The gospel literally means good news
and it is good news.
But if you've been with us in the study of Romans,
we've been through the first two chapters.
And it, it doesn't sound like good news.
If you read the first two chapters of Romans.
It's.
It feels like it's nothing but bad news.
Though the gospel is good news.
And what Paul does in the first two chapters of Romans
is he paints a very clear picture
of the bad news.
I was reminded of what he does in this way.
If any of you gone to a jeweler and looked at diamonds, just diamonds.
Any of you.
None of you.
Some of you need to get some new people in your life to take your advice.
Sometimes.
If you go to a jeweler and they show you diamonds
that they don't show you a diamond
on a white or pale background
because it looks like this,
it's still a diamond.
Really, really valuable.
But this isn't how they show you diamond.
How do they show you a diamond?
A black belt.
Why does it change the diamond?
It just makes the value.
And the beauty of the diamond. Pop.
And that's what Paul does in chapters one and two.
And in verses three, one through 20,
he's showing us the grace of God.
But he has to show us the grace of God
in front of a black background,
so that not because it changes God's grace,
but also but because it makes God's grace
visible and it pops.
And the black background
on which he presents the grace of God.
The gospel
is our sin.
And that's why chapters one and two are so dark,
so that we will realize the darkness of our lives.
Apart from God's grace exhibited in the Son,
so that when we see God's grace exhibited in His Son,
it pops.
See, part of our problem
religious people
is we try to convince ourselves and others
that our background is as white and pure as possible.
Rather than acknowledging
how darkened it has become.
And when we do that, all we're doing
is we're discrediting the beauty
and the magnificence of God's grace.
And so Paul presents the gospel, the good news, the grace of God
against a black background of our sin.
In chapters one and two, in the first part of chapter three.
And it though it is good news, doesn't look good.
In chapter two, Paul finishes with this,
this, this teaching about the
the the act of circumcision for the Jew.
It was really, really important.
That was the sign that God had given them that they were a set apart people.
And religiously, the Jews believed that because they had this
sign, that this sign made them right with God.
So, in other words, for us, because we obey the law,
because we try to behave appropriately,
our behavior makes us right with God.
And Paul goes through a lot of chapter two at the end of that and says, look, that
that has nothing to do with you being right with God.
Your behavior and your religiosity and how good you are
doesn't make you right with God by any stretch of the imagination.
And so in chapter three, what Paul does is he starts asking questions,
and he uses a Socratic method of teaching
where the teacher will ask a question that really counters
his own teaching and then provide the answer for it
so that the hearers, the learners, will kind of learn along with him.
Let me I'm going to pull something.
Now, I'm going to ask your question and I'm going to answer your question.
That's a Socratic method of teaching.
So Paul does it.
And in chapter three he asks a few questions.
And one of them, the one he starts with having just talked
about the religious behavior of Jews, then them thinking that by their
religiosity they're right with God.
He says,
what advantage, then, is there in being a Jew?
Or what value is there in circumcision?
So naturally, the Jews he was writing to what?
Ask the question, Paul, if you're saying that all of our religious
behavior doesn't make us right with God, then what advantage is there in doing it?
What advantages are in us being Jews?
Good question.
He's going to answer it in verse two and in verse 234.
This is what he says.
Well, there's advantage much in every way.
First of all, the Jews have been entrusted with the very words of God.
Now what if some were unfaithful where their unfaithfulness
nullified God's faithfulness? Not at all.
What he's saying is the great advantage is they've been given the Word of God.
What if they don't believe? It don't matter.
It's still the truth.
Does their lack of acknowledgment of belief in following God
make God out to be a liar and everything he said? No, not at all.
Let God be true in every human being, a liar
as it is written, so that you may be proved right
when you speak, and prevail when you judge.
Now let me tell you what's going on here.
The natural question that they would ask Paul is what advantage is there
if you say all this religious behavior and all my goodness doesn't make me
right with God.
What advantage is there in being
religiously right?
He says, well, there's this great advantage honestly, in it.
And if we look at ourselves, I would say the same.
There's a great advantage
why Paul will tell the Jews because you've been given the words of God.
Well, guess what we've been given.
The Word of God.
It would be like us saying, well, what advantage is there in us?
You know, doing a church thing much in every way.
We have the advantage of
having a place to come and study the words of God,
to have it explained to us,
to go verse by verse through God's Word.
So it's clear and it's known and the truth is proclaimed.
We have the advantage of being a part of a huddle and a small group of people
who are doing life together and learning God's Word, and we have the advantage.
Parents of your children being in church and learning the rhythms of worship,
you have the advantage of it.
We have the advantage
of a youth ministry that is incredible junior high and high school as well.
Well, they can learn relationships with God and with each other.
We have the advantage.
We have the advantage of taking the advantage of going on mission trips.
So we get out of our own culture, so we expand the kingdom.
We have the advantage. Do you understand what I'm saying?
And what Paul says is just because
some people don't believe what God says, does that nullify what God says?
Not at all.
That God be true and every man a liar.
Basically what he says is if if God says a
and Colter says, be.
A is right.
What he says.
So here's the thing saying we have to assess cultures consensus
and their opinions about issues don't matter
to the disciple of Jesus.
God is true.
And I think counter to that is a lie.
That God be true and every person a liar.
God's right.
So Paul has just got done talking about how God will judge unrighteousness,
unrepentant sin, and Paul saying God is right in his judgment
just because you don't believe how black
our souls
are without him, just because you don't believe it does mean it's not true.
God is true.
Everyone's a liar and his judgment is true.
And then Paul quotes
from Psalm 51 verse four,
so that you may be proved right when you speak, and prevail when you judge
that David wrote that King David
in Psalm 51, if you're not hit pause.
Hearers would understand this.
They would their minds go right back to what they wrote.
Psalm 51 hours. Maybe not so much.
Let me tell you in Psalm 51, David as King,
committed adultery with this lady named Bathsheba, got her pregnant
and then contracted to have her husband killed
so he wouldn't look guilty and then took her as his own.
And he had convinced himself that it wasn't that bad.
And the
prophet Nathan came to him and said, David, we need to talk.
Here's the truth.
Your heart is blackened right now.
And David repents of that sin.
And he writes this psalm, Psalm 51 and he says,
you are proved right when you speak,
and you prevail when you judge against me,
because I have sinned,
I am far from the glory of God,
and my heart is black.
God, you're right.
Do you understand?
And that whole Psalm is David agreeing
with God about his sin and God's judgment.
And so, so that's what Paul said and said, look,
whether you believe all this stuff doesn't change the truth of it.
And for the Christian,
a matter of culture says.
That God be true and every man a liar.
Even about the blackness of our own soul.
And then he goes on in verses five and six,
and he's still he's asking questions and he's providing answers.
But if our righteousness brings out God's, if our unrighteousness
brings out God's righteousness more clearly, what shall we say?
What shall we say?
That God is unjust in bringing his wrath on us?
He's like, look, I'm just talking as a human.
Like I'm using human logic here.
Certainly not.
If that were so, how could God just the world?
Here's what he's saying.
He's saying the brilliance of the diamond is just not in the diamond.
The brilliance of the diamond is seen
because it's contrasted against the dark background.
We all understand that.
And so Paul's argument is, if my sin,
my dark background makes God's goodness look really good,
then he can't judge me for being bad
because he looks good by my badness.
So honestly, if all I'm doing is making him look good,
he has no right to judge me
because of to his benefit.
You understand?
Yes, and that's the argument.
And Paul's like, that's ridiculous.
That he's going to judge the world.
And he says, honestly, just because God's grace
looks good against your sin, your sin is still your sin.
You can't get away from that.
And then he takes it a step further in verses seven and eight.
Someone might argue, if my falsehood enhances God's
truthfulness and so increases his glory,
why am I still condemned as a sinner?
Why not say as some slander should claim?
We say, let us do evil.
That good may result. And then he just sits
there, condemnation.
Just.
Here's what
he said.
Some people take it this far.
If God's grace abounds where my sin is, I'ma
be really sinful so I can get a bunch of grace.
If my sinful makes God look really good, like a really dark background.
So the diamond really pops, then I'm going to make sure
I got a really dark background.
You get it?
And his response is,
you're an idiot.
Now, he says that in a very Pauline
biblical way, but spiritually,
he says that doesn't even merit a response.
That's just stupid.
And then Paul goes on in verses nine through eight,
and I'm not going to read it all. You can read on your own.
And he asked this question because he's writing to Jews,
and we'll translate it to our time. But he's asking this question,
how about us religious Jews?
Are we no better because of our religious behavior?
We could ask the same thing.
We're in church.
We're studying the Bible like we're good people.
Are we know better.
As far as our relationship to God because of our goodness.
And Paul says,
yeah, they're not in the least.
We're not even slightly better
because of our good deeds.
And he will say in verses nine
through 18, we are all under sin.
And when Paul says we're under sin, he means two things
one, without Christ and his work on it was death on the cross.
We are slaves to sin,
and sin is a tyrant ruler.
What he's saying is we will never get free from sin by ourself.
It's too big. It's too powerful.
It will always rule over us as a tyrant.
Never relenting, never letting go.
And sin only increases.
It never decreases. Left to itself.
And he quotes in those verses
nine through 18, he quotes from Psalm five, Psalm ten, Psalm 14.
Psalm 36.
Psalm 53.
Psalm 140, Ecclesiastes seven, and Isaiah 59.
And basically what he says is your entire body.
And he goes right down the list your mind, your throat, your,
your lips, your tongue, your mouth, your feet, your eyes.
The whole thing is corrupt and sinful.
What he does is he takes an X-ray,
a cat scan of our soul, of our heart, an internal look.
He says the whole thing inside you is corrupt and darkened by sin.
You might look good on the outside because of all your religious stuff.
And honestly, some of us look really good on the outside,
right?
Just maybe you need to know some better people.
I don't know, but like like some of us, some of you look really good
on the outside.
And that's what Paul saying you might look great on.
But inside
the darkest night.
And then in verse 18
he says, there is no fear of God before their eyes.
What he means is this
wherever there is sin, there's no fear of God.
He's just got done for two and a half chapters talking about God's
wrath of sin and his judgment on sin.
And he says, if.
If, if,
if you're not fearful of his wrath,
sin is going to abound.
And when we let sin rule in our lives,
there is no fear of the wrath of God.
You follow.
And so the end of 19 and verse 20,
he goes on, he says, so that every mouth may be silenced.
The whole world held accountable to God.
He's saying, look, just say with me, keep your mouth shut for a minute.
Let me just unpack.
This is what he's saying so that you have no response to God.
He's going to hold the whole world accountable for our sin.
Therefore,
no one will be declared righteous in God's sight
by the works of the law, by what they do, by their religious behavior.
Rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.
And so he's saying religion does not make anybody right with God.
The only thing religion does is prove how.
How far away from God we are.
The only thing religion does is prove
that we fall far short of God.
It's wrong to think that religion makes someone a righteous person.
It might make someone a moral person.
But here, man, this moral people don't get into heaven.
People who have been declared righteous by God get into heaven.
Jesus didn't come to make us moral.
He came to make us righteous.
It's wrong to think our religious behavior makes us righteous.
It doesn't.
The bad
news is the darkness of our background.
The only thing that religion does that
that God's laws do is prove we've broken them.
There's nobody I haven't come across to anybody yet
who obeys every theme in the Bible
24 seven every day of their life.
Do you know anybody?
There's nobody.
So all this does is prove
how darkened our soul is because of sin.
It doesn't make us right with God.
He says, but now the good news.
That was all the dark background.
Now the diamond.
You ready?
But now this is the transition part here.
This is where this is where he says
the newness of God is coming through the work of Christ.
But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been made
known, to which the law and the prophets testify this righteousness.
Pay attention to this.
This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.
There's no different judge.
It doesn't matter, for all of us have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
This is a really, really, really important passage of Scripture.
Paul has established our legal guilt before God
in the first two and a half chapters, and now he does.
He establishes a legal turning of the tables in our favor.
So legally, he says, you're guilty.
And now he's going to turn the legal tables not to our guilt, but to our freedom.
Now things have changed.
And what he says is righteous righteousness of God.
Righteousness
is the judicial verdict of approval.
It's a legal word.
The judicial verdict of approval, not guilt.
In essence, it's when I can say
I am declared right by God after God has examined me.
So the first two and a half chapters, God has examined us and found us guilty.
And now, because of righteousness,
he examines us again and finds us right with him.
Not guilty. You follow. You follow.
So this is what the Bible tells us about the righteousness of God
being examined by God.
Because of Jesus, been examined by God and now declared right with him.
Now Paul says, where does this righteousness come from?
From obeying the law and being obedient?
No, not at all. You can't be good enough.
You can't be religious enough to deserve to be considered righteous by God.
Salvation.
Being righteous with God is apart from anything you do.
It has nothing to do with us.
This is so important. We got to get this.
When Paul says righteousness comes through Jesus, I want you to shout.
It comes from God through faith in Jesus.
This is how we're made right with God, from God through faith in Jesus.
Paul has just said how righteousness
doesn't come by obedience and behavior.
It does come through faith in Jesus.
Now there's a difference, and Paul makes this very clear.
There's a difference between through faith
and by faith.
Please don't be confused.
Right with God.
Righteousness comes from God through faith in Jesus,
not by faith in Jesus.
Paul is very clear about that.
It comes through faith in Jesus.
Here's the difference.
If I say that I am
right with God by faith, by my faith in Jesus, who's in control,
I am.
It's by my faith.
Has it has everything to do with me
and my choice to believe.
That's not what Paul says.
Paul says it comes through faith in Jesus.
And there's a difference.
Faith.
Is not trusting or expecting God to do something.
Like, by my faith, I expect him to make me right.
Faith is relying on what God has already done.
And so it's because of the father's testimony
regarding his son and his son's work on the cross.
Through faith of what God
has already declared, through faith of what God has already determined,
not by my faith, but through faith in what God has already declared.
I rely on what he's already done
through faith.
To trust.
Always looks forward to what God will do.
And we trust in God.
Those who know God.
Trusting God. God, I trust that you're going to. Right?
You understand that.
But faith sees what God says has been done and believes God's Word.
So when God says that you are righteous through
the death of Christ, it's already been done.
So it's not by my faith that I mean righteous.
It's through faith
and what God has already declared,
the power and the proficiency of the blood of His Son
has nothing to do with me.
It has everything to do with what God has declared
about the life and death and blood of His Son.
Do you understand?
It. It takes every opportunity to be proud
of ourselves, every opportunity to be spiritually arrogant.
It takes all of that off the table.
Says, you have nothing to do with this.
I have chosen, God says, to make you righteous.
Because what I've declared through the blood of my son.
So through faith in him, not by your faith.
I get this.
The Bible says even the ability to have
faith is a gift from God.
We can't have faith apart from being God's gift.
It all comes from him so that we cannot boast at any level.
For all have sinned
and fall short of the glory of God.
Let me give you a mental picture of what this verse mean.
There are some, let's say,
while murderers, adulterers, addicts,
maybe as low
as the bottom of the lowest coal mine,
and while good religious people
might be at the top of Mount Everest when the goal is reaching
the star, all are far short.
Do you understand? All.
It doesn't matter.
All your little things you've done
to get from the bottom of the coal mine to the top of Mount Everest.
None of them are enough to get you to the stars.
Do you get it?
He said, so wherever you are on that, we're all.
And so you people on Everest, you ought to be arrogant and proud about yourself.
You're stupid
because you can't reach the stars.
So there's no sense
in being prideful and arrogant
about standing on the.
You understand?
That's what he's saying.
And so he says, let me tell you how to get there.
Verse 23, all of us fall far short.
Every one of us.
I don't care how good we look on the outside,
far short of the glory of God. But.
And that's where it gets good.
But I'm telling you, put your seatbelt on.
Because I got a lot to unpack.
You're going to want to take some notes.
Just follow along.
Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption
that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation
by his blood through faith to demonstrate his righteousness.
Because of his forbearance, God had passed over
the sins that were previously committed.
You got it. Got.
Paul introduces
three words that are crucial to understand
what salvation is, what God has done,
and what it means to be righteous in his sight.
Declared righteous.
Three words and those words are justification,
redemption, and propitiation.
Everybody share that with you. Say justification,
say redemption, say propitiation.
Okay. Good job.
Because of grace,
not our behavior.
These three things come into play
because of God's grace.
That's greater than anything.
You want a feeling behind it.
Grace is greater because of that grace.
These three things come into play and profound measure
in the life of the one who comes to faith through Jesus.
The first one is justification.
Justification is a legal term. Paul
uses it 30 times in the New Testament, 15 times in the book of Romans alone.
It's a it's a it's a,
a word that is presented in the present continual form, which means this
every time I believe in faith, I am declared justified.
Every time. It's present. Continual.
It's not one and done.
Every time I act and believe in faith, I am again declared justified.
It literally means to consider the guilty as though they had never,
ever, ever even been guilty in the first place.
Not just wiping their record clean.
Not just expunging it to to be considered.
Never, ever, ever, ever, ever having been guilty.
And if God, through faith in Jesus, now looks
as though we have never been guilty, it also means that he treats us.
As if we've never been guilty.
Can you imagine
God not only seeing, but treating you as though
you have never been guilty
of sin?
That's what it means to be justified
before God.
AC Dickson from yesteryear.
This is a quote from him
through the death of Christ on the cross making atonement for sin.
We get a perfect standing before God.
That is justification and it puts us in God's sight.
Back in Eden, before sin entered.
God looks upon us
and treats us as if we never.
Can you imagine?
He doesn't look at us with.
It's like, you know what? You used to be really bad.
I liked you, I, I so I cleaned you up.
Even though you're you and I'm me, I still accept you.
That's not how he views us.
Through Christ and the blood of Jesus.
Justification means that he now
looks at me as if he and I are walking through the Garden of Eden
before sin.
And did you know that about yourself?
If you follow Jesus,
that that's how.
Here's why so many of us follow Jesus.
And and we've accepted our Savior, and we think that God kind of treats us
as the dirty little stepchild, that okay, you know, you get in
because you believe me, but I'm really going to treat other people a lot better.
As if there's never been a record.
Do you know why God treats us as if
we've never sinned?
Because he treated Jesus as if he did.
He leveled against him.
And then Paul uses this word redemption.
And it literally means a substitute sacrifice.
It was a word that was used oftentimes in the slave market,
where a benevolent person would purchase a slave
not to enslave them, but to free them and liberate them.
It was paying their price, paying their debt
inherent in the
word redemption is this idea of value,
that there's something valuable about that which I am redeeming.
It means the purchaser pays the price for a thing because they see
something of value in what's purchased.
So when God looks at us, he says, I have made you in my image and
where you are is so dark and so sinful.
But I see in you something that I don't want to buy back.
I want to purchase you
not to enslave you, but to liberate you, to free you.
I want to redeem you.
You follow.
Such freedom
in salvation.
Such freedom in Jesus
that now so free that God looks at us
as if we have never, ever, ever been guilty in the first place.
That freedom.
And then Paul uses this word propitiation.
It's a really difficult word to understand and to translate.
The best way we can understand is, is substitute sacrifice.
It's a Greek word called hell.
Austrian,
and it literally means substitute sacrifice.
There's been something sacrifice
that was substituted for something else that wasn't sacrificed.
This word propitiation
is a Greek word, but it's used in the Old Testament.
Now, the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, but this word is
used in the Old Testament.
Let me tell you how,
in reference to the Ark of the covenant,
and when before the,
the temple was built, also God would meet with people
at the tabernacle, the traveling tent at the Ark of the covenant,
the Ark of the covenant was a big box, and in the box were three items.
One was a jar of manna
so that the people would remember God's provision for them
when they got lost in the desert, wouldn't ask directions, and so they
okay.
That's right.
Anyway, when God would give them manna.
And then.
So they kept a jar to remind their kids of the story
of the Exodus and God's provision for them in the wilderness.
The second thing was in the Ark of the covenant.
This box was the rod of Aaron.
It was a stick that God brought life into in it, buddy.
And so they kept that there to remember.
God creates life out of dead things.
A third thing that was in the Ark of the covenant was the tablets.
The tablets of the Ten Commandments,
God's law that they broke over and over and over.
And those three things in the Ark of the covenant were reminders,
both of their sin and of God's goodness and provision.
And over the ark of this box was a lid,
and that lid was called the mercy seat.
And it was at the mercy seat that the high priest would walk into
the tabernacle of the Holy of Holies, where the ark was, and sprinkled blood
on the mercy seat.
And when that happened, God would visit man
at the mercy seat because of the sprinkled blood of the lamb.
When the
Old Testament was translated into Greek, the language of the New Testament,
the word for mercy, seat is propitiation.
Jesus is our propitiation.
The Jews would understand that to mean Jesus is the mercy seat
where blood is shed and God meets man.
He's the sacrifice
so God can meet man.
Every other religion in the world is about man meeting God.
Christiana is the only one that says, no, no, no.
God will come down to man because of the blood of Jesus,
who is our propitiation, our mercy seat.
You understand?
You get it.
Please understand this.
His sacrificial substitution for us,
Jesus is the mercy seat whose blood was shed
so God can meet you.
Because Jesus is the substitute,
the mercy seat whose blood was shed so God could meet you.
God chose
to pay that price of his son for you.
Because he wanted to buy you back
from the blackness of your own soul,
from a life being a slave to sin.
He was for something so valuable in you
that he said, whatever the price,
even of my son, I will buy you back
so that you can be seen by me
as if you have never sinned in your life.
Isn't that amazing?
That should clap for that, Sarah.
That's all right. Thank you.
It's amazing to me.
That we don't have to walk around
with our heads in shame.
God. Thank you.
I don't deserve it.
You're right. You don't.
But because of redemption
and justification and propitiation.
Complete liberation.
So that God has put his righteousness on you.
The very righteousness of himself.
Paul wraps it up with this.
He did all this
to demonstrate his righteousness.
At the present time.
So as to be just.
And the one who justifies those who have faith in Christ.
So then where's your boasting?
You don't get to brag about it.
He said, God did all of this to show himself in two ways.
One, that he is a just God and his wrath will be poured
on unrepentant sin.
But he also did this to show himself as the one who justifies,
to make those who deserve his wrath
as if they never have sinned in the first place.
Because he poured his justice and his wrath against one who had never
sinned in the first place.
So God sits as the just and the justifier.
Both of them come to full expression
in the person of Jesus and his shed blood.
Nothing to do
with our goodness and our religiosity.
Everything to do
with Jesus, a sacrifice.
And this, my friends, is a salvation
that he invites us into.
This is
the invitation.
To be freed
from the pressure of your own performance, to be right with God.
To realize what you have been saved from,
and to live with inexpressible joy.
That you that I
would be seen by him as something so valuable
that he would buy us back
and treat us as if
we have never transgressed.
Can you believe?
Can you imagine
that he loves you
that much?
What about you?
What about me? Is that lovely?
Not. And
so I will gladly admit
the blackness of my background.
Because I understand the brilliance
of God's grace.
And endeavor
to live with this incredible joy and freedom,
and give every ounce of my being that others
may know this as well.
This is good news.
And I want to invite you into
what Jesus has invited us into.
I don't care how many times you've done this before.
I invite you to do it again with a new realization
of what this means and who God sees you to be, invites you into.
Would you pray with me?
God, your word tells us you have loved us
with an everlasting love.
Thank you.
Thank you that you don't love us in spite of all these things.
That you simply love us
and have seen in us.
People that you want for yourself.
And that you have paid the price.
And that in paying that price,
you don't hold our past against us.
I thank you that we don't have to grovel
and beg before you, as if.
We're so unworthy.
We realize our unworthiness,
and we realize your grace.
And we thank you for it.
Father, I believe that there's some in this place right now
that realize their need for a savior.
And there are some in this place right now
who are realizing, maybe again, maybe in a new way
of everything that you've done for us to your son.
It's amazing.
And there are some in us in this place that are realizing
incredible freedom and joy that we have
through your son.
And so, father, we repent
and we accept you, Jesus,
as the leader of the of our life and the lover of our souls.
Friends, I want to invite you in this moment
to agree with God about what he says and what he's done.
I don't care how many times
you've done this before, it's always a good redo, especially
for the first time to say, father, thank you that you love me.
So much
that you paid my sin price
with the life of your son.
Jesus, I accept you
as the leader of my life.
I agree with you
about the darkness of my soul
and I invite you in.
To shine the brilliance of your grace
in my justification.
In my redemption.
Because you are my sacrifice.
Father, people have prayed that prayer,
and you've done that work.
And I pray, father, that we would live as people
who understand and exhibit what it is to be justified before you.
Righteous in your sight, redeemed by your blood
because of your sacrifice.
Make us new.
I love you, Jesus.
Thank you.
In the name I pray.
Amen.
Listen, I love you guys.
You're doing a great job hanging with us through Romans.
It's a big book, isn't it?
There's a lot there.
I'm proud of you.
Here's what I have.
Take this week and read through Romans three again and let stuff come alive.
Let it pop, let it let it live.
And then read chapter four, because that's where we're headed.
Every week, a new chapter.
This is good for us to do.
And my other encouragement.
You got people in your
huddle that aren't in church.
Don't they need to know this?
Let me ask that again,
because I feel like you're not listening much.
You got people in your world who aren't in church who don't know this.
Don't they need to?
You're in their world for one reason
I love you. Let's listening.