FROM THE RADIO PROGRAM

CALL TO WORSHIP

As preached by Pastor Bernard (Bernie) Timmerman

 

I am once more thankful for the privilege of bringing you the gospel of God which is also the gospel of Christ. A gospel of which I do not have to be ashamed, because it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. I see this as the theme of the book of Romans, although we find in that book many doctrines and practical teachings. Christ is shown as all in all. All the promises of God are yea and amen in him.

 

We have been going rather slowly in our study of this letter to the church at Rome because there is a teaching in this first chapter that is all to often overlooked. Many people seem to become Christians today without ever knowing the reality of their sin. Without true repentance from sin there cannot be a true faith in Christ. If we have not believe what God tells us of our sin, we will not believe that Christ is alone the Saviour of sinners. All to many rest on something they have done, and then on Christ. Or we could say they come to Christ in their own strength instead of knowing that He must come to us if we are to be saved in God's way.

 

It is true as we saw earlier in Romans 3:11, "there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God." We are dead in our sin until God makes us alive, as we read in Ephesians 2:1. Before that, there is the life of Satan in us; the spirit of disobedience and even worse, the spirit of pride. It was the hatred in pride that led the Jews to crucify Christ. I hope in our messages that all of you have learned of the depth of your sin, that your mouth is stopped and that you have become guilty before God. If you have missed this teaching and experience, you really don't know God or his Son Jesus Christ. Your must still cry out as did Paul, "Lord who art thou?" You must learn as did Isaiah when he saw the Lord high and lifted up that he was a man of unclean lips and lived in the midst of a people of unclean lips. We never learn too much of that if we learn it God's way.

 

God's way is the way of repentance before Him and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ, and that is where we are led in this book of Romans.

 

After Paul expounds on the sinfulness of man, he then shows the blessing in Christ that we have by faith. In Romans 4, Paul brings before us the example of Abraham being justified by faith. Paul asks the question, "What shall we say then, that Abraham our father as pertaining to the flesh hath found." His answer is, "for if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory, but not before God." Here Paul seems to be talking to the Jews. Paul was himself a Jew. Those people had a great pride in themselves and particularly that they were children of Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation. But Paul also states that Abraham could not be justified by what he had done, but that Abraham's only hope was in God. In verse 3 we read, "for what saith the scripture, Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness." Paul also refers to David in this chapter in verses 6,7,and 8. We read, "Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man unto whom God imputeth righteousness with works saying, blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered." "Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin."

 

Do you know what a blessing this is? Have you believed that you were such a sinner as we are told in the first chapter of Romans? Do you also believe that the Son of man came to save that which is lost, to bring back sinners to God? And not only as David said, "blessed is the man whose iniquities are forgiven", but that Christ also makes new creatures out of us. He makes us want to serve a new master even the God who created us. If we come to know Christ in His forgiveness and power we will be delivered also from the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life. Confess your sinfulness before God and look to Christ Jesus for deliverance.

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