Bible Guys Classics: Romans 1 Part 1

Hey, Jeff, I have some really good news today.

Oh great.

Yeah. The good news is it's another day of us

on podcasts.

Hey, and we're talking about the good news.

Yeah, Paul shares the good news.

We're kicking off talk about the Book of Romans. So

he's Chris and I'm Jeff, and we're the Bible guys.

So, Jeff, today we are handed a segment that we

have not done actually in quite a while. Yeah, called

this or that. These are fun, Yeah, they are fun

because it's all it is is just your opinions and

your choices.

And we have plenty of those, yes, of course.

So it says this or that, which one would you

rather either do, have or be?

Okay, so here's the first one.

Okay, would you rather have unlimited tacos or unlimited ice cream?

No, no brainer, unlimited tacos.

Yeah, so for me, it's actually, well it's the wrong choice,

but it's unlimited ice cream. Really yeah. I love love tacos,

like the universe. The universe loves tacos. However, ice cream

is the one thing that is my downfall. Wow, Like

I could eat ice cream all the time, wow, all

the time. Yeah, And there's so many choices, just like tacos.

I love ice cream, but I have like limited Like

I can go once a month with ice cream and

I'm perfectly fine. Oh like a taste of ice cream.

Oh I could do ice cream if it wasn't like

the thing that is super sugary and fat. I could

probably drink a shake a day.

Oh wow, yeah, wow, yeah, I see you have a

shake problem. You have an ice cream problem. So yeah,

I like good gelato, like a nice, creamy chocolate gelato.

I love that, all right.

Question number two, would you rather wear a tux to

work every day or have to wear pajamas to work

every day?

Oh? Tucks, I'd rather wear a tux to work every

day rather than pajamas.

You are insane? Really, Why why would you be formal?

So fancy?

Well, who cares about how you look?

Well, you dressed for success.

How about dress for comfort? You know what. The older

you get, but with the rest of the world too. Yeah,

the older we get, the more we realize the comfort

becomes the priority, right right, right, So you know, I

think that's the reason why people the order you get.

It's just it's just all about cushing.

All the other shoes to new balance right, right, right,

all the men start finding like stretchy pants, right yeah yeah,

yeah yeah, comfort? Well I can see that. Yeah.

So let me ask you a question. When you get

home from work, and let's just say you're in jeans

and a button down shirt, do you not immediately change

into something more comfortable?

No?

Nothing, no?

Never.

Do you have a set of pajamas?

No, not a whole set.

Do you realize how many sets of pajamas I have?

Oh, I'd imagine a bunch.

I would say, thirty?

What Yeah, you collect pajamas?

No, it's just what I have.

Well, you have to thirty of anything? Seems like a

collection to me.

I wear pajamas every day.

Wow. Yeah, so no, I'm sorry that's hilarious. Well, okay,

I think you sounds sophisticated. I think talking pajamas, a

button up and a collar in the whole nine yards, like,

mister cleaver.

Well, it's probably not what you're thinking. It's not like

silk proper pajama set.

Because I'm envisioning you now, like in a smoking jacket

at night, sitting in dim light, and you're you know,

you paneled.

Guys, Pajamas are just the bottoms and then you sho

wear a T shirt with it. Okay, that's the popular thing. Okay,

I have a pair of pajama bottoms, I guess. Okay,

all right, but I do have several sets.

Though, Okay I do apparently thirty Yeah.

There's a lot.

Okay, okay about this? Well, that's amazing. Sorry, we spent

so much time on that. I'm just blown away.

That's all right. Would you rather watch all your movies

and TV shows and half speed or double speed? Oh?

Double speed?

Yeah? No, no brainer?

Yeah? Yeah?

Yeah? Who want to go half speed?

I don't know. You're a movie bove. Maybe you'd enjoy

it twice as much.

It reminds me of it reminds me of what's that

one show with the fox in the in the sloth

and the sloth is there? Okay? How about this number four?

Would you rather have a burnt tongue or for a

week or have a brain freeze for a week? Oh?

Neither neither? Can I can? I vote neither on that one,

No doubt. Yea man, if you if you have to

choose one, what would you choose?

I'd have to. I have to go with the burn

tongue because I could deal with it. But brain freeze

is like, it's like the debilitating.

What am I starting to just have a brain freeze?

Yeah?

Just debilitating?

Right, yeah, so it really is right. You can't do

anything with the burn tongue. It's just really so bad

brain freeze. I mean you got to turn the lights

off in the room kind of thing. Yeah, just yeah, yeah, yeah, debilitating.

And then number five, would you rather, Oh, my goodness,

would you rather win every game you play? Or lose

every game you play?

Oh? Win when every so winning is fun and everything

else is not winning? Right, But I don't know.

Why anybody would choose losing. Oh I love to lose.

Losing is the best right to which somebody that was

taught to be a good loser, Well I was a good.

Loser or just a loser?

Yeah, I remember on one of my coaches when I

was a kid told us to be good losers, right,

because we were all mad after losing game wet as

in a baseball team, and we went mostly undefeated deep

into the season. We were still undefeated and we lost

the game we shouldn't lose, so we were kind of mad.

One of the kids through a bat. You know, we

were all angry, hitting the fence, whatever, and just bad

attitudes is our first loss. The coach comes in gives

us whole speech about being a good loser. On the

way home, my dad said, Jeff, you know that I

look up to your coach. I think your coach is

good coach. My dad always would encourage me to look

up to my coaches. I say, yes, he said, so,

I just want to clarify something. We never want to

be good losers. We want to be gracious losers. We

never want to get good at losing. Just be gracious

when you do. And he said, is difference. He said,

sometimes I know it sounds like semantics, but words matter, right, right,

What are you good at? I'm good at losing?

You know what?

That right? So well, today, a lot of people don't

like winning or losing. A lot of people don't. It

feels like a measurement thing. It feels like a really

Oh yeah yeah. I think they just feel like everybody

should just enjoy participating.

Oh like trophies, I guess wow. Yeah.

Yeah, we're a couple of old guys. We like winning, so.

Well, today we actually are, you know, just remind everybody

we're going through the Book of Acts and chronologically since

Paul wrote almost new half half the New Testament. Uh,

what we're doing is we're sort of breaking chronologically from

the Book of Acts and we're sort of going to

the letters that that he has written. Well today, actually,

last podcast, we just finished up Second Corinthians, right, he

was on his third is on his third missionary journey,

and and today is going to take a surprising jump

directly from Second Corinthians to Romans.

Well, I don't think we're gonna put on the screen,

but there is two halves of verse that says, then

he traveled down to Greece where he straight stayed for

three months. That's in the Book of Acts. And then

we're moving on during that time, the three months that

he was in Greece, he wrote the Book of Romans,

as far as we know.

And this is interesting too because number one Romans doesn't

read like a typical letter. And then number two this

is actually a church that he has never been to.

Right, That's why that's why I think the other ones

are so personal. Yeah, and this one's pretty academic.

Yeah, And because this church most likely was started by

the Jews that came up from Acts chapter two, the Pentecost,

and actually it was mostly Jewish, although there were some

you know, Greeks in the church, and Paul was writing

to introduce himself. He was writing in hopes to visit them,

which he did eventually. This was written around fifty seven

AD according to my little notes over here on my

Life Application Study Bible, and about three years later after

this letter of introduction he actually gets to visit them.

Okay, good, So we're just going to pick up and

Paul wastes no time. Yep. Within just a few verses

he gets into some really big stuff and from there

on this is a heavy hitting book, one of the

most theological books in the Bible, really defining for us

what the meaning of what we talk about as the Gospel,

what that is. He kind of provides the framework of it,

but he also deals with a lot of other social

issues and behavioral issues. So this is a hard hitting book.

The other ones were correction, stop doing this, stop doing this.

This book is more just emphatic statements of this is

what real Christianity is, right, So no corrections in here,

just making statements, all right. So let's jump in. We're

reading from the New Living Translation. If you're following along

Romans Chapter one, and we'll read through what verse eighteen

seventeen seventeen. This letter is from Paul, a slave of Christ.

Jesus chose chosen by God to be an apostle and

sent out to preach his good news. God promised this

good news long ago through his prophets and the Holy scriptures.

The good news is about his son and in his

earthly life, he was born into King David's family line,

and he was shown to be the son of God

when he was raised from the dead by the power

of the Holy Spirit. He is Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Through Christ, God has given us the privilege and authority

as apostles to tell gentiles everywhere what God has done

for them, so that they will believe and obey Him,

bringing glory to His name. And you are included among

those gentiles who have been called to belong to Jesus Christ.

I am writing to all of you in Rome who

are loved by God and are called to be his

own holy people. May God, our Father and the Lord

Jesus Christ give you grace and peace. Let me say

first that I thank my God through Jesus Christ, for

all of you, because your faith in Him is being

talked about all over the world. God knows how often

I pray for you day and night. I bring you

and your needs and prayer to God, whom I s

with all my heart by spreading the good news about

his son. One of the things I always pray for

is the opportunity God willing to come at last to

see you. For I long to visit you so I

can bring you some spiritual gift that will help you

grow strong in the Lord. When we get together, I

want to encourage you in your faith, but I also

want to be encouraged by yours. I want you to know,

dear brothers and sisters, that I planned many times to

visit you, but I was prevented until now. I want

to work among you and see spiritual fruit, just as

I have seen among other gentiles. For I have a

great sense of obligation to people in both the civilized

world and the rest of the world, to the educated

and uneducated alike. So I am eager to come to

you in Rome too to preach the good news. For

I am not ashamed of this good news about Christ.

It is the power of God at work saving everyone

who believes the Jew first, and also the gentile. This

good news tells us how God makes us right in

his sight. This is accomplished from start to finish by faith,

As the scriptures say, it is through faith that a

righteous person has life. You know.

Always cracks me up. Is that verse that says the

jew first, then the gentile?

Yeah?

Yeah, But we have to understand that he's not saying

that the Jewish person has priority of salvation over another person.

What he's saying is is that in the Old Testament

that the Jewish people were God's chosen people, and actually

God was actually associated with the Jewish people, and that

actually when people talked about God, it was the God

of the Jewish people, right, or God of Israel. Right.

Well, Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, right, So Jesus came

to the Jews, and it emanated from the idea of Christianity,

emanated from the Jewish religion. I think that that's what

it's talking about. It came to them first, but now

it's spreading everywhere. Right, that's what he's talking about. As

a matter of fact, some translations would say in verse fourteen,

where it talks about, you know, in the civilized world,

and the rest of the world. He's saying also to

the Greeks and the Barbarians, is what it was saying.

So you know, you got to remember in this time

in the Western world, so this is everything maybe on

the west end of the Silk Road, all the way

to Spain, that whole region up into Gaul, which would

be you know, modern day France and Germany. Now maybe

even pushing towards by this point, not quite pushed towards

I don't think towards Germany or towards England yet, but

it's most of the Mediterranean, that whole thing. To them,

that was the whole world. They thought when you went

past the Rock of Gibraltar out into the Atlantic Ocean

somewhere out there, you just fell off the planet, right,

that's what they thought. So they thought that they had

dominated almost the whole world, and on the edges of

the rest of the world were those barbarians. So it's

pretty much Romans, Greeks, some Africans along the bottom of

the Mediterranean, and then those Barbarians to the north. And

so what he's saying is basically in his mind, it's

available to everybody. That's what he's talking about. But it's

kind of a funny way for him to say it

that way, right, So it's just trying to include all

the peoples.

Well, you know, you said something last night at dinner.

We were at dinner, had a meeting, and you were

explaining that when the Great Commission was given at the time,

there was a half of a billion people on the planet.

That's right, So think about that just in terms of population.

Yeah, that's according to the I think it's a UN

census thing, and then also the US Census Bureau. They

both kind of combined all of their projected research and

go back. We didn't cross a billion people on the

planet until about the same time that the printing press

was invented in the fifteen hundreds. Wow, isn't it amazing? Yeah,

until then, that first fifteen hundred years of Christianity, it

was roughly a billion half a billion people. Wow, isn't

it amazing?

And now we have twenty seven billion people in the.

We have eight eight billion here in January of twenty

twenty three. They're saying this eight billion. We just crossed

that line. By the way, just recently, so some people

are saying we crossed eight billion in November others are

saying it's going to happen here in January, but right

here it's eight billion, and by twenty fifty.

It will be ten billions twenty yees, yeah, okay.

But by twenty fifty it'll be ten billion people on

the planet. So our responsibility with the good News of

the Gospel is going to be in our lifetime if

we live to twenty fifty, is going to be twenty

times the scale of Paul's responsibility with the Gospel. And

Paul was willing to risk everything to go tell everybody,

and there's only half a billion people on the total

whole planet, and he only knew about maybe half of them, right,

And here you and I are sitting here and now

all of our listeners that are Christians with responsibility reaching

ten billion people in our lifetime. God's mandate hasn't changed.

The responsibility is much greater. But he's also given us

unbelievable resources Paul couldn't have imagined back then. He couldn't

imagine I'm going to on Saturday and this podcast. Yeah, yeah,

the ability just to speak literally around the world. We're

what in eighty something countries on the podcast or whatever,

and almost every state in the Union just by talking,

and people can choose to tune in the ability to

communicate like that through the Internet. I'm going to get

out an airplane on Saturday. I'm flying to Egypt, and

then after Egypt, I'm flying onto India. And the idea

that I'll be in Egypt in less a day, less

than twenty four hours, I can be in Egypt, Right,

that's unbelievable. Yeah, Paul, couldn't. It would take you months,

and we can do it in twenty four hours. And

so with this great responsibility, God's also given us great

opportunity and ability. And so this idea of him saying, hey,

I'm planning. He basically this letter is an introduction to

himself saying I want to come and visit you. And

here's why I think we're going to have a meaningful

ministry together.

Yeah, and he definitely talks about Jesus here, introducing Jesus

as the foundation. And as he speaks about Jesus, he

talks about the verse that stuck out to me was

he said he was born into King David's family line, right,

and he was shown to be the son of God

when he was raised from the dead by the power

of the Holy Spirit. He's Jesus Christ, our Lord. And

so that immediately thought made me think of the two

genealogies in the Gospels. Yeah, so you know, when you're

reading the Gospels Matthew, Mark and Luke and John, which

i'll talk about the story of Jesus. In Matthew, there's

a genealogy and it was written to uh it is

written from Abraham right with Abraham to Joseph, and really

he was writing to a Jewish audience and establishing the

claim that Joseph had through David, King David. And then

the other genealogy is in a couple chapters into the

book of Luke, and it actually goes backwards from Joseph

all the way to Adam for Adam and of course

through David of course, right, and so just you know,

just sort of showing the uh, you know, the humanity

of it, and and just the you know, again proving

that he's from King David.

Yeah, both of them, showing that both Mary and Joseph

were in the royal lineage of King David, right right, right,

It's pretty incredible. So this idea, then, you know, Paul

is starting off and introducing himself to strangers. But they're

not strangers. They're godly people who have a famous reputation

for godly people. He just hasn't met them yet, and

so he's reminding them. The commonality for all Christians is

not a political affinity. The commonality of all Christians is

not that we have the exact same social views or anything.

The commonality for all Christians is that Jesus Christ is

the son of God and he rose from the dead

for salvation right of all humanity. That's the common thing.

So we can have common fellowship with others that are

different from us in Christ. And that's what he's trying

to point out.

You know. I remember the first time I took a

massive missions trip over to Africa and I realized that

as different as that culture is and those people are

to me, I thought, man, this is going to be

so different. And then I realized how alike we are.

You know, there's a lot of you know things that

we share, you know, family trades and loving our kids,

you know, so it's like, wow, these guys are really

not that much different. But honestly, it was the commonality

of Jesus. It was like it was like we they

accepted me, and I accepted them, and just we felt

immediately like we are brothers in Christ, in Christ. So

it was just it was really interesting to me how

I felt what you just said. I felt it, yeah,

and I actually thought like, WHOA, that is amazing. That's

an amazing feeling.

Yeah. So you know, there's times when I've gone into

places where normally it might be dangerous or for outsiders,

or it would be extremely uncomfortable, but immediately those walls

are torn down because of our commonality in Christ. Right.

And this is the universal I believe universal appeal of

Jesus is that in Galatians, Paul says that there's no

more Jew or gentile, there's no more slave or free,

there's no more male or female. We're all want in Christ.

And this is kind of what he's appealing to to

the Romans here. Now we know that the Gospel came

to Rome through those earliest Christians out of the Acts,

chapter two. That's the tradition. But he's clearly referring here

that it looks like the majority of them now are gentiles,

because in verse eight, there's verse sixty says and you're

included among those gentiles who have been to belong to Christ.

So it seems like this is a majority gentile. So basically,

you know Romans, these are Romans, and so he's appealing

to them from that standpoint. Also, the way he writes

this book is very logical, right, it's not emotional or philosophical.

He starts at A and goes to Z is pretty

much how he writes this book, and that would appeal

to Romans in a way that maybe it wouldn't have

appealed to some of the people from Syria or Turkey

that he was writing to before. So he adapts his

style a little bit to who he's writing to. They're

also going to be much more highly educated in the

power center of the entire universe at that time. They're

going to be more educated. So he comes at from

some point, which is really impressive that he can choose

to be who his listeners need him to be. He's

not a chameleon, like he's faking it. It's just that

he has the ability to simplify things when he needs

to simplify it, or he has ability in this book

to step up to the plate and go all right,

let me lay it out there on a you know,

pretty advanced level, and I know you guys can keep up.

Yeah, And Paul had the unique privilege of actually being

a Pharisee and a Roman citizen. So being a Roman citizen,

you know, he has credibility right from the start. And

when he's writing, he's actually, you know, sort of introducing

the fact that, you know, God is not just for

the Jewish people, for the gentiles. And the reason why

is because we have to understand and keep in mind

that the reason why he writes this is he's setting

the stage because the word apostle, we call him the

apostle Paul, the word apostle means one who is sent right,

and so he's actually given a mission by God to

reach specifically those people who are non Jewish, so that

that's the definition of the word gentile. So just keeping

in mind that when he's writing about Jews and gentiles,

he is the he is the leading expert in the

world about about telling everybody, Hey, listen, Jesus died on

the cross and his gospel, his good news is not

just for the Jewish people anymore, is for everybody, barbarians, pagans, right,

for you know, gentiles, anybody. And so I love the

fact that he's setting the stage that way, and everything

who he is, everything about who he is, supports this letter.

So what we do, what we see is at the

very beginning, his very first sentence is shocking, I'm a

slave of Christ for a Roman citizen to embrace the

idea of being a slave. What he's doing is he's

recognizing Jesus bought me with his blood, and now I

serve him unquestionably. So he starts off very humble, but

by the end of this verse seventeen verses, he's saying,

but I'm not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ because

it's the power of God to salvation. And so then

that sets the stage humble serving. I want to humbly

serve you, but we're not ashamed of this power of

God that brings us to salvation. It's available to everybody

through faith. And the whole rest of the book unpacks

that idea.

Yeah, and what a great verse to memorize Romans one sixteen,

For I am not ashamed of this good news about

Christ is the power of God at work saving everyone

who believes. And so it's just a it's just a

great reminder that when it comes down to you know,

bringing up conversations about God or talking about your faith,

even though that a lot of people like to keep

it private. You know, we're supposed to not be ashamed.

You know. It's interesting why people want to keep their

faith private, because you know, sometimes the church has getten

a bad rap over the years, and we deserve most

of that bad rap. But for the majority, for the

majority of people, they don't have a bad church experience.

But I think that a lot of us in this culture,

we listen to culture and cultures like keep your religion private,

keep your faith private, you know, and that's sort of

that's sort of the narrative, right. But but you know,

as long as you're doing it, you know, not with

you know, spiritual manipulation, you know, or being you know,

all all those different negative things. You know, just just

be not ashamed of your faith, share your faith, be

proud that you believe in God and the son Jesus Christ,

and tell people without a doubt that's the reason for

your happiness, your joy and everything else.

The only power to save people from their sins and

to change their lives is the power of God unto salvation,

and so that comes from the fact that we're not.

That's why we shouldn't be ashamed of this good news.

Well, it looks like we're right at that time, so

we're excited to pick up tomorrow and we'll hopefully see

you in on the Bible guys,