Scripture: Topics: Romans Bible Study
Welcome to The Door. This is the book of Romans. We're going to chapter five versus one through eight tonight. The Door is located in Lobelville, Tennessee. Anytime you're passing through on a Thursday night, feel free to stop off.
We're going to be studying the word of God. Now this is not a religious Bible study. There's nothing for you to join. We're not selling you anything.
And it's just here for you to understand the words of God. That's our only purpose. “Heaven and earth shall pass away. But my words,” notice the plural, “words shall not pass away.” Matthew 24:35
So God has a collection of words that he said will not pass away. So if you don't have that collection of words, then you don't have the word of God because the word of God is made up of the words of God.
We have that in English in the authorized version. We also read Psalm 33:4 "For the word of the Lord is right;" So if it's God's word it's right, it doesn't need correction by Greek or Hebrew or a commentary. "the word of the Lord is right; and all his works are done in truth." So we have great confidence in our book tonight.
Psalm 33:6 "By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth." So the words of God are powerful. Another passage says that he's placed his words above his name. So the word of God is exalted. He said, "Let it be magnified."
Now a summary, last week we talked about Abraham, Genesis 15:6 says, "And he believed in the Lord and he counted it to him for righteousness."
So this Christianity in effect, the gospel, started way back there with Abraham. When Abraham simply believed God, and God counted it to be much more than it was. It was just a belief that he would have a child through Sarah. But God called that little bit of faith righteousness and declared Abraham to be God's righteousness.
Romans 4:23 says, "Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him;" That his righteousness imputed to him. "But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him, that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead;" So we're going to talk about the fruit of justification by faith in Christ as found in Romans chapter five.
So he has brought us to that point to where he is now going to argue so the Jews understand clearly that not only are we not saved by the law, rather we're saved by faith in Christ, but that faith in Christ has much more benefits than the law was ever able to provide. The law in its diet made them healthy. The law in its social order made them safe and kept them from revolutions. The law in its judicial aspect created justice throughout their nation. But what it didn't bring was life, true life. So he is going to talk about the fruit of justification by faith.
So we open our Bible to Romans chapter five. And we read "Therefore" And you have to ask what's it therefore, he's referring back to what he's just told us in chapter four about being justified by Christ and not with the law. "Therefore being," present tense progressive, we're in the process of being. We are and we are continuing to be "justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:"
So this word being is interesting. "Beloved now, are we the sons of God," John said in 1 John 3:2. Now, are we the sons of God? "it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is."
"Now are we the sons of God," Are you God's son right now? You see I'm not working to be. I'm not going to die and then become God's son. I'm his son right now. I'm in his family. I'm a son of God. As secure as Jesus Christ himself was secure.
1 John 5:12-13 And "He that hath the son, hath life; and he that hath not the son of God, hath not life. These things are written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that you may know that you have eternal life," So we are being justified and we know that we have eternal life. We believe on the name of the son of God.
Back to Romans five, “therefore being justified.” That's a great word. Justified. It's a word used in court. "Who was delivered for our offenses and was raised again for our justification. So Christ died to pay for our sins and then he was raised from the dead. And in being raised from the dead, we are justified in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now this word justified is an interesting word because it means we're just before God. That is that there's nothing to our charge. We're not guilty. We're not to blame. We have no record of sin. Before the court of heaven we've been exonerated entirely and found to be pure like Jesus Christ is pure. That's an amazing thing.
It's found the word justify in its different forms, justify, justifying, 36 times in the New Testament.
Acts 13:39 "And by all that believe are justified from all things," That tells us what justification is. Is to be justified "from all things, from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses." So the law of Moses, what it purported to do, which was to give us life, it couldn't do it. So what the Moses law failed to do, in Jesus Christ it is accomplished.We are justified from all things.
1 Corinthians 6:9-10 "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God." That's a crazy list. “And such were some of you.” So the church in Corinth had some of those people in it, it was a church made up of people that would come from San Francisco, for instance.
1 Corinthians 6:11 He said, "Such were some of you: but ye are washed," That's what justification is. It's being washed. You "are sanctified...." That means set apart and made to be special. Dear to God. One of his. You are sanctified. You "are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God." So that's what it means to be justified before God.
So if you have been a sodomite or an adulterer or a murderer, now I used to say that down to prison and of course there was half of them there present, that'd be true. And some of them were worse. And so I would say that and, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." Such were some of you, but you're washed, you're sanctified and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and the Spirit of God.
Titus 3:7 And "...being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life." So justified is to become an heir of God. It not only exonerates us from sin, but by his resurrection being placed in his body, as we studied earlier, or we will study in chapter six.
By being placed into his body when he was raised, we were raised. And so his experience becomes ours. So we're justified, made heirs and it's according to the hope of eternal life.
So justification is unto eternal life.
Romans 5:1, again, "Therefore being justified by faith..." Boy, this is a really pregnant passage.
It's got, what do you call it? When you have five, quin triplets or something? This thing is just totally full here in verse one. "Therefore being justified by faith..." By faith. Now I looked up that word faith and the word faith appears in its different forms 612 times in the New Testament. Faith or belief, believist, believing, believed, 612 times. Now, very few words appear that many times in the whole Bible, but that's what the New Testament is about. It's about believing.
And so being justified by faith. Now, the amazing thing about being justified by faith is you're not required to have faith in order to be justified. You're required to believe. That's your part. Belief is a verb. Faith is a noun. So when you get saved, when you get born again, at that point, you don't have any faith. And if you looked inside for faith or somebody looked at you for faith, they wouldn't find any. But what you can do as a pitiful weak sinner is you can simply believe what God says. And in that action of belief, faith is placed in you by the holy spirit and you are justified by that faith that God generates in your heart when you take action to believe.
So the Calvinists, not understanding the difference between belief and faith, say that faith is a state of righteousness, which it is. It's a gift of God. And therefore the sinner cannot commit an act of righteousness. So therefore he must be, through forknowledge of God, elected under salvation, predestinated to salvation, effectually called to salvation, and then God placing faith in him. In other words, God regenerating him, then he believes. They've got it backwards. The Bible makes it clear we're to believe and when we do, then the faith comes through the spirit of God to regenerate us. I've spoken on that, have a tape on that. You can look that up.
“Therefore being justified by faith. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Now let's look at that. You can find justification by works in the Bible. You sure can. In a half a dozen places. But it's never represented as having been achieved. It's possible, but that's theoretical. Having not been achieved we cannot say it's impossible, we just have to say that it's never happened and never will. Theoretically, you could do a flat footed jump and jump 10 foot in the air, theoretically. There's nothing to stop you. Keep trying, maybe one day. But so far, no one's done that and I'd probably say that's impossible, though that wouldn't be a proper word. So yes, you can be justified by your works if they're perfect works from the day you're born to the day you die. But no one's done that so far and none are expected to. So justification by works will not work. It has not been achieved.
Romans 3:20 “Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.” Laws like an x-ray that reveals the disease, but doesn't bring a cure. Only the blood of Christ brings the cure.
Romans 5:9 "Much more then, being now," right now, not in the future, "justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him." So that justification is now my present experience based on my belief and his faith he put in me.
Galatians 3:23-25, “but before faith came,” faith as a body revealed truth, faith as a way, faith as opposed to the law. "...before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us under Christ, that we might be justified by faith."
When you watch my Bible studies here with all the scripture, what I really hope you're doing is learning how to study the Bible.You see, all I do to prepare for this is look up every time the word justified is used in the Bible. Look up every time the word peace is used in the Bible. Look up every time the word faith and belief are used in the Bible.I just read all those verses and it's all right there. So it doesn't require anything profound or deep. Very simple people like me are able to do that simply by doing it and you can too.So that you'll see this preponderance of evidence I have here. And this is just a small portion of what's available when there's 612 verses.I believe there'll be a 13th one, 613, but I couldn't find it. Maybe it's still there. You know why I think there might be 613? Because there's 613 laws in the Old Testament.And so I thought this should be 613 faith used too. I'll probably find that one sooner or later.
Romans chapter five, again, “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:" Peace with God. There's the fourth blessing jewel we find in this. Peace with God. Now not many people understand peace with God.You know how you understand what that means? Say go to Strongs Analytical Concordance, absolutely not. Go to Bible study or Greek word studies? No, no, no, no.What you do is get your concordance in English and you look up every time the word peace is used all the way through the Bible. Read all of them. It might be several hundred times. That's good. It's a good exercise. And on a computer, you can do it really fast.
And so what is peace with God? Peace with God is not peace within: it is peace without "...the way of peace they've not known:" Romans 3:17 we read in chapter three. You remember that?
One of the marks of sin is not knowing the way of peace. Now history of man proves that, individual histories prove that, marriages prove that, workplace proves that, friendships prove that. The way of peace they've not known.
Now here's what peace is, "Or what king, going to make war against another...while the other is yet a great way off, he sendeth us an ambassage," like an ambassador, "and desireth conditions of peace." So this is the peace we read about in the Bible. It's the peace between two factions that are enmity with one another. It's the peace that people want to have in the Middle East. It's the peace that they want to have at the end of a war. That's what the Bible means when it says peace. We'll see that.
So peace is made through propitiation in the Bible or atonement. We studied propitiation earlier. Esau was propitiated. He was angry and wanted to kill his brother Jacob. And Jacob got several large hundreds of animals in each group, each herd, several large herds and sent them ahead to try to propitiate Esau. And when Esau was convinced that Jacob meant him no harm and was quite wealthy and wasn't going to take his wealth, he was satisfied with that large gift of animals and was propitiated. So there was enmity between the two of them and there had to be some offering made to satisfy the offended party.
Now in our relationship with God, God is the offended party and you and I are the offender. And it's our responsibility to offer to God a propitiation for our sins, but we're bankrupt and have nothing to offer. The amazing thing is that God offered the propitiation to himself.
“Whom God set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood.” So all God did was make this gift, the sacrifice, and then challenge us to believe it was made. That's an amazing gift.
In other words, we didn't have the lamb, we didn't have the knife, we didn't build the fire and we didn't have the altar. All we had was the sin and the angel of destruction was about to pass over. So God, as it says with Abraham, provided himself a lamb. So God provided the sacrifice, made the sacrifice, accepted the sacrifice even before you were born and now says to you, "Will you believe the sacrifice?" And when you do, he is propitiated, that's called grace. We're going to come to that. "so making peace." Peace has to be made in an act of propitiation or atonement. I love the book.
Ezekiel 45:15, "And one lamb out of the flock out of two hundred, out of the fat pastures of Israel; for meat offering, and for burnt offering, for peace offerings, to make reconciliation for them, saith the Lord." So the peace offerings were to make reconciliation. Now I've forgotten how many but there's a bunch of peace offerings made in the scriptures. So scriptures assume that there's this enmity and that peace offerings need to be made.
Become a Theologian
Colossians 1:20 "And, having made peace..." That's that word again? See, when you start looking up every time the word peace used and you start seeing made peace, made peace, and then you start seeing the examples and illustrations where peace was established and how it was done and how it's accomplished. Then you become a theologian and all you need is a King James Bible and a concordance, best done on the computer in these days. I can do more now on a computer in 10 minutes than I used to could do all day long. And I used to work all day long to get it done.
Colossians 1:20 "And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself..." Now, wait a minute. We're the ones that should be creating the reconciliation. But rather Christ is reaching out and reconciling things unto himself. “By him, I say, whether there be things in earth, or things in heaven.” So he's reconciling all things unto himself. Now I won't stop and talk about that, but sometime it would deserve discussion on why it was necessary to reconcile something in heaven.
Colossians 1:21-22 All right. “And you, that were enemies and alienated "...and enemies in your mind..." Enemies. That's what he's talking about here. "...enemies in your mind by wicked works..." You say I'm not an enemy of God. Yes you are. You're a liar, you're deceiver, you're sneaky, you're proud, you're lustful, you're greedy, you're bitter, you're harsh, you're cruel, you're indifferent. We are those things. And that's the reason we need a savior.
We're enemies in our mind by wicked works "...yet now hath he reconciled..." What a God. We're all of that and he reconciled us. "In the body of his flesh through death..." his death, not the death of a lamb, "...to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable..." That's justification. Holy unblameable and unreproveable. Your wife can find something wrong with you or your parents or your kids or your neighbors but God can't find a thing wrong with you. He said, you're unprovable. Amen. He said, you're unblameable. Now that's because he's looking at you through blood stained glasses. He's looking at you through the resurrection lens of the Lord Jesus Christ. He's looking at you through the propitiation that he made and received on your behalf. My, my, my, what a fine salvation we've got. I need a revival song. I do.
All right. Ephesians 2:13-14. "But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off..." Far off, "...were made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace..." So I've heard people say, "Have you made your peace with God?" Whoa, what a big job that would be. Exactly what would you do to make your peace with God? No, you've not made any peace with God and you never will make peace with God. You will believe his peace or there'll be no peace for he is our peace.
When you have Jesus, you have the peace of God. When you don't have Jesus, you don't have peace.
Ephesians 2:14-15 "For he is our peace who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us;" He's talking about the Jew and the Gentile. So establishing peace. “Having abolished in his flesh the enmity.” Remember me using the word enmity? That there's two parties in the state of enmity, enemies in our minds by wicked works. "Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances..." That would sure mess up a good seventh day Adventist meeting. "... for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace;" So God, again, notice making peace. God's making peace. "Having abolished in his flesh..." That enmity between God and man.
Now in Washington, D.C. and other places, there is this famous statue of law. Notice at the feet, I don't know if you can see it, but under her feet is a serpent. She's standing on the serpent as the scriptures say that we would tread on scorpions and serpents, nothing would hurt us. And the Bible says in Romans, we're going to come to that chapter 13, they bear not the sword in vain the government. So she has the sword of justice. It's used to cut heads off that sword is. And then she's blindfolded because justice is supposed to be blind. It doesn't favor one over the other. Now she holds the balance scale because she's going to put the crime in one side and the evidence in the other and see how it balances out. And if the crime weighs out, then the sword is applied.
"Having abolished in his flesh enmity..." So the sword of justice has been buried in the side of Jesus in form of a spear, his blood was shed and that abolished in his flesh the enmity.
You see that representative of justice didn't tip the scales, didn't have mercy. In fact, that representative of justice had just weights in her scale and you and I were found guilty and we were sentenced to death but then the Lord Jesus Christ comes and dies that death in our place.
So the sword of justice draws blood, but not our blood. The blood of the Lord Jesus. That's called gospel. Good news.
Ephesians 2:15"Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man so..." There it is, "...making peace;" So the sword of justice is satisfied and is at rest.
I remember, and I've told you that illustration, I got to repeat it again, it's true in my experience, I was in Bible college and I think it was only my first year there. I'd just come from art college and so I went into Bible college and I believe it was the first semester I took theology 101 or something, and eventually got a major in theology but that was my first semester.
And the professor opens his notes and he says, "Today, we're going to talk about the satisfaction of the atonement." I said, "Woo, that's good. I'm satisfied." He said, "No, no, no, no. It's not you that's satisfied. It's God that's satisfied." So he explained it and I don't think anybody got as excited in theology classs as I did. He was monotone, drummed on and boring, but he'd hit some stuff just really get me excited.
So the satisfaction of atonement is that God who is at enmity was satisfied. It says there in Isaiah chapter 53, maybe it is or Psalm 22. And concerning God, and he shall be satisfied. So that's where the word comes from. Can't quote the verse now. It's slipped my mind. That's my 71 year old mind.
And so Jesus made my peace. Did he make your peace? Are you still trying to make your own? You'll never make it. Peace is not sought, it's believed. It's believed.
Acts 10:36 "The word which God sent unto the children of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ: (he is Lord of all:)" So the gospel is a message. It's preaching peace by Jesus Christ. It's a message of peace.
Ephesians 2:16 "And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby: And came and preached peace..." Unto you, which were afar off.
It's preaching peace in Jesus Christ. Peace without does bring peace within. That's a fact. And you shouldn't seek peace within. There are things in life that will take away your peace. If you're living at all, you can't have a car and not lose your peace every once in a while. You can't have a kitchen and two of you try to get in it without losing your peace. There's all kind of things in life that will disturb you and trouble you, and that's just life. That's the way it is. But there is a peace that passes understanding. A peace that cannot be explained by circumstances, a peace that overrides everything else and that gives a disproportional sense of joy, victory, and celebration. And it is extremely sustaining.
Romans five, again, "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:" Isn't a that beautiful passage? "By whom also..." That's means in addition to, “in whom also we have access by faith.” So remember, he's giving us the benefits of this justification by faith here in this chapter. Showing us how it exceeds the law. "By whom also we have access by faith into his grace wherein and we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God." So God has granted us intimate access into his grace.
Grace is not God's attitude towards us. It's not mercy. It's not his feelings of compassion and goodwill. Grace is God's toolkit. Grace is God's gifts, his presence, his works on our behalf.
Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me, I once was lost but now I'm found, was blind but now I see. If I could sing, I'd be singing right now.
Ephesians 2:16-18. "And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby: And came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them which were nigh. For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the father."
So not only did God declare us righteous, but then he established an intimate relationship with us so that he's removed all barriers from our approaching God and asking for something. Or approaching God, and just telling him how we feel or what we think. So we now have complete and unhindered access to the throne of God. It reminds me, and I'll tell you that in a story in a minute.
Ephesians 3:11. "According to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord: In whom we have boldness and access by confidence by the faith of him." Now do you have boldness and access?
I heard a story years ago of a king, you read in the Bible how the King of Syria, if he were approached without him lifting his little scepter, then you'd be put to death. So when what's her name? Esther came in, his wife, she was concerned that maybe he might just not lift his scepter. If he didn't in recognition, she'd be carried out and killed. That's all you had to do to get rid your wife back then, just do nothing. Just don't don't pick up your little jewel stick and wave it. And not that I ever wanted to get rid of mine, but well, there was time when we first got married come think of it. But thankfully I didn't.
And so there have been kings who have all power like that. And so this king was sitting on his throne receiving dignitaries and people stood trembling waiting to be received. And all of a sudden the curtain opened behind him and out comes this little boy and he goes running up and he jumps up on his daddy's lap and he starts pulling on his ears and his beard and grabs the scepter and waves it around. And the daddy's trying to look around him like that, pushing him to the side, and trying to get the scepter while he's still talking. And just seems like he's ignores the boy or taking him for granted because that's where he is supposed to be. That's what you call access. Do you have access to God? Look at this. Just like a kid, just walk right into his presence. I worked on that one.
Chapter five again. "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also we have access by faith into his grace..." Into his grace.
Hebrews 4:16 "...unto every one of you is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ." Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace," So you see Lord Jesus Christ has something that he distributes. He is a distributor. He deals in a product and he has a seat of operation. It is a throne and it's called the throne of grace because that's his chief thing he distributes.And he's granted you access to come to that throne and receive unlimited grace to help. See grace helps in time of need. God hasn't changed his mind towards you. He's always merciful.But the grace you must acquire for different circumstances and different situations.
The Bible says that a couple, man and a woman married, you got to clarify that in our day and age.A man and a woman married, a couple, are heirs together of the grace of life. So there's one kind of grace. He's got this file cabinet full of different kinds of graces.This one grace is made. It's called the grace of life. It helps you to make it through life and it's special for a married couple but they got to come together to get it. They can't get it individually.You can get other graces, but that particular one is for a married couple together. Good reason to be together.
Ephesians 2:7 "That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace..." God has a studio, a place to display what do you call it when you display pictures? Gallery. God's got a gallery. Thank you. I'm getting a lot of help here from the peanut gallery today.
Okay. God has got a gallery where he displays his trophies and he likes to display his riches of his grace. Now if you come to my house, I've got this little gallery of knife and tomahawk things that I did and won contests and cups that I won and different things like that. And so I'll show them to you, at least some of them. I got so many of them I can't put them all in one room. And so God has a gallery of trophies of grace.
Now I think we'd be shocked if we went up there to see his trophies. He'd take us there and here'd be this pimply faced looking girl, skinny and emaciated with scars on her arms, where she cut herself and her teeth trotted out. And God said, "This is one of my special kids right here. She's very special." We said, "Well, God, is that a trophy?" He said, "That's a trophy right there. I worked for that one." So we'd be shocked to see God's trophy case. It's not like we got down here. You see these preachers with their hair all done up and maybe curled up and they got these really nice suits on and they're really smooth and stuff. And you say, "Well, there's God's trophy." No, that's not God's trophy. I'm not saying some of them don't know the Lord, don't love God. But I'm just saying that's not in the right direction.
When God gets trophies, he starts with crooked sticks. He starts with broken things, things that fell apart, he starts with rejected things, not people that were raised in a church and are smooth and slick and educated and polished. That's God's trophies. I've seen a lot of God's trophies over my years in the prisons and on the roads and the streets and rescue meetings. I started preaching rescue missions when I was 16 years old and that's where I learned to preach in rescue missions. And I've seen some trophies come out of there that I'm sure God's showing off in heaven. Most of them be dead by now.
Romans 5:1-2 "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: By whom also we have access by faith into this grace..." Isn't that full? That's like a fruit salad. "...wherein we stand..." We stand "...and rejoice in hope of the glory of God." What's this thing about standing? Ephesians 6:13-14 "...and having done all to stand. Stand therefore..." The scripture say. A captain says to his men, "They're coming." Stand your ground. That means hold where you are. Don't give over, just stand your ground.
1Corinthians 15:1-2 "Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye received, and where in ye stand;" You see you stand in that gospel. Don't be moved by false doctrine. By Mormons, Jehovah's Witness, radical Pentecostals, Church of Christ, Antinomian Baptist. Don't be moved by anyone coming and preaching any other gospel than the pure gospel of grace and peace. "...wherein ye stand; By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain."
1 Corinthians 16:13. “Watch ye, stand fast..." That word fast means like it's the same word as hold onto, grasp. "...stand fast in the faith..." quit you, like being equipped. "...quit you like men, be strong." That's kind of like soldier talk there. "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage."
So to teach you how to study the Bible, have you noticed the word stand? How did I come up with all this? I just looked up the word stand in the concordance. See how simple that is? And there it is. Now other Bibles won't work this way because in order to create a sellable product, you have to change a Bible 10% to get it copyrighted. So they'll take the word stand where it's used, I don't know, let's say 50 times. I don't know how many times. Let's say it's used 50 times.
And through the King James Bible, as with the Greek, the Latin, some of the other languages, it's consistently translated from the original languages so that you find the same word representing the same all throughout the English translation. But what they'll do, they'll take the word stand and they'll come up with 10 different synonyms and sprinkle them all through there so you can't look up the word stand and get a meaning from it. Because they will change it to synonyms. Meaningless. Stand fast therefore in the liberty.
Now back to Ephesians 6:13-15. "Wherefore take unto the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day..." So not every day is an evil day, but there comes some evil days and you need to stand when they come. "...having done all to stand. Stand therefore..." So you got to make preparation to stand but then when the time comes, you've got to stand. "...having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; Above all..." And that's above the ones he just mentioned, "...taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye she'll be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked."
So the wicked one, the devil, is throwing fiery darts at us. So we need above all to take the shield of faith. "And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God: Praying always with all prayer and supplication..." See a soldier needs to maintain communication if you're going to win the battle. "...and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints;"
So here is the typical Roman soldier decked out.The first bit of armor was having his loins girt about with truth. Truth in his loins. Now all of these different aspects are directly related to the armor or the parts of the body.So why would truth be at the loins? What is underneath the loin cloth? What is underneath the loin covering? What is it there that there has to be some truth first.That's right. There has to be truth in your loins. Pornographers don't have truth in their loins, adulterers don't have truth in their loins, lusters don't have truth in their loins.
And then having on the breastplate of righteousness, that's the spot that's most vital to be wounded, and you need to protect it. So he has on the breast plate of righteousness, which is a gift.
And then preparation, feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. That is you're ready to go and take that gospel of peace that Jesus made peace to the whole world.
And above all, he said, take the shield of faith because that shield can move around. You can switch it and move it and you can adjust it to incoming missiles. And faith you can't just lay it down, you can't hold it in one spot. You have to be ready to place that shield between you and the fiery darts of the wicked one.
Then the helmet of salvation, you don't want to get bonged on the head, you'd be done far. So you got to be saved, of course.
And then the sword of the spirit. Now that's an offensive weapon. You don't use that to defend usually, although you can, but its main purpose is offensive, which is to strike the enemy.
The sword of the spirit, which is he said, the word of God. So the word of God, you see Jesus had the sword of the spirit when Satan came to him temptation, he said and he quoted scriptures, quoted Moses three different times.
And then the seventh one is praying, praying and he expands upon it, and watching as you pray.
In other words, praying for someone, for your friends, your neighbors, and your family, praying for them and watching to see what's happening in their lives. So you know how to pray.
Watching with supplications. Supplications is then pleading with God on their behalf. So he said this is how we should be decked out and that's how we should stand.
So if you want to know how to stand, this is how you stand. Standing is not a passive position. Standing is not just holding ground. Standing is being a warrior with both offensive and defensive weapons, doing the work of God, taking the gospel, praying, wielding the sword of the spirit, deflecting the fiery darts of the wicked, walking in righteousness and truth.
Having done all to stand. Stand therefore.
And he says, in "...whom we have access by faith into his grace wherein and we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God." What is this hope of the glory of God? In other words, we have a confidence. We have an expectation of experiencing, seeing and living the glory of God.
Now do you ever have dreams? Do you dream about God and heaven and his presence? I do sometimes and I've never really had church like I do in my dreams. In my dreams there's no hold barred and wow, man, that's a great place. I'm looking forward to be there. We're going to have some real church when we get there, real church. Yeah.
Because it's going to be glory all over the place. We're going to be walking in glory, swimming in glory, we're going to be shouting and singing glory. Oh yeah, I wish I could sing. All right. God's going to let me sing when I get to heaven.
Psalm 24:7-10 "Lift up your heads, O ye gates; be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in. Who is the king of glory?" Another angel shouts. And in response, of course, "...The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle." Then in unison, "Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in."
And then one base voice off to the side, "Who is the King of glory?" Back up, who is the King of glory? "The Lord of host. He is the King of glory."
So that's a little peak into the angels in heaven receiving Jesus back into heaven after his crucifixion and resurrection, having brought his blood to place it before the throne.
And he's coming back through the gates, the King of glory. That's the king he is. He's in glory.
Revelation 15:8 "And the temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God, and from his power; and no man was able to enter into the temple, till the seven plagues of the seven angels were fulfilled." You see what I've done here is I've looked up the word glory throughout the Bible. Again, I'm helping you to learn to study the Bible. And that's how you come across all this.
Isaiah 43:7 "...for I have created him..." Talk about man, "... I have created him for my glory..." You see God didn't create you to be religious. God created you for glory. Think about it. How much of the world, how much of the time and the money is spent seeking glory? How much attention do we pay to the glorious? Like a football pass, the guy's running, two guys are on him. He stretch his arm out just as far as you can reach, he's right on the sideline about to run out. He reaches out with one hand, catches that ball, just almost steps out, doesn't. Dodges to the inside, they grab for him and fall and miss. And he goes across the gold line and that's glory, man. They stop those guys from celebrating. They just shouldn't do that. They all give them a little time to do it. Two, three minutes, spell. When you've worked all your life to do that and you do that and they're supposed to be mute about it.
Or a golf hole in one, or take me for instance, going to a knife throwing contest one time.
And I don't have the strong arm of some of the younger guys, but we were having a long distance throw and Deb was there. I'd already won two gold cups that day, two World Championships. There was a Frenchman there that was really good. I knew I couldn't beat him. He was consistently hitting at 45 and 48 feet and so I wasn't sure I could hit from quite that far.
And so I hit from 49 feet. I beat his throw, which was amazing to me. And then he stepped back and he stuck it at 58 feet, which I know I couldn't beat it because just to throw it that far pound and a half, nine. So I stepped back and I gave it everything I had. Bullseye, four inch bullseye, at 63 feet. Man, that was glorious right there. And I held the top long distance throw for several years until somebody came and beat me and he got the glory then. So glory won't last long here. But God made us for glory, that's what we do.
A woman makes a pie, brings it out and wants you to say, "Oh, that's the best pie I ever ate." Just for the glory, right? And women, they dress up for the glory and they dress their kids up.
They take bald headed little babies and stick ribbons right on top of their head like that or put a little band around their head like that. I saw you do that. And make them look like they got more than what they got. And so guys, they buy trucks and paint them up, jack them up, put all kinds of stuff, pipes and junk on them like that for glory. That's really what motivates and keeps things going. But God made you that way. God likes glory. He's full of it. He wants you to have glory. Now sometimes we glory in the vein, the empty and the stuff that won't last, but glory is the goal of mankind.
And he created us for his glory "...forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God:" 1Corinthians 11:7
Psalm 8:3-6 "When I consider the heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon, the stars, which thou hast made. What is man, that thou art mindful of him? And the son of man..." That's not Jesus. That's us. "...that thou visitest him? For thou made him a little lower than the angels and crowned him with glory and honuor." So when Jesus made us and that was Jesus that made us in the garden. He crowned Adam with glory and honor.
Think about it. God created a garden with everything to eat, it was beautiful, it was glorious.
And he created beautiful bodies of Adam and Eve and he gave them license to eat everything there. All they had to do was eat the fruit and make love and just live in a garden. That's like two hippies with no sin, no pot, just getting high on pomegranate and peaches and apples and nuts and stuff. Beautiful soft grass, no stickers, bring it home. That was God's idea, that wasn't the devil's, that wasn't man's, that was God's idea. That was what God said is glorious. He said, "I like that." And a man comes along and we're so broken. We try to do something like that, it'd end up really bad and it does. Crowned him with glory and honor, made "...him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet;"
Exodus 28:40 "As for Aaron's sons..." Listen to what God did, "...thou shall make coats..." This is when the temple they were going to dawn the temple. "...thou shall make coats for them girdles and bonnets shalt though make for them, for glory and for beauty." So see God wanted the temple to be glorious and beautiful and he wanted the priest to be dressed up glorious and beautiful. They had brass plates with 12 beautiful stones on it. It was gaudy full of stuff. They look worse than the Pope does.
Romans 3:23 "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;" That's what we've done. We were attended for glory and we've come short of it.
Romans 2:7 But he said "To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honor and immortality..." We still seek for glory and honor and immortality.
Romans 1:21,23 "Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God..." That's the way we responded. "...neither were thankful; but became vain in their imagination and their foolish heart was darkened. And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, birds, four footed beasts, and creeping things." That's how we responded to God's glory. We come up with substitute glories. I could use some names, but I don't want to even speak their names. I just see them on the news.I've never seen them sing or dance or whatever it is they do, but I've seen their painted faces on Fox News or something and there are some girls, females, I don't know if they started off that way.But there aren't now and people celebrate them, go to concerts and pay money to hear them and that's glory? No way. Rock concert is nothing more than an imitation heaven.It's just an imitation of the glory, the lights, the sound, the dance, the music, the celebration of heaven. We've sure made religion dull in America.
1 Thessalonians 2:12 "...God who has called us unto his kingdom and glory." Unto his kingdom and glory. Called us to glory.
1 Thessalonians 2:14"Whereunto he called you by our gospel, to the obtaining of glory..."
So he made us for glory and he wants to bring us back to glory. We fell short but he wants to bring us back. He wants to obtain glory in Jesus Christ.
2 Peter 1:3 He "...hath called us to glory in virtue..."
2 Peter 5:10 "But the God of all grace who has called us unto his eternal glory by Jesus Christ.” Psalm 29:2 "Give unto the Lord the glory do unto his name; worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness." So we should be engaged in glory.
2 Thessalonians 1:10 "When he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believed because our testimony among you was believed in that day." So when Jesus Christ comes back it's so he will be glorified in all of his saints. We'll sure shake off our religion and get loose when we see Jesus come back in the air. Yes, we will.
1 Peter 5:4"And when the chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away." So remember he crowned Adam with glory and honor, but Adam took the crown off, handed it to his wife. That's what he did. And she took the crown and gave it to Satan. And he's been the God of this world ever since. Jesus Christ came back wearing the crown and overcame, and now he wants to crown us.So when he comes back, he's going to put that crown of glory and honor back on our head that Adam lost. Only this time, it won't fall off. It won't fade away. It'll be forever.
Acts 7:55-56 "But he, being full of Holy Ghost, looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God..." And he said, "Behold, I see the heavens opened and the son of man standing on the right hand of God." That's why Stephen could die so boldly. He was looking into heaven while they were stoning him to death.
Revelation 21:10-11 "And he carried me away in the spirit," John said, "And he showed me the great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God. Having the glory of God and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal."
So take your Bibles when you get home or sometime this weekend, look up the word glory, just read everywhere its used throughout the Bible and you will get a real glorious blessing from it.
Romans 8:18 "For I reckon the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us."
Now I got one more thing to cover and we'll be through for tonight. And we "rejoice in hope of the glory of God." We rejoice in hope of the glory of God. What is that hope? Now again, get your concordance, look up every time the word hope is used. It has nothing to do with hope, it happens.
Here's hope. Acts 23:6 "...of the hope and resurrection of the dead am I called in question." Hope in the Bible is connected to the resurrection of the body. That's what it's all about. That's the hope.
Titus 2:13 "Looking for the blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our savior Jesus Christ;" That's the second coming of Lord Jesus Christ. It's the adoption.
1 Peter 1:3 "Blessed be the God and father of the Lord Jesus Christ, which according to abundant mercy has begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead," His resurrection, our resurrection, promised resurrection. It's a lively hope. The Bible's amazing book to interpret itself, isn't it?
1 John 3:2-3 "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that has this hope in him..." Of seeing him, the resurrection, "...purifieth himself, even as he is pure."
Romans 8:23-25 "Waiting for the adoption to wit the redemption of our body for we're saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for it." He's talking about something that we don't see, but we're anticipating, which is the adoption of our body. "But if we hope for that we see not..." That's the adoption of our body, "...then do we with patience wait for it." Do you see that the Bible defines hope as getting our glorified body, seeing the Lord Jesus Christ, the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our God and savior Jesus Christ.
Now I was planning on going through verse eight and I only got through two verses. I think I did that the last time around. So we're going to stop there and have to have part one and part two of episode six. And so next week we'll take up there.
