Bible Study Romans Part 10-City of David

Welcome to the program Study in the Chapel.

God's Word is supreme in chapel ministries.

We consider it absolutely essential to a proper relationship with God.

We study it, we love it, we rely on it every minute of every day.

The following program is an edited recording of the regular Bible studies we hold, and we decided to share these with you in the hope that you too will be able to find inspiration, encouragement, and ultimately salvation through discovering Christ in Scripture.

Our intention is to travel all the way through the Bible.

It will be a challenging journey, but one that will undoubtedly bring you to a decision.

Through this study, you will be faced with either believing or rejecting what God has said to us.

It is our intention to provide you with enough knowledge to make an informed decision about God and his word.

We strongly encourage you to listen intently and diligently, because though at the moment you may not realize it, these things are truly a matter of life and death.

In fact, these are matters of eternal life and eternal death.

Never treat what God has said lightly.

There is truly nothing more important to you.

Now join us as we seek God's will through his inspired word.

Before we get started normally, Catherine will say a prayer for us.

We don't like to broadcast the prayers because prayer is a very intimate thing to us, so we just keep it among ourselves.

Anyhow, one of the things that she said was really hit home to me.

She said she was thanking God for the preservation of his word.

And how true that is, I think that's one of the greatest testimonies to the proof of God is that he has kept his word alive all through the many centuries.

And believe me, there are a lot of enemies to Scripture.

There have been many enemies, there are many enemies, and the fact that it's still with us and still intact and still one of the most documented books in all of human history tells me that this book is important to God.

It's important that we have it and it's important that we study it.

So it is a great blessing to have scripture with us and let's take advantage of that blessing.

We are in the book of Romans here.

We are still in the very beginning, first few verses of that letter to the Romans.

The reason why it's taking so long is because Paul basically summarizes the entire rest of the letter in these in this very first sentence.

That first sentence takes seven verses.

That first sentence is seven verses long, and so that's why it's taking us some time.

We're going over Paul's summary.

He's puts the summary at the beginning.

He is telling us what he's going to talk about.

That's why it is taking us so long.

And plus, it's pretty cool and we're enjoying it all along.

So let's go ahead and get started with that.

We're going to start with verse one of Romans 1.

I read out of the King James.

Please read out of the Bible in front of you.

If you don't have a Bible in front of you, next time bring one with you.

But we do always put the verses up on the screen for you to read.

So read along with me, please.

Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, which he had promised afore by his prophets in holy scriptures concerning his son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh.

Paul is here still describing what this gospel's all about.

Now I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record for those that actually know what that means, but here Paul is continuing to direct his messages straight at the Jewish converts in the church at Rome.

I've said to you before that all of the letters that we have from Paul, and I believe we have all of them, there are those that think that there were others, but that those have been lost over the centuries.

I'll say that is entirely impossible.

If the Holy Spirit inspired something, it's going to make its way to us.

It will never be lost.

God never wastes an effort.

You can trust that.

Now, if Paul did write other letters, ones that we don't know anything about, then they do not contain any Holy Spirit-inspired text.

I have a hard time believing that anything the apostle Paul wrote was uninspired.

By that I mean inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Because once God got a hold of this man, his entire life and everything he did was bent toward God's purposes.

Now, is any of that scriptural?

No, but I still think it's true.

But you don't have to believe it if you don't want to.

Back to my point.

All of Paul's letters were written to address some issues going on in the churches that the letters were addressed to.

Now, I can't help but to think, with again, very little, if any, scriptural evidence, that there was something specific going on in this church at Rome that involved the Jewish converts.

It appears to me that this may have been the reason he decided to write to them in the first place.

And this assumption on my part comes from what I think are subtle and some not so subtle hints within the letter.

Paul over and over points out, either directly or indirectly, things that hit home with the typical Jew.

And at times the things he says are meant to sting a little.

Now, listen, this is not to say that Paul is in any way anti-Semitic.

Neither should we be, neither should anyone be.

These are God's people.

Paul is not being anti-Semitic, but being anti-anything doesn't involve being silent in the face of error.

When someone is committing error, it's our job to tell them.

Sometimes we must speak the truth to any brother or sister if they need to hear it, regardless of their race or cultural identity or any other sensitivity.

Now, just as a side note, I find it much better to refer an erring fellow church member to scripture rather than try and straighten them out myself whenever possible.

Very often when we say something intended to be helpful, it comes off as hurtful criticism.

And that never helps.

Let the Holy Spirit do the talking whenever you can.

Let's bring this back around.

As I said, Paul is not being maliciously critical of the Jewish people.

He himself, of course, was proudly Jewish.

He loved his people, and he only spoke out of concern for their well-being.

In fact, let me read you something we'll cover sometime off in the future in more detail.

I'm just introducing it here to help me make my point.

Romans 10, starting at verse 1.

Brethren, my heart's desire, listen to this.

Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be saved.

For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.

For they being ignorant of God's righteousness and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.

And then he opened the previous chapter in very similar fashion, Romans 9.

I say the truth in Christ, I lie not.

My conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart.

For I could listen to this, this is an amazing statement, for I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh.

That is a powerful statement.

Now we're not going to go into it now, but this is the spiritual equivalent of wanting to throw oneself on a live hand grenade to save the platoon.

In very dramatic fashion, Paul is here expressing the lengths he's willing to go to to save his own brethren.

They're important to him.

Let me read it again.

For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh.

Who are Israelites?

Listen, this is how much he loves and listen to things that he says.

Who are Israelites?

To whom pertaineth the adoption and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the law and the service of God and the promises?

Whose are the fathers and of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came, who is overall, God blessed forever.

Amen.

Now please don't misunderstand me.

This is not a letter meant, I'm talking about Romans, this is not a letter meant exclusively for the Jewish converts.

I know that so far that it seems like it, but I believe that that's because at the moment this has been our focus.

However, there will be plenty of points aimed at the Gentile converts as well.

And as a matter of fact, some are just as harshly realistic as the ones he makes in reference to his own people.

But I think Paul knew how difficult it was for a mixed congregation to make any progress.

All of the members of the church, regardless of their background, must work together if the gospel of God promised afore by the prophets is going to spread as it should, and in turn, the Father in heaven and his son be glorified.

Unity is one of the ongoing themes in all of Paul's letters.

It's important to him.

He knows that without unity, the unity of the body of Christ, we cannot fight against the world.

That is why we're having problems in this world today.

The Christian church is very fractured.

It's split.

We must come back together under him in the right way in order for us to finish this job.

Now, this letter seems to have been sent to correct some very specific problems.

Admittedly, none of which are overtly laid out by the internal evidence, and what we know of Paul's other letters tells us what that we are right.

Many of the problems seem to have to do with the Jewish members in the church, probably those problems being the motivation.

Again, that's strictly my opinion, but certainly not the only issues Paul had to deal with.

Now let's get back to the letter.

Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, which he had promised afore by his prophets and holy scriptures, concerning his son Jesus Christ, our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh.

Now, to me, this last statement is clear evidence.

And actually, actually, the point that started this lengthy previous section, concerning his son, concerning God's Son, Jesus Christ, the Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh.

That is a very important statement.

Now, Paul is an expert in the Hebrew Scriptures, and that is directly why he is a convert.

Hey, John, I thought Paul was a convert because Jesus knocked him to the ground on the road to Damascus.

Yes, but the fact that Paul is an expert in the Hebrew Scriptures is why he why Jesus knocked him to the ground on the road to Damascus.

Again, that's my opinion.

Listen to me, none of the other apostles were scholars.

They were all working men of some sort, fishermen mostly.

Paul was also a working man.

He was a tent maker, but he was primarily a brilliant scholar, and that was what the group needed.

You see, the foundation, and you're going to hear me say this over and over, the foundation of the claims of Jesus as the Messiah lies in the Hebrew Scriptures.

Now, the basic value of the other apostles brought to spread to the spread of the gospel was their intimate, detailed witness of the earthly life and death of Christ.

Their sensitivity to who the man was is part of what made them so important to the early church.

Likewise, their job was to report what they witnessed, to describe, to declare the incredible events that occurred as they traveled the countryside with their Lord.

Paul's role was to link those experiences with what God had been saying since the book of Genesis and all the way through the Hebrew Bible.

And he was the right man for the job.

Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, which he had promised before by us, this is his job.

He knows what he's talking about.

He's saying that the gospel was declared by God's prophets and holy scriptures.

What gospel?

The one concerning his son, Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh.

What Paul is saying here was meant to establish in the mind of those Jewish converts the connection between the arrival of Jesus on this earth with the promises God made to King David.

This is an immensely important issue with the Jews.

The long-awaited Messiah was to be in the house, the family of David, because of the promise God made.

God had promised that the Messiah, the one who would sit on that throne, would come from the house of David.

So Paul is saying that was spoken of in the scriptures by the holy prophets of God about Jesus.

He's pulling all of it together.

God said that the throne of David would last forever, and those Jews knew it and counted on it.

And it would last forever because the Messiah, a relative of David, would sit on that throne forever.

Now, here Paul doesn't explain how Jesus is related to David, but I'll tell you.

In fact, the Bible tells you.

Now I'm going to summarize it for you to spare you the bagat statements.

This is incredibly fascinating.

Now, the one and almost only fact most people remember from the Bible is that Jesus was born in Bethlehem.

But that's a good fact to remember, because that is one of the most important, if not the most important fact of Scripture.

Partially because it demonstrates the power God has over us, over our history, over the actions of mankind.

Have you ever wondered why Jesus was born in Bethlehem?

He didn't grow up there, but he was born there.

Joseph and Mary weren't from there, but that was where Mary's child was born.

I'll ask it again.

Do you know why?

Now I'm sure most of you know the earthly reason.

You get reminded of it every year in late December.

Jesus was born in Bethlehem because his parents had to go to that little town to answer the census called by the then Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus.

All of Jewish Palestine at that time was under the authority of the Roman government, the Roman imperial government.

What Caesar wanted there, Caesar got.

And Caesar wanted tax money.

And the best way to make sure you get all the tax money that's coming to you is to have a record of all the taxpayers.

So the way that census was conducted was that each citizen was told to report to the legacy home of their ancestors.

Mary and Joseph went to David's city.

Bethlehem is David's city.

He was born there.

It was the seat of David's family going all the way back to Ruth and Boaz.

Mary and Joseph were relatives of David.

And so they reported to Bethlehem, where David's family first settled.

And listen to me, being nine months pregnant was not going to relieve you of that responsibility.

Let's read it out of Luke chapter 2, verse 1.

Luke 2:1

And it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.

And this taxing was first made when Cyreneus was the governor of Syria.

And all went to be taxed, everyone into his own city.

And Joseph also went up from Galilee out of the city of Nazareth into Judea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of, listen, he was of the house and lineage of David.

Now back to Romans verse 3.

Concerning his son Jesus Christ our Lord, he's talking about the gospel.

Paul is talking about that gospel promised afore by holy prophets in scriptures.

He's talking about his God's son Jesus.

Concerning his son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh.

Paul, the expert on Hebrew Scripture, is here sharing the reasons Jesus is the Messiah.

This should thrill you.

But I'm not Jewish, John.

Why would I be thrilled?

Because this is showing Jesus' pedigree.

Jesus is related to David, and God said that the Messiah would be related to David.

This is Jesus's right to claim the throne, the eternal throne.

Jesus is the Messiah.

No need to search anymore.

Your wait is over because Jesus, who was born of the seed of David as promised, is the Messiah.

Now, one more important point to mention about verse 3.

Let me read it again.

Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle.

Why do you go all the way to verse 1, John?

Because this is one sentence.

It doesn't make any sense if I grab it up at verse 3.

Let me start again.

Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, which he had promised before by his prophets and holy scriptures, concerning his Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh.

Now I hope that you picked up on the way this verse is structured.

In it, we are to get the distinct impression that before Jesus was the seed of David, he was something else.

And even after he was the seed of David, he retained.

That previously held identity.

Paul makes clear that before the identification with the seed of David, Jesus was the Son of God.

He was the Son of God.

He was God's son before the seed of David business.

So Jesus existed, the Son of God existed, and then he became the seed of David.

That's the point I want to make.

The King James did a relatively poor translation here.

It's misleading.

Jesus wasn't made anything, he already existed as something.

He didn't come out, his existence didn't begin as the seed of David.

That's what that sounds like when it says he was made of the seed of David.

He was something else, and then he became the seed of David.

Verse 3 should read: Jesus became the seed of David.

He was one thing and then he became the seed of David.

He stayed who he, this is one of the great mysteries of the gospel.

He remained the Son of God even when he became the Son of Mary, the seed of David.

Now I hesitate to try to give you an illustration because there's really no way to explain in a human context, in a context of human experience, what this really means.

However, let's give it a shot.

On May 6th, 2023, Elizabeth's son Charles became King Charles III.

He was still Elizabeth's son, but now he was also the king of the United Kingdom.

He was what he had always been, but now his role and focus and mission and future had changed forever.

But that's where I must end this attempt at illustration, because what Jesus is is far different from this point on.

You see, this statement that Paul made about Jesus becoming the seed of David illustrates an immeasurably important aspect of salvation.

In fact, without this becoming, there is no salvation.

Listen to me.

One of the great ironies of this is that the mighty Son of God in heaven, in that capacity, while he was in heaven as the Son of God, he was unable to save us.

He had to become the seed of David.

Becoming the seed of David, relinquishing that throne, was the only path of redemption for us.

The price required to buy us back was that one of us had to die.

And if the wrong one died, we'd all die with him.

The fall of Adam made clear that just creating another Adam, another man from the dust of the earth, and hoping he'd be the one to get it right this time would only end in another failure.

And then you'd have to create another Adam and then another one.

And ultimately we'd be no closer to God than the day after that first piece of fruit was plucked.

But there's a challenge here.

It was necessary, listen to me, it was necessary for a man to save man.

John, what is the point of all this?

The point is Jesus became a man because he had to.

There was no other way.

Why?

Because this was a man-centric debt that had to be paid.

Only men's sin.

Sending a donkey would solve the no sin requirement, but a donkey is not a man and could not pay a debt owed by a man.

The savior, the one that would save us all, had to be a man who could also offer a sin-free life.

He had to offer a sin-free life so that the law could pass away through its fulfillment.

The law could pass away as our judge, and the only way that could happen is if somebody fulfilled it.

That doesn't mean the law goes away forever.

Paul tells us that in this letter.

No longer can it send us to our death because a man fulfilled it.

And that man who fulfilled it then died as if he didn't to pay our debt.

Another Adam would be a man, of course, but the chances of a sin-free life, based on the previous Adam's track record, would have been impossible to calculate.

And that is why the Son of God, God's Son, became a seed of David.

The Son of God.

God's son becoming a man was our, man's and God's only chance.

That is the gospel.

And it was promised to four by his prophets in Holy Scripture.

The important point we must gather from these first few verses, as well as many others in this letter and all of the New Testament, is that the very footing, the footing on which the gospel stands is scripture.

I've told you last time, when our previous lesson, God never expects you to believe just because.

It is where he has been promised and what he has been promised.

God is saying, believe in that, see the connection between Scripture and my Son, all of that that was promised before and my son, and you shall live.

Listen to me.

If someone is preaching something other than a Bible-centered message, then it is totally and completely invalid.

I'm gonna hurt some feelings when I say this.

This is why I left the Catholic Church.

The Catholic Church does not preach a Bible-centered message.

And therefore it's invalid.

In fact, it's worse than invalid.

Elsewhere Paul says, Galatians 1, 8, but though we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.

Not only is the false gospel invalid, but the one preaching it is accursed.

Only truth is allowed to flow.

All right, I think we'll break there for today and we'll get back to it next time.

See you then.

We hope this study has blessed you.

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