jesus Christ had and compare them with the insights that somebody else had, the Buddha or whoever. They will not do. The gospel is the gospel of God. And therefore, Paul tells us here at the beginning, as he tells us at the end, it was made known for all the nations without exception. This is not narrow-mindedness. The universal claim of the gospel for the obedience of all nations is based in this, that the gospel comes from the one true God.
He tells us again that this gospel was promised before by his prophets in the Holy Scriptures. The gospel is not some Johnny-come-lately philosophy. It is based on that historic revelation going back centuries that we have enshrined in the Old Testament scriptures. That is exceedingly important. Because while those Old Testament scriptures were not in their first place designed to announce the Messiah, Jesus Christ. They were, uh, designed to correct the world's thinking on the nature of God.
It's no good telling people that Jesus is the Son of God, well, not much good is it, unless you, uh, they are clear what you mean by the term God to start with. Who is God and what is God like? Well, that purpose did God raise up Abraham and his seed? To be a protest to the grotesque and also the sophisticated idolatry of the ancient world. And in that respect, Israel and its temples stood unique in the surrounding Middle East for centuries. We need sometimes in our modern world to get back to that part of God's revelation that is the Old Testament, and talk to our modern contemporaries about God, the one true God.
Also, in the ancient world, the surrounding Gentile nations, they believed in crea- a creator in some sense. But when you examine them further, the most of them at any rate, their creator, their gods, were part of the stuff of the universe itself. Behind them lay some vague but frightening power called fate or chance, but the gods themselves were, in the cruder instances, deifications of the powers of nature. The sun god, the moon god, the storm god, the god of fertility, and this, that, and the other.
Deifications of the great powers of nature. Israel stood out in her protest that this was false, to interpret the universe that way round. She stood out in her unique testimony to the one true God, transcendent, not part of the universe, but the creator of the universe and its upholder. That lesson is a lesson that we do well to preach to our modern contemporaries. He given opportunity to talk, uh, to the erstwhile atheists of Russia these days, I find it a very valuable approach.
For if you ask a modern atheist and agnostic, what are the ultimate powers that control us human beings, that brought us here, and will eventually destroy us and our planet together. The atheist won't employ the term gods because he professes not to believe in them. But he will have to admit that we humans didn't create the universe, that's self-evident. So, what does control us? What did control our beginning? What will control our demise? And your atheist will answer basically the same as the old idolatrous nations of the ancient world.
The ultimate powers that control us are the physical forces of the universe, basic energy, whatever that is, and the weak atomic power and the strong atomic power, and electromagnetism and gravity and anti-gravity if they're be such a thing. Plus all the mysterious forces of biology and so forth. All of them, mindless. All of them, purposeless. One day, according to current theory, those same mindless powers that created man will one day destroy him.
And the final irony is that having destroyed humans along with their intelligence, the humans will know they've been destroyed or about to be destroyed, you see. The great powers that destroyed them won't even know what they've done. And the implication? That without God, as Paul puts it in his letter to his Christian friends at Ephesus, there is no hope. Men and women are hopeless. The honest atheist will admit it and shrug his shoulders and say, so what?
But you will see the glory of the Christian gospel, do you not? Not merely the gospel of Jesus. It's the gospel of God. And here springs hope for all created humankind, the animal and the inanimate creation together. Paul adds, of course, that the gospel is concerning Jesus Christ, God's son. But notice, if you will, at this stage, the terms in which he describes him.
He was born of the seed of David according to the flesh. I would like to invite all preachers present, all Sunday school teachers present, and all others anyway. When did you last preach a gospel sermon that hammered home to your neighbors, or whoever it was that was listening, that Jesus Christ is the son of David? Why you say, dear sir, we did it at Christmas time, once in David's royal city. Yes, it is an integral part of the gospel, isn't it? It has immediate connotations, for David was Israel's greatest king, who extended their empire geographically.
David becomes the model in Israel's prophetic literature of the coming Messiah, for he shall not only be savior, he shall be king. And God will raise up in the house of David, that is, in that royal line, an ensign, and to him all the nations of the earth shall flock. Not some mere narrow kingdom of Judah and Israel, but all the nations of the earth shall eventually bow to the ensign of Jesus Christ and acknowledge him as Lord and King. This gospel of mine, says Paul, is made known by God for the obedience of faith of all mankind.
When now Paul eventually sat in a Roman prison, about to appear before Nero, who eventually ordered him to be executed as a trouble to the Roman Empire, Paul wrote to Timothy saying, remember Jesus Christ, Tim old boy, remember him. Remember Jesus Christ. What should I should remember about Jesus Christ? Remember Jesus Christ of the seed of David, according to my gospel. It's the royal king. He will outlast the Caesars. He shall have universal dominion.
He was not a political king, was he, in the sense that his Jewish contemporaries, some of them tried to make out with a few bombs and bullets, trying to overthrow the Roman occupation and lead a military coup against the Romans. But he was a king. And when he came to the great confession before Pontius Pilate, our Lord drew the issues very plainly. My kingdom is not of this world, Pilate. You'll see Earth's issues cannot be solved within the mere context of Earth, can they? Take the basic matter of human justice.
Is there such a thing? Well, if Earth is all the history there is, if it's a closed shop, then of course the answer must be that justice has been a very poor and fragile thing. For many people, but a rope of sand. Multi-millions have suffered injustice in the course of the ages and died unrequited. If Earth's history is bounded by this little planet, there's no big outside. You may save your breath talking too much about supposed justice.
That's why kingdoms based on this world will never solve the problem. My kingdom is not of this world. Jesus Christ, let Paul remind you, is of the seed of David according to the flesh, declared to be God's son by the resurrection from the dead, and that puts the whole concern in its properly big frame of reference. Secondly, you'll see, talking to Pilate when Pilate said, but you know, Jesus, you'll have to start talking because, um, I have to tell you not to put too fine a point on it, but I do have power, my dear young man.
I have power, do you see? How do politicians do rejoice in it, don't they? Like to feel that power is the thing. Power is the ultimate thing that controls affairs. That's false, actually. As far as God is concerned, it's false. The question of the power of the Almighty was never at stake. Not even his satanic majesty thinks he will overcome God's almighty power. But the ultimate question of the universe is not who has the biggest power. It's another question.
Who is true? I am a king, for this end I came into the world, said Jesus, that I might bear witness to the truth. What on earth is the truth, said Pilate. He wasn't at that stage too bothered and went off. And what is truth? The truth about you, if I may put a fine point on it. What's the truth about you? Well, you say I'm young and I'm pretty and I have good prospects, marriage and a fine family and a good home, and my husband might even get a, a Mercedes-Benz or a bit higher than that even, and uh, and uh, grandchildren and, and yes, and what else about you?
What is the truth about you? Are you the product of mindless chances and bits of stuff? Doomed to be spilt on the floor like a pot of jam and trampled underfoot and eaten of worms and things? What's the truth about you? I'm come, says Jesus Christ, to tell you the truth. We've got precious little time to do this, said Pilate. I must now sentence you to be crucified. That is the truth, said Jesus Christ. Want to know the truth about you? You'll see it in Jesus Christ crucified upon a cross.
That's the truth. Not only is there an all powerful, omnipotent creator who made you, but this is the truth about him. That he's no tyrant with all his absolute power, but he loves you. And rather than you perish, he would give himself for you. That is the truth. Its corollary is too, too horrendous to contemplate. To reject the love of that God is by definition perdition.
That's why you will find Paul coming to his great climaxes in the early part of his book, dwelling on and and glorying in a tremendous exhibition and demonstration of the love of God that was given us in the death of Jesus Christ, his son. Now, as we begin, all too late, our consideration of, uh, the first section of the book. It will help us perhaps to remember that as Paul was writing this epistle, he was sitting in Corinth.
It's not a bad thing from time to time to remember what some of these ancient cities were like. It is a little easy for us who are surrounded by computers and things and Concords and whatnoters, to get a little stuck up as though we were specially intelligent. There's no evidence that human intelligence has increased. Knowledge, yes, but intelligence, that's very doubtful whether intelligence has increased. And as for building cities.
Why, uh, Joel say, um, the city of Corinth, poor, dazzling with its marble paved main road, so to speak, and its statuary and its classical designed, uh, temples. They wouldn't necessarily pre- please modern architects, but goodness me, they weren't bad, and with exception of Cambridge, perhaps, Corinth would have made many a modern English city look like a slum. We shouldn't forget that Greece produced philosophers who influenced this world yet.
The Greeks invented almost every genre of literature that today we have. The Greeks invented the atomic theory in its earlier form. They weren't all that lacking in intelligence. And as Paul sat in Corinth, he knew that Corinth and so many of those brilliantly civilized cities had another side to them. Their extreme moral corruption, their sexual perversions, their injustices, their moral confusion.
When he writes about God's judgment on human sin, that's not because Paul was brought up in the Victorian age, you know. He wasn't actually. It wasn't that Paul was brought up in the Victorian age when sex was taboo and you mustn't speak of it, and nobody knew of anything, or if they did, they kept it quiet. So that if now he had had the advantage of living to our modern age, he would have been far more broad-minded because he... No, he lived in an age back to which our modern post-Christian world is returning.
He knew all the permissiveness, permissiveness we now have. And as he pronounces God's verdict on it, it is not from the narrow-minded viewpoint of people that have not met the modern world, but of a someone who's seen where all our modern permissiveness actually leads, as earlier generations have found it to lead, when it was practiced ad lib. So we come to the, uh, uh, first major part of his epistle.
What I have done here is once more very arbitrarily to outline or to list what are perhaps the, some of the major components of that first section of the epistle. I have called the verses from chapter one verse eight. Oh, thank you, I have a good man here that keeps my doctrine straight. Thank him very much. Uh, Dorsey, uh, the passage from chapter one onwards to three twenty, I called it not merely a statement of God's wrath against sin, but the justification of God's wrath.
Where do I get that idea from? I pick up a phrase from chapter three, you'll see, verse three and four. For what if some were without faith? Shall their want of faith make of none effect the faithfulness of God? God forbid. Yea, let God be found true, but every man a liar, as it is written, that thou must, that is that God must be justified in thy words and mightest prevail when thou, God, comest into judgment. Ponder that. It is a, it is perhaps an extreme thing to say, if it's wrong, may the Almighty forgive me, but it bothers God what you think about him.
He is not a tyrant. And when he pronounces his judgment, God is sensitive to the possible objections, to the complaints that it is unjust. And God is not concerned to act the tyrant and say, I can't care what people think can be unjust if I like, can't I? God is concerned to demonstrate his judgment is true, his wrath justified.
That is why, as you come down chapter one, for instance, you will meet in verse twenty, the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things, uh, that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity, that they may be without excuse, meaning that they may be utterly without defense. A defendant in a law court that can say nothing to defend himself against the charge. And again, in chapter two, verse one, wherefore thou art without defense, O man, whomsoever thou art that judgest.
And in chapter three, verse, uh, nineteen, now we know that what things soever the law says, it speaks to them that are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, with nothing to say, either in defense or to dispute the justice of God's judgment. Our blessed Lord announced when he was here on earth that he it is that's going to be the final judge anyway. If I may wander from my topic just a little bit, at least from the epistle. I would like to appeal to certain things that the judge himself said when he was here on earth, showing this same concern that God's judgment will be just and fair.
In the Gospel of John, for instance, in chapter fifteen, our Lord said to his apostles, if I had not come and spoken unto them, that is his contemporaries, they had not had sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. And again, if I had not done among them the works which none other did, they had not had sin. But now they have both seen and hated me without a cause, seen and hated both me and my father.
They hated me without a cause. They are important statements of principle. When our Lord said, if I had not come and spoken unto them words that none other spoke, they had not had sin, he is not saying that they would have been sinlessly perfect. All men have sinned. The term to have sin means to be guilty and to be blameworthy. And these will be blameworthy because I have come, and I have spoken, and I have shown them the Father, and they have heard, and they have seen.
In rejecting my words, in hating both me and my Father. They now are left without excuse. For they knew. And they heard. Similarly, at the end of his miracle in John chapter nine, when he had cure, uh, healed a blind man, given a blind man sight. And... up in the Pharisaic mind, so to speak.
The Pharisees presently remarked, oh, how nice of you. Ha ha. So we're blind too, are we? Oh, how generous of you. Yes, I mean, we're blind. Is that what you're saying? Just like this fellow, I couldn't see anything. We can't see anything either. Oh, how nice. What a compliment coming from you. Yes. Um, and our Lord replied. If you were blind, you would not have sin. Meaning? Not that you would be sinlessly perfect, but you would be without blame. Nobody can be blamed for not seeing... what they don't have the eyesight to see with.
Do they? Imagine a sinner standing before God Almighty, Jesus Christ our Lord, at the judgment, and the judge has to say, I must consign you to eternal perdition, and the man says, may I ask a question? Yes. Why am I being condemned? And God says, well, uh, for not seeing the book here in my hand. The man says, what book? I can't see any book. And the Lord says, well, of course, don't be stupid, man. Of course you can't see it. You haven't got any eyes to see it with. But you're going to be condemned nonetheless for not seeing it. Why, if that ever happened like that, the whole universe would grow dark with injustice.
It won't happen, says the judge. Men will never be blamed for not seeing what they didn't have the faculty of sight so they could see. Men will never be blamed for not seeing what wasn't there to be seen. If I hadn't come and have talked to them, they couldn't be blamed for not believing what I said, could they? They never heard it. Now, in telling us about the wrath of God, Ga- Paul points out how God will be justified in his judgment.
Men shall have no defense. There was evidence that they could see if they wished. And he lists the evidence of creation, pointing to God's, not to his love, but to exist- his existence and his almighty power and godhood. Men can see it by direct intuition. As others can see, a tulip is beautiful. It takes no intricate philosophical reasoning. It can be seen directly by any creature.
And God has designed it that way in order that men shall be without excuse if they reject the Creator. In the wrath of God that is already revealed in life. Paul stays to give us the reasons, or rather God Holy Spirit through him, professing themselves to be wise, you see, they changed the glory of, uh, of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things. So, the judgment on that is what?
Well, if they will thus deface the image of God, the the the knowledge of God and the glory of God, and demote the Creator, to think of him as simply a creature. By a kind of poetic justice, God gave them up to dishonor their bodies. The perversions that we see around us are not just things that one day God will judge for being perversions. Some of them are a result that God has judged already.
For if men dishonor the Creator, it will lead to their dishonoring themselves. That follows, of course, almost logically, doesn't it? What are you? If instead of being the deliberate creation of a personal God, responsible to God, made in his image, you devote the idea of God to a mere animal, you will eventually behave like one. If you demote the idea of a creator to a bit of s- mindless stuff, you must not be surprised if it leads to a gross devaluation of the human personality.
If Stalin had believed that men and women were made in the image of God, I somehow think he wouldn't have slaughtered sixty million of them, would he? Moreover, when God- men do not, um, like to retain God in their knowledge, they shouldn't be surprised if their judgments begin to go astray. We are not some self-made containers of self-made wisdom. We are dependent creatures, and ultimately dependent for the health of our outlook upon our Creator.
And if we refuse to take God into our concept and retain him there, says the verses, God gives them up to a reprobate mind to agree with these perversions. I repeat, it is not that the perversions will one day merit the judgment of God. It is an alarming evidence of the judgment of God that people begin to defend the perversions and say they're all right. That shows a mental state gone wrong. It is part of the providential government of God. More than that, I do not wish now to say upon these verses that are there telling us about the wrath of God and the justification of God's wrath.
They come to their climax, of course, in chapter three, when the whole world, Jew and Gentile, pagan or Hebrew are brought before God's judgment, their mouths shut. They become guilty before God. The next paragraph, three twenty one to thirty one, is Paul's claim that the salvation is by faith. How is that related to the argument? Recur to chapter one, m where Paul said, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, it is the power of God to salvation.
And when we inquired, well, tell us, Paul, uh, uh, if you wouldn't mind, tell us why it is the power to salvation. Why does the gospel have this uncanny power to save people? And Paul immediately answers, because it proceeds on the principle of faith. That is a difficult thing to get hold of, isn't it, uh, Dorsey, in our minds.
It seems to me people so self-evident that if ever we're going to be saved and please God, well, the obvious thing what we've got to do is to keep God's law. No, says Paul, we know that what things the law says, it says to them that under the law, that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world become guilty. That was the purpose of God's law. God's law, ladies and gentlemen, is like a thermometer in some senses, isn't it? You'll see. It shows us how we've gone wrong. How serious our illness is. The thermometer can't kill your illness. Suppose one of these days you come to visit me and find me propped up in bed with my nightcap on and plenty of lem sip by my side, you'll say.
And you'll say, what's wrong with you? I say, I'm ill, very ill. Yes, you say, I heard you're rather ill. Uh, I thought I'd come see you. But pray, what are you doing sitting there sucking that thermometer so vigorously? So don't be stupid, I'm ill. And the doctor came the other day and showed me how ill I was. He got this thing and he put it in my mouth and he read it off and said I was, I don't know how many degrees above what's safe to be, and the only hope for me was if I could get the th- the thermometer reading down. So I've been sitting here this last hour sucking the thermometer to get the reading down, and then I should be well. Can't you see that, you stupid men? I'm ill.
You say, yes, you are ill. You're more ill than you thought you were. Thermometer shows you how ill you are. It can't cure you. The law can show you and show us all how ill we are. Can't cure us. You read the thermometer aright, and it will send you to the doctors for help. If you read God's law aright, uh, aright, it will send you to the only help there is, to Jesus Christ, our Lord. Not our effort, but his sacrifice can appease the wrath of a holy God against our sin and bring us peace with God.
And all the benefit of that great salvation comes through faith. Of that we speak tomorrow, according to the program laid out for us. We come to this next bit, which is chapter four. um And the first part of chapter four is to do with what, and how does it fit into the argument? Well, Paul has here got to answer some of his critics. Paul says that salvation is by faith, if you please. And he also makes a claim that the Christian gospel is based on the Old Testament prophets. Really? Does the Old Testament then give us any ground for thinking that justification is by faith?
If the gospel is, is a new invention, you needn't bother with your Old Testament, of course not. But if the gospel is based on the Old Testament prophets, promised by them, witnessed to by them, then it will be a matter of urgent concern that you should be able to show that that Old Testament does lay down as a precedent that a man is justified by faith and not by works. And so Paul appeals to the legal precedent of Abraham and his experience, how Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness.
And that covers the, uh, law, doesn't it, the first five books. And then he quotes David from the former prophets and then from the Psalms to show that a man is, um, forgiven by God's grace through faith. Then enters a great argument to show that Abraham, though father of the Jews he was, was justified before he was circumcised and not afterwards, which puts this in the clear, that if Abraham could be justified without first being circumcised, then justification does not depend on circumcision, which has a rebound to us Gentiles.
We can be justified too without the Jewish right of circumcision. And more and more does he say, but for time's sake, we come to the end of that, uh, chapter four, where Paul, uh, cites Abraham still, but applies the lesson not now as a precedent, but as an analogy, to show us now not only that Abraham was justified by faith, and therefore we must be justified by faith, but to show us exactly what is meant by the term faith. What is meant by it? You say you're justified by faith.
Did you ever have the experience of telling your friend, when a suitable opportunity arose, that you were sure of salvation? And your friend went tut tut and said, you really, uh, think you, uh, I mean, you're doubtless a good living person, but should you actually make such a big claim? How can you say it? Isn't that a little bit, uh, presumptuous? And you have explained, oh no, but salvation is by faith. That's why I'm sure. And your friend replied, you must be someone of very strong faith. I wish I had your faith. It's a common notion, isn't it?
And when the Bible says salvation is by faith, people think, yes, well, of course it's by faith, but you'd have to have a colossal faith, faith that could move mountains or something, uh, to be saved. And people will tell you, but my faith isn't all that strong, you'll see, so, uh, that's why I'm not sure of salvation. It would be very important, wouldn't it, at this juncture in the course of this argument to get it settled. What do you mean by faith when you say that justification is by faith. So Abram's case is quoted, how that God, in his case, promised him he would have a son. And God, uh, Sarah was already barren.
Abram was allowed to get old, so he's absolutely decrepit now, and physically there was no hope of having any son. Now, it wasn't a question of you do your best, God will help. It was a question of just believing God and his word, a God who could bring life out of death. And Abram persevered in that kind of faith. In some years, it was a bit wobbly, but I haven't got time to tell you about the wobbly bit. Uh, i- in the end, the old faith won through, didn't it? I prepared to believe God, who would bring life out of death.
Well, how does that, uh, help us to know what our faith is? Well, of course, God doesn't promise us that we're going to have a son by the time we're ninety nine and a half or anything like that. So how does Abraham's faith become an example to us? By way of analogy, says Paul, you'll see. Abraham had to believe in a God that could bring life out of death. A son out of Sarah's barren and decaying body. We believe in a God who, for our salvation's sake, not only delivered his son to death for our sins and trespasses, but raised him from the dead.
Come with me, if you may, and come reverently, as I shall try to. Suppose we were standing around the very grave of the blessed Lord Jesus when he was buried. And suppose at that stage, what wasn't given to anybody, but, uh, suppose at that stage we had become aware that our whole salvation depended on this, that the body of Jesus Christ might come out of the grave. And you said, well, my brother, I've perceived it is written in the prophets that the Messiah will, uh, it is implied Messiah will rise from the dead, and uh, and uh, through him we shall have salvation. Isn't that marvelous?
And if he doesn't rise, we shan't be saved. Oh, so what should we do about it? You say we've got to believe. Righto, I say, let's, let's start believing then. Uh, let's stand around the grave and we'll all join hands and we'll start believing. Now, now believe, my dear sister, believe. You're, he hasn't risen yet. You're not believing hard enough. Believe. Do you suppose all our believing under the sun will bring the body of Jesus Christ out of the grave? Of course not. Uh, bringing the body of Christ out of the grave was the action of a God who brings life out of death and does the whole thing.
And faith is the bankrupt's hand taking the gift of pardon and new life in Christ. Faith does not contribute, in that sense, to the great work of our redemption. I have done perhaps something, if I have tried to show, for instance now, how chapter four fits into the flow of argument and why the two topics it discusses must be discussed at that particular point. Then we come to the climax. The results and implications of justification.
You say to me there are more important things at this stage in the afternoon to be considered, my dear sir, temporarily at least. A cup of tea to revive our flagging bodies, if not our spirits. You are perfectly right. Indeed, there are some great commentators who will tell you that this last bit here doesn't belong to the first section. You'll see, it belongs to the beginning of the next section. That's how these Bible commentators are. They each have their scheme. Most of them disagree. They can't all be right, but they could all be wrong. I certainly hope that, by God's grace, if I were called upon to do it, I would go to the stake for my belief that the Bible is the word of God.
I very much doubt if I would go to the stake for my analysis of the word of God. I would readily believe the other chap would be right and I wrong if I had to go to the stake for it. It might be that both are true, might it? We shall have to see that when we come to our next session. Just let's bow in prayer, shall we?
