Romans | Why We Believe - Romans: Book of Revolution

Hey, I'm Pastor Steve Hole.

I want to empower you today to walk in your true identity as a worshiper and warrior.

Today, embrace the power of God's Word and the Holy Spirit.

Welcome to the Born for War podcast.

I wanted to just say that I think there's three kinds of people in the world.

There are those who are full of fear, there are those who don't know what to fear, and then there are those who have the book.

They have the Bible.

Because the only way you're going to conquer fear, and every one of us in this room has some form of fear, is to become a people of the book, a people of the word of God.

The word of God builds faith.

Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the words of Christ.

And so, as we are spending time in God's Word here this morning, we're in the great book of Romans.

And it was the Swiss commentator Gadet who wrote of the great revivals of history who said, the reformation was certainly the work of the epistle to the Romans, and it is probable that every great spiritual renovation in the church will always be linked, both in cause and effect, to a deeper knowledge of this book.

So Romans is a revolutionary book.

Let me just say this: the Bible is not a book per se.

The Bible is actually a library of books.

There's 66 books.

And if we were looking at the 66 books and we were categorizing them as to the most influential in growth, Genesis would be right up there for sure.

I'm reading Genesis again right now, and if you're following me on the blog, you see all the references to Genesis because as I look at what's happening in human sexuality right now, and with the woke idealism that we're facing, with progressive Christianity growing, I felt like that I needed to go back to the foundations of my faith on sexuality by going to Genesis.

So I'm reading Genesis again.

So I got a study Bible that had never been marked in before.

I've got several books, several Bibles on my shelf of Bibles that I hadn't, I don't know how I picked them up.

Anyway, I've got them.

So I've decided to pick one that hadn't been written any yet at all, and then start there, and it's been a joy.

It's been a super joy the last month, month and a half.

So I've been blogging on that.

Because you can take any psychological viewpoint, you can take any woke viewpoint, you can take any cultural viewpoint, but really where you want to go in understanding what's really true is to go back to the book.

It's to go back to Genesis.

So Genesis would rank up there, but Romans would certainly be one of those in the top five most influential books in Christianity.

And the Cliff Notes of Romans, and I mean I always have to make sure I recognize this because my kids don't know what I'm talking about sometimes.

Raise your hand if you know what Cliff's notes are.

Okay, good, okay.

I didn't know, is it still out there?

I mean, do you still have that?

Okay, all right.

So in my day, you you when you wanted to cheat, um, you went to Cliff's Notes.

So Cliff's Notes, if you don't know, is a summary of usually tomes, big you know, literature that gives you a great analysis of it.

Um, and and I was not very studious in high school, and so the best-selling book on my shelf for almost every book that I was supposed to read was Cliff's Notes.

But anyway, the Cliff's Notes for Romans would be Galatians.

So he said, Paul's saying the same thing except not as detailed in the book of Galatians.

So I've chosen Romans, and today I want to talk about why we believe.

Why we believe.

Because it's important to understand that not everything is equal in Scripture.

Okay, so everything is God breathed, but not everything is equal in importance.

And so we're gonna talk about the resurrection today.

We're gonna talk about the scriptures, we're gonna talk about the resurrection, because this is the hallmark of what we believe.

So turn to Romans 1, and I promise you, you're gonna get past the first verse today.

So two weeks ago we started with Paul, and let's move forward.

Paul, and by the way, I don't do that often.

I'm not gonna do that often in Romans, or we'll be in it for a decade.

But I felt like in the first message you needed to understand who Paul was.

So if you missed it two weeks ago, you guys can can look it up and listen to it.

Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, and when I see that called to be an apostle, written by Paul, identifying himself as called to be an apostle, we might reference that as the Lamb's 12.

Some have called it the Lamb's 12.

Capital L, Christ, the Lamb's 12.

It's gonna be different than the word apostleship that's gonna come up in a few verses.

A bond son of Jesus Christ called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of Christ.

You remember when I was talking about that, that we talk about it's not a separation from only, but it's a separation from and into.

It's a separation from and into.

Okay, where those that are in separatist fundamentalists, extreme fundamentalist Christianity, like I would say, like Amish, things like that, they they've looked at that as separated from the world, which is true, we're separated from the world, but but not as much as separated into Christ.

And I would say that being separated into Christ is first.

When you're separated into Christ, you have less and less desire for the world.

So we talked about that a couple weeks ago.

Verse 2, which he promised before through his prophets in the holy scriptures.

If you're an underliner, circler, I'm a circler and an underliner, uh, circle scriptures through his prophets in the holy scriptures.

Remember, this is the the New Testament is being written as Paul writes it.

So all they had was the Old Testament concerning his son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh.

Now write this down.

The Bible is the signature of God.

The Bible is the signature of God.

So I do a lot with a debit card now.

So on my, if I go online to my bank, I can see where I use my debit card.

And occasionally people have stolen the number and we pick it up and we we I mean, I don't know if they ever get caught, but at least they I don't pay for what they do because you because they're looking at a consistency in there that's me.

But when I write a check, which is rare less often than I used to, usually bills, things like that, or people I'm paying who've done work for me on something, um, sometimes I'll look and I'll see check and I'll see this astronomical number.

And I go, there's no way I wrote that check.

And then I go in and it's got the remember, it's got the photocopy?

There it is, man.

There's my handwriting, there's my signature.

Oh, I can't believe I paid them that much.

You know, but but your signature is your word.

That's your word, man.

You sign a contract, that's your word.

And if you have integrity, then even though it hurts, or maybe even you disagree two months later or two years later with what you wrote, you still, that's you.

That identifies you, that authenticates you.

And if you have integrity, then you, and I can't tell you how many times I bit the bullet, paid the thing, a sign that I would, because it's my signature.

That's my identity on that.

God's signature.

God's identity is the book, it's the Bible.

It's God breathed.

So Peter in his second letter says this for we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

But we were eyewitnesses of his majesty, knowing this first.

I think that's important, knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.

So it's the Holy Spirit breathing into.

We call that plenary inspiration.

The plenary inspiration of scripture is that God breathed.

God breathed through this man.

He didn't dictate it as if it was a teleprompter that, you know, a political person is reading from.

It wasn't writers that were reading something that was in the sky, or it was breathed, God was breathing his breath, Holy Spirit, Spirit, pneuma, P-N-E-U-M-A, pneuma, that's where we get the word pneumatic.

A pneumatic tire is a tire with air in it.

In your pulmonary system, if you get a sickness called pneumonia, it starts with a P.

That's where the word comes from.

So this God breathed into the prophetic men in Scripture to write what we have as Scripture.

And we can stand on that.

It's not up to us to just make up interpretations.

That's why I've said from time to time in different, not so much debate situations, I've never been on a stage in a debate, but I've been in discussion with different pastors or different leaders at different times, and I've said to them, nothing is new, and if it's new, it's probably not true.

So, in other words, I'm a big believer in the church fathers, I'm a big believer in tradition, I'm a big believer in systematic theology.

Because I can tell you one thing, Martin Luther was a lot smarter than me.

John Calvin was a lot smarter than me.

Aquinas was a lot smarter than me.

Now, we have applications.

Listen closely.

There's an application that might be true to our culture that's different because we're living in the 21st century, but the actual interpretation of scripture has already been settled, church.

Why is that important?

Because there are heresies all around us.

You gotta be careful, and it sounds very enticing, especially in the era of homosexuality.

It has been clear for 3,000 years that homosexuality is a sin.

Well, now there's all these different lines of thinking called gay Christianity in us, and I'm studying them all right now.

And we're gonna do a conference in November, either last part of October, first of November in 2023 called Holy Sexuality.

And we're gonna look very closely at the scriptures and we can stand on what the scriptures say, we can stand on the interpretation of the past.

Now, why is that important?

Because it is possible, at least in this church, that we can love people who struggle in sexual errors, we can love them.

But it does not mean that our love goes so far as to affirm those actions.

And so as we study scripture, it's important that we understand it's not up to us to develop our own interpretation because it's a 21st century.

So I was in England years ago at a conference, and there was a guy there who spoke.

I'm not gonna give his name right now, but when I was at the conference at the gathering at the Broadmoor with Dr.

Dobson, um, when Michelle Bachman spoke, she kept showing these references with the WEF, with the World Economic Forum, where he was their speaker.

And this guy was a key evangelical leader 12 years ago, and now he's totally trashing everything that we believe in.

So things are gonna change.

So how do we know?

How do we have a plumb line?

Well, we have a plumb line because of this library of truth that's found called the Bible.

And sometimes you'll hear from people, well, Christianity is kind of a new religion, isn't it?

I mean, Buddhism, it preceded Christianity, Hinduism preceded Christianity, and it's a misunderstanding of how we have what we have today from the scriptures.

In that, we don't just look at the time of Christ, we look at the prophecies about Christ before he came.

So there are 324 passages in the Old Testament that prophesy of Jesus' birth, his life, his death, and even his resurrection.

Isaiah 53, written over 600 years before the birth of Christ, gives us one of the most stunning and accurate portrayals of Jesus' death.

Micah, a contemporary of Isaiah, accurately prophesies Jesus' birthplace.

And we read this, about the only time we read this is at Christmas.

Micah 5, 2.

But you, Bethlehem, Ephraim, though you are little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth to me the one to be ruler in Israel.

Christ in the Psalms, 3,000 years ago.

Jesus as part of the creation, Psalm 8.

Jesus' death and resurrection, Psalm 16.

Jesus' betrayal by Judas, Psalm 41, his deity, Psalm 45.

And then there's 50 other Psalms that speak of the life, the death, and the resurrection of Christ 3,000 years ago, which, by the way, predates all the other religions that we're talking about.

Jesus was actually before time.

So in the great prologue, one of the great pieces of literature is John 1.

In the beginning was a word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.

He was in the beginning with God.

All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made that was made.

In him was life.

And the life was the light of men, and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

Jesus existed before he was born on the earth.

Now, why is that important?

Because men and women, you are going to be tested, you are going to be challenged again and again as we move into the last days to betray your faith, to start to have doubts, to begin to become ambiguous in what you understand.

Be in the book.

Read the book.

Try to read it every day.

The smartest people, the wisest people, and historically the most successful people are people of the book.

Even those who called themselves just deist and the founding fathers were men of the book, and they knew it and they understood it, and that's why there's so many references to God in our founding documents.

Now, what is what is the foundation of the foundation?

If we could say it that way, what's the most important thing that we stand on as Christians?

Well, the Apostle Paul says this in verse 4, which he then verifies more succinctly in 1 Corinthians 15.

Let's read verse 4.

And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of Holess, by, underlying this, by the resurrection from the dead.

Buddha is dead.

I remember one time we had some Koreans come over and join us for an outreach we were doing in Japan.

And these Koreans would come and they were just flamethrowers, man.

They broke every myssiological, cultural means of how to communicate the gospel possible.

And I can still remember this one girl looking at this Japanese over a lunchroom table in the cafeteria at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies where I was at, and she's going, Buddha is dead.

Jesus is alive.

Mohammed is dead.

Jesus is alive.

And she just goes to his other, oh no, that's this is not the way to communicate it.

I mean, it's true.

It's better, there's there's more winsome ways to communicate it, you know.

And then she dragged the person to our meetings.

It wasn't effective.

But anyway, the point is Buddha is dead, okay?

Buddha is dead, Muhammad is dead, animism, Taoism, mystic cult, religions who worship worms and trees and Mother Earth do not have a resurrected Savior.

The resurrection of Christ is the cornerstone of our faith.

If Jesus was not raised from the dead, our faith is meaningless and useless.

Listen to what some of the great intellectuals have said.

Simon Greenleaf, former dean of the Greenleaf School of Law, quote, It passes the bounds of credibility that the early Christians would have manufactured such a tale and then preached it among those who might easily have refuted it simply by reproducing the body of Jesus.

Paul Athus, professor, University of Ithacen, Germany, the resurrection could not have been maintained for a single day, for a single hour, if the emptiness of the tomb had not been maintained as a fact for all concerned.

Paul Mayer, one of my favorite historians, writes if all the evidence is weighed carefully and fairly, it is indeed justifiable, according to the canons of historical research, to conclude that the tomb in which Jesus was buried was actually empty on the first Easter.

And no shred of evidence has yet been discovered in literary sources, epigraphy, or archaeology that would disprove this statement.

Men and women, the cornerstone of the foundation of your faith is the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And I remember many years ago at the University of Georgia getting up and speaking to, I don't know, probably two or three hundred students there on the University of Georgia campus at the at the main, sort of central part of the main campus on the resurrection of Christ.

To hecklers and to others that were out there.

And that as they ask, I was asked to speak, and I thought, this is the foundation.

If I'm gonna speak on something, it has to be this the resurrection of Christ.

So let me give you eight facts.

So if you're a note taker, write these down.

There's eight facts that verify the resurrection of Christ.

Fact number one is a broken Roman seal.

Now let me explain that they had a seal back then.

So when that rock was rolled over the tomb, there was a Roman seal placed upon that rock.

And so it was broken.

And the consequences of breaking that seal is that the guards would be crucified upside down.

No questions asked.

The cowardice of the disciples at the time puts no confidence in the fact that they would have come and stolen the body.

Professor Thomas Arnold, author of the three-volume History of Rome, writes, I have been used for many years to study the histories of other times and to examine and weigh the evidence of those who have written about them, and I know of no other fact in the history of mankind which proved by better and fuller evidence of every sort to the understanding of a fair inquirer than the great sign which God hath given us that Christ died and rose again from the dead.

George Washington crossed the Delaware is the evidence that Christ rose on the third day from the dead.

Dead.

Fact number two, an empty tomb.

An empty tomb.

We must remember that the disciples did not go off to Rome to preach about the resurrection.

They didn't go to Athens, Greece to preach about the resurrection.

They didn't go to the province of Galatia to preach about the resurrection.

They preached it in Jerusalem.

Right there where it happened.

So if there's a body to be found, don't you think the Jews or the Romans would have presented it?

These guys are nuts.

These people of they're they're looney tunes.

They're crazy.

Here's the body of Jesus, you know, decaying right here.

Nobody was ever presented.

Ever presented.

It'd be like something happening in Colorado Springs that's like outrageous.

It's crazy.

And we start from the road, we start just telling everybody.

And everybody, you would think, who's incredulous or doesn't believe it, would then counter in their argument.

But the reality is, according to Josephus and others, everybody heard about it in Jerusalem.

It wasn't that big at that time.

People knew about it, and they even historically wrote about it.

That's super interesting.

Historian Paul Meyer writes positive evidence from hostile sources is actually the strongest kind of historical evidence.

In essence, this means that if a source admits a fact that is decidedly not in its favor, then that fact is genuine.

Does that make sense?

In other words, for the Jews to write about it, for the Romans to write about it, this fact that this thing they said happened, which is decidedly against what they want to believe, is actually the greatest evidence that it actually happened.

Fact number three, a large stone moved.

In Matthew 27, Matthew describes the removal of the stone with an added preposition that indicates that the stone was rolled up an incline.

We believe it was a two-ton stone, moving a two-ton stone up a hill.

The women were the first to come to the tomb.

You think they did it?

No way.

The Roman garrison who'd be crucified upside down if they did it?

Not a chance.

The frightened and cowardice disciples who are still just hanging out in the upper room after the resurrection when they've seen him, I don't think so.

The only common sense explanation is that God rolled that stone away.

Fact number four Roman Guard AWOL.

The Roman Guard fled.

This was 16 of the most highly trained special op soldiers in the world at that time.

There's no way they would have fled unless something fantastic, something incredulous, something actually frightening, even to them, had occurred, and they ran away.

Fact number five, grave clothes.

Tell a tale.

Like the empty chrysalis of a caterpillar cocoon.

The grave clothes were caved in as if the body had just slipped out.

That's why it says when John got there and he looked in, he believed.

He believed.

So something of the way the grave clothes were aligned, he knew something supernatural had occurred.

Fact number six, his appearances confirmed.

So my son Samuel is in law school.

He's in his third year.

And so two years ago, he was in the DA's office his first year out of law school.

Couldn't try any cases, did more of the research and stuff for the lawyers.

But last summer, he was in his is after his second year, and he could try misdemeanor cases for the DA.

So he did.

And he would get all excited because he loves trials.

He loves the give and take of the trial.

He digs it.

He thinks it's so cool.

And so he was pumped to do it.

And I can't tell you how many times he went into trial totally prepared.

My son will out-prepare anybody.

And then the eyewitness doesn't show up.

Usually cops who forgot to come or something like that, and he'd be there, and all he needs is one eyewitness.

He just needs one.

And then it's settled, man.

It's done.

It's over.

Right there's the eyewitness.

But people get busy, right?

They forget, they don't do it, and it was so frustrating.

And so an eyewitness today and in history is the key.

Five hundred people saw Jesus risen from the grave.

Over 500 is what it says.

So the proclamation and the declaration of the resurrection of Christ in Jerusalem was in a city where there were over 500 people that literally saw Jesus risen from the grave be suicide.

To proclaim that in that environment if it's not true.

And so over 500 saw Christ risen from the grave.

Dr.

Edwin Yamauchi, Associate Professor of History at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, says what gives a special authority to the list of witnesses as historical evidence is the reference to most of the 500 brethren being still alive.

St.

Paul says, in effect, if you don't believe me, ask them.

Such a statement is an admittedly genuine letter written.

This is it, he's talking about 1 Corinthians.

Within 30 years of the event is almost as strong an evidence as one could hope to get for something that happened nearly 2,000 years ago.

Now the seventh point is interesting.

And let me explain before I say it why this is important.

So when I was in graduate school, I had some archaeology classes, and one of the things that we studied was how do you know if a document is genuine or it's fake?

Because you can imagine right now with the use of computers and stuff, and they were just really starting to uh come in.

I mean, when I was going to graduate school, we had a computer room because nobody had a computer, and I remember Apple, that was like Macintosh.

You had you had to do Macintosh.

And Steve Jobs was pretty smart, and he gave all these Macintoshes to all the schools so that all of us growing up would want a Macintosh and we got out, right?

It's like three times more than Bill Gates' IBM computer.

So I didn't know how to use it, but anyway, we'd go in there and and people started teaching me.

I started to learn how to use it and everything.

Well, with the advent of computers, this became even more important.

And that is how do you verify a document being true or false?

And this is kind of interesting.

It's the opposite.

It's actually kind of counterintuitive in that the if the document that you found, let's say it's it, you think it's circa 1,000 years BC, 3,000 years from now, that you found this document, like we have with the Dead Sea Scrolls and stuff like that, which is what my son Daniel is an expert in.

He's been an Oxford scholar for the Dead Sea Scrolls.

So I was asking Daniel about this actually the other day when we were hunting, and he said, yes, absolutely true, and this is what it is.

That the closer you get to a document being reliable is actually some of the inaccuracies that are within it compared to what you have as the actual data.

So if it's word for word exactly the same, it's probably been a it's a fake.

In other words, somebody just took that and they wrote it in to make it look so real, and then they did stuff to the paper to make it look like an old parchment, which they can do, and they go, oh, this is fake.

But if there's a if there's just a few things like a comma missing or a period missing, or something like that, they go, okay, this that that passes the first round.

Does that make sense?

Because you don't fake it.

So great example.

How many of you have ever heard people say, well, you can't trust the Bible.

It's just men's opinions, just their interpretation.

I mean, look at Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

They all say different things about Jesus.

See?

Actually, that's actually the most verifiable evidence that it happened.

This is actually a discussion we had around the fire at on the hunting camp with Daniel.

Daniel were talking about it.

It's like, if I said to you, he's this is the example he used.

He said, if I said to you that I think I'm gonna shoot an elk tomorrow.

And I think it'll be around noon, and I think it's gonna be over on that third hill, and um, that's what I think.

Let's just say something like that.

Well, there's five people around the fire, everybody hears it from a different angle, right?

And what they remember is slightly different.

That actually is what verifies the authenticity of the eyewitnesses, or we might say the ear witnesses of it, because you you have your different perspectives on it.

So actually, when you have Matthew's view, Mark's view, Luke's view, and John's view, it that actually verifies the fact of the authenticity of it, is because of the uniqueness of their different angles, as long as the main idea is still there.

Does that make sense?

So, so I say all that to say number number seven.

The women saw him first.

The women saw Jesus risen from the grave first.

Now, why is that important?

It's important because the authenticating feature of the story of the resurrection of Jesus is first women, which is exactly the opposite of what you would do in that culture at that time to authenticate something that's in the past.

Because a woman's witness was thrown out in the courts of law at that time.

So the fact that they would pick that God used women does two things.

One, it shows the authenticity of it.

And then number two, it shows the value God puts on women.

When I have a prayer meeting here, I'll guarantee you there'll be more women than men.

If I were to say there's a job to be done somewhere in the church, there's going to be women, way more women than men.

You women are awesome.

I love you.

More work gets done, more spiritual reformation comes forth from women more than men most of the time.

That's why I've made it my mission.

And that's why we had the video we had.

That's why we have wholehearted men.

Because if we could just get the men, if we could get the men to get women, you guys get it already.

I watched the elbow slamming into the rib cage of your man on Sunday morning.

I told you.

I can see it in a there's more young men out there that are successful because of their mom than because of their fathers.

That's a sad commentary, but it's true.

So in the annals of God's historical perspective on the resurrection, it's the women that are there first.

You don't do that if you're faking it.

You would have men, you would you'd make up some story about a bunch of men because they are the eyewitnesses that he's gone.

No, it was the women first.

As a matter of fact, the evidence of how true this is is that the men didn't even believe the women and they knew them.

They had a personal relationship with them.

They had been traveling with them in the 120 all that time.

They didn't even believe.

Nah, that's not true.

And so they had they go running.

But the women were there first.

Dr.

Meyer observes and says this the initial reaction of the eleven was understandably one of suspicion and disbelief.

Again, if the resurrection accounts had been manufactured, women would never have been included in the story.

Fact number eight all of the disciples gave the rest of their lives to this truth.

Eleven of the twelve, the original twelve, died, martyrs' deaths, proclaiming that Jesus rose from the grave.

We have tons of examples of people who died for things they believe in.

But very, I'm not even sure we have any examples of someone dying, being willing to be martyred, murdered, or killed for something they knew was a lie.

That's why I love the apologetic Lord, liar, lunatic, which I won't get into that.

But the Lord, liar, lunatic, the idea that Jesus was either Lord, he was either a great liar, or he was a lunatune.

He was a lunatic.

Because men die for things that they believe in that are a lie all the time, but they think it's true.

These men died because they knew it to be true that Christ had risen from the grave.

So what's what's this mean to us?

Look at the next verse.

What does this mean to us?

Verse 5.

Through Him we have received, number one, grace and number two, apostleship.

There's that word again.

For obedience to the, number three, faith among all nations for his name, among whom you also are called of Jesus Christ.

So men and women, the resurrection of Christ, what it means to us is that you are called, you are you are set apart.

You are set apart from the world into Christ by grace.

Unmerited favor, the favor of God.

His life, his death, and his resurrection is for you.

It's accepting that, it's believing in that.

It's less about obedience and disobedience as it is about belief and unbelief.

Well, I can't, I can't change that area of my life.

My dad was a drunk, my grandfather was a drunk, I guess I'm just destined to be a drunk.

That's not a question of obedience, that's a question of faith.

Do you believe that you're different?

Do you believe that in Christ, Christ living his resurrection power in your life, you can become sober, you can be set free.

Because that's the issue is faith.

The book of Romans is about increasing, developing, and building up our faith.

And then we're called to apostleship.

So look at verse 1.

Verse 1 said, Paul says, I'm an apostle.

But then by verse 5, he says, and we're all called to apostleship.

Church, you all have a sphere of influence, you all have an area that God wants to use you to be ambassadors for him to carry the love and the grace of God to a hurting world.

People are so confused.

So confused.

And some of you today, you're confused.

Rest in the resurrection of Christ.

Don't trust in your own abilities, but trust in Him and be crucified with Him.

Thank you for listening to the Foreign for War podcast.

We hope today's message has empowered you to make a difference in your world.

To connect with Pastor Steve's sermons, books, and blog, visit Steve Holtonline.org.

God bless.