The 1st Wrong

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

Well, good morning to all of you. Good morning. Okay, you're awake. You're awake. I see you. We're going to be in Romans chapter 5 today. Romans chapter 5, where we kind of left off a couple of weeks ago. You know, you guys took a couple weeks off for spring break, so did I. And where we left off and the end of Romans, or the middle of Romans 5, is kind of where we left off. And we were talking about a few things that we're going to try to kind of gear up and re-remember and kind of re-get back into it. And, you know, as we do, I want to make sure those lights are up a little bit, just because it's going to be hard for people to see. So, make sure those lights are up. We don't need to be blind, but lights up. Okay.

So, to help you kind of get into that, I want you to remember President John F. Kennedy, okay? President John F. Kennedy, JFK, 1961 was the year and he announced plans for the US to land on the moon within the decade. Okay, 1961. Remember, we didn't land until 1969, but it was in 1961 that Kennedy announced that we were going to land on the moon within the decade, that that was his plan. And again, even though we hadn't landed yet, the announcement itself had a very unexpected effect. It was very strange times I hear back in 1961. And what it did culturally for America in particular, it kind of ushered us into the space age. It kind of ushered us into this thing where cartoons like the Jetsons started coming on. Okay, that was 1963. Shows like Star Trek, movies like Star Wars, they all came kind of rushing onto the scene in dramatic fashion very quickly.

fiction became a genre almost overnight, right, or at least became a lot more popular. And news broadcasts, TV talk shows, everybody was talking about this prospect of landing on the moon by the end of the decade. They all wanted to be connected, right? They all latched on. public latched on to this idea of being the first to land on the moon. And the reason that that was so popular, I'm sure there's a lot, but one of the reasons that was so popular, one of the reasons that Americans took such pride in being the first to land on the moon is because we wanted to feel connected to a really great event. We wanted to look at that and go, that's great, that's America, you You know, we were the first to do it. In fact, because we wanted to feel so connected to that event, we can remember what Neil Armstrong said, right? What did he say? He said, it's one small step and one giant leap for mankind.

One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. What made Neil Armstrong feel like he had to speak for humanity in that moment? It's because he felt connected to it. It's because he knew what he was doing was bigger than himself. He knew that he was part of some larger story that was going on. That was why he felt like it was appropriate to say, this is one giant leap for mankind. For the next three weeks, as we lead up to Easter, we are going to be studying most of Romans 5 and 6 together. And in these two chapters, we are going to see a lot of this kind of representation. A lot of this, just somebody taking a small step themselves, but it's a really big step for mankind, for humanity. And that is to say maybe a different way that you and I are caught up in something bigger, in a bigger storyline. You and I are more than the sum of our own experiences.

We're caught up in something bigger. And if we miss that bigger storyline that spans humanity, If we don't really grasp that, if we don't understand humanity's past and our connection to it, then we will be unable to move forward into the future. We will be unable to move forward individually, spiritually, with our families, with our church. We will be stuck because we don't understand that we're part of something bigger. Romans 5 and 6 talks a lot about that. And this bigger storyline, if we were to sum it up, we could sum it up in a simple phrase. right. The story of humanity can be summed up a lot of different ways, I'm sure, but today we're going to sum it up by saying it's two wrongs and a right. These next three weeks, we're going to be talking about two wrongs and a right. So this Sunday, we're talking about the first wrong. Next Sunday, we're talking about the second wrong. And then Easter Sunday morning, hallelujah, we're going to

be talking about the right. It's going to be good. Okay. We're going to begin in Romans 5, 12, and that right whenever we're into Romans chapter 5 verse 12, we are taken immediately back to Genesis 3 at the fall of mankind. We're starting to talk about Adam. So Romans 5, 12, it says, Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, that one man's Adam, we're going to find out, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. Okay, so this is Adam, the first man, talking about how he inaugurated sin.

He sinned first, but it was that he inaugurated kind of a new era. And to put it in Neil Armstrong terms, it was one rebellious act for man and one death sentence for all mankind. Okay, that's what Romans 5:12 is telling us. It tells us that Adam sinned, But it meant more than just him sinning. This is like Neil Armstrong walking on the moon, but bad. So it's not just him taking a bite or him, you know, not being around whenever he was taking a bite, him not leading, however you want to kind of lay it out. It's Adam's deal, it's Adam's fault. He sinned and it was one, because of that, it was a death sentence for all mankind. Look at verse 14. It says, it says, yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. Okay. So in Adam's sin, everyone died. Okay. This is a theological point commonly referred to as original sin.

Okay. You guys probably heard that before. This is where we get. We get in Romans 5, 12, 13, 14, and following. In Adam's sin, everybody died, and really, this is the first thing that we kind of need to grab onto. This is a bigger storyline in all of humanity. This is the first wrong. The first wrong is Adam's wrong, right? The first wrong is that Adam's wrong led to a whole lot of other wrong. And in one sense, we need to understand that these verses are giving us extremely bad news. And look, I'm not trying to cheer you up at this point. I really want you to be sober. I really want you to understand this. Your child, your spouse, your best friend, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, all of them, all the people that you care about, they're all choking on the exact same thing that you are. Very bad news. Nobody's throwing a party for that. That's not going to make, you know, that's not going to get its own day in April or something.

Sin, slavery, is sabotaging all intentions. It is twisting all innocence. It is always tempting all of us toward selfishness, toward rebellion. And me and you and everybody that we love, people that we hold dear, The youngest of the oldest, we're all choking on it. Very bad news. This is reflecting on what we already learned in Romans chapter three verses 10 through 12. It says, none is righteous, no not one. No one understands, no one seeks God. All to turn to side, all become worthless, no one does good, not even one.

This is very bad news and it stains everything. How we receive this news, how we, how you and I hear this news, interpret this news, and then react to this news, it has a profound effect on how we treat people. Profound. And the reason is because it's such a large fat, you know, original sin, the fall of man. It's such a big, heavy thing that it sets the reality in which you interact with them. Right? In other words, if I say, hey, I'm going to talk with George, like we're going to talk, but we're going to, we're not going to deal with original sin whenever we have a conversation. Well, okay, that's like a fairy land. I mean, I might as well be saying like, we'll do it with unicorns too. Like they'll be there and we'll be by the, you know, the rainbow or something. That's not, it's just not reality. It doesn't work. It's the, well, we, what we live in this reality that we have, if I'm going to

have a conversation with anybody, original sin is going to be there. It's going to be present. It's present in your marriages. It's present in your parenting. It's present in everything. And there's kind of, there's kind of two ditches that you can fall in with this. you can either completely discount original sin or you can take it too heavily. If you discount it, I'll just take examples with kids and adults. If you discount it, then the reality that you're going for is that people are born good. People are basically good. They are born good. They, and so if you are raising children like that, if you believe that children are born good, then really you're just trying to not mess up their goodness. trying to not mess up their inner goodness. You only encourage them because you are afraid to kind of crush their spirit and take that goodness away. With adults, it works a little bit different,

but it kind of sets up a caste system. And this could be a whole other sermon, I'm just gonna say it here. You believe that some people are objectively better than you or objectively worse than you. Because you're less tainted than they are or they're less tainted than you are, However you want to lay it down. But it doesn't help you have good friendships, right? If you think that some people are actually better, that were all born good, but they have messed up less, then they're better than you, or you're better than them. Either way, that's a really terrible way to look at relationships. It will make you use people.

Conversely, if you take original sin too far, right? If the reality that you're kind of in is that everybody is just all pure evil. There's nothing, you know, there's, we'll come, we'll talk about that in a second. If you raise kids like this, then you are overly suspicious of all of their intentions and that you are so concerned with them becoming aware that they're messed up and they're broken. And really all that you do, all that you feel like you can do as a parent or even as a family member is discourage their rebellion and pride. You find their flaws and you discourage them. That's all you can do. With adults, you've seen this with people that are isolated, right? It pushes them toward isolation. If they can't trust anybody, if they can't be around anybody, then of course they're gonna get isolated, they're overly wary, they keep people at a distance, they hardly trust anybody, even their own family.

Original sin is real, is heavy, and it sets the reality for everything. It is the backdrop upon which we live our lives. We make these kinds of choices every day. And the bad news, and I hope I've given it to you straight, as bad news. The bad news is that sin always works this way. It is always pervasive. It is always staining everything. But here's the good news. The good news is that grace, very different than sin, grace outworks sin in the opposite direction. Grace outworks sin in the opposite direction. And I want to show you what I mean. We're going to be looking at a couple of verses to kind of elucidate a little. Romans 5, 15, it says, but the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many." Okay, that's that second half of that sentence is a bit, you know, choppy. It's a little weird.

Basically it says that in grace through Jesus, we can receive the free gift of righteousness. We can receive the grace of God. And this grace is pretty much the opposite of sin in a couple of different ways. And what we see in verse 15 is that the direction runs opposite. So when Adam is in sin, Adam sinks down into sin and he pulls, he brings everybody down with him. He kind of creates this black hole, okay, if you're into space things. He kind of creates this black hole and just sucks everything down and just creates this gravity well that really we can't get out of. You can tell that you are kind of living in that sin-slavery reality. You can tell because all you can think about is yourself and your problems. All you can think about is how people don't like you. That's all you can think about. You're not thinking about other people, you're not thinking about them being blessed, you're not thinking about anything that when you are in that pit,

when you are in that gravity well of sin, the only thing you can do is see yourself or your situation. So grace works the opposite. So Jesus then blessed everyone else and then it abounded to even more people, right? So Jesus, the thing about grace is that you can't hoard it, okay? Like if somebody's giving you grace and you're like, I'm gonna keep all that grace for myself, I'm gonna store some for a rainy day, it doesn't work. Grace, you have to share it, you can't hoard it, it must go out to other people. If it's really grace, it's going to go out to other people. What we see here is that whenever Jesus made that grace available, it wasn't just that he kind of passed it out and be like, oh, I don't have any more. It was that he created the opposite effect. It wasn't a gravity well, it was a fountain, right? And this fountain is like ever flowing. This fountain is abounding too many.

It means that if people are just running up with cups or with vats or with bathtubs, whatever they're running up, and they're just trying to get that full, that filled, they're gonna have it filled to the overflow. It's not gonna run out. The free gift travels in the opposite direction. It doesn't sink down, it goes out. It's a blessing to many. What else? Verse 16, it says, and the free gift is not like the result of one man's sin for the judgment following one man's trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification, okay? So we got a lot of $5 words there. We'll interpret pretty fast here. Effectively, judgment is opposite when you're talking about sin, slavery, you're talking about grace. So Adam's sin condemns everybody as guilty.

Jesus's gift justifies completely everybody that accepts it and declares them not guilty. Okay, so it it doesn't just take back what was done. It covers it. It says it says you are no longer guilty you're actually not guilty. I haven't just taken in other words the charges the charges just haven't been dropped or it's not like somebody's just mad anymore. It's that you are declared something new. You are receiving a new not guilty status. Your status in other words does not depend on your level of obedience. In fact, you know that you've taken original sin too far when you believe that your life is stained beyond repair. If you believe that you are unworthy of God's grace, then what you don't understand, what you don't understand is that you and I were already unworthy. Okay, look people didn't, we're not born good and some people mess up too much and you know God doesn't love him anymore. That's not how it works. It's that

we're all born into sin and that's actually a really, that's actually, it's bad news but it's really good news. We're all born into sin and in Jesus's gift of grace we receive a new status not based on anything that we did but based on something that Jesus did on our behalf. That's a really important distinction. I'm not a pastor because I'm a really nice guy. You can ask my friends, I'm not a really nice guy.

I'm not a nice guy. I'm full of holes, man. I'm full of all kinds of sins, right? All kinds of things. And the Lord is working on me at Gloria. Hallelujah. That's that's good. And I try to walk in a manner worthy of the gospel. Yes, indeed. But every day, every minute of every day I fail. Right. And it's not it's not because somehow like I'm I'm I'm not a good enough pastor or I'm not a good enough husband or I'm not a good enough coworker. I'm not a good enough friend. It's not that I'm not good enough. It's that I never was. I never was good enough. I was never okay at this. I was never qualified to preach the gospel. I was never qualified to be a pastor. I was never qualified to be a father. Never. At no point in my life did I have the status of worthy. And neither did you. That's actually really, really important. Because we needed somebody else's obedience on our behalf.

Judgment is opposite. We go from condemnation to being declared free because of Jesus, not you. And so with original sin, really bad news. Everybody's corrupted. We're all twisted by it. The free gift of righteousness is even better news because it travels in the opposite direction and because it makes the opposite judgment. There's one more reason for this, and it's in verse 17. I wanna show you how it's the opposite. It says in Romans 5, 17, for if because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. So we see the directions opposite, the judgment's opposite, and also the result here is opposite. Adam sinned, death is allowed to reign. Again, this is what we were talking about before. This is one rebellious act for man and one death sentence for all mankind. It says that it personifies death

here. If you can imagine death being a king, what a terrible king that would be. And this is bad news, but there's a much more here. And we don't really speak this way. We don't say, much more do I love my wife? I mean, it doesn't, we don't, that's not how we talk. But what it's saying here, it says, if because of one man's trespass, death reign through that one man. If that's true, then think about how much more, how much better it is that those who, those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness, that's one person, okay, that's one group of people. Those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness, how much more will they reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ? How much more will that happen? It's important to know this. Sin slavery and the free gift of righteousness, right, sin and grace are not equal opposites.

Okay, sin and grace are not two sides of the same coin. This isn't yin and yang Okay, that's not what this is. This is something totally different. This is a king death being deposed. This is a change over. According to 517, Jesus's free gift of righteousness reverses the result. It's saying, think about, think about what one man did and all the trouble that caused. Now think about that. Think about how terrible that was, how devastating, how cataclysmic that was. Okay, now take that double it put it the other direction and that is what happened Whenever Jesus Christ gave us the free gift of righteousness It overpowers what was done So in Adam's sin death rain, but in Jesus's gift We are allowed to reign in life Now look, I realize we talk about Jesus reigning a lot and we should Jesus does reign and that's a good thing But here it clearly says that we reign in life, that those who receive the abundance of grace.

That's us. We reign through Jesus, of course. We don't do it apart from Him or anything like that. But in Jesus, it's not just that death has been deposed. It's that we're invited to have a part in Jesus's reign. This is why whenever Jesus is talking to his disciples, when he says, look, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can move mountains. He's not just trying to speak hyperbolically. He's trying to help us understand that we have the power in prayer to break strongholds. We have the power in prayer to see captives set free. We have the power not like we just get to unleash it whenever we want, whenever we want, but it's at our disposal that in prayer, in worship, together as a church, whenever we are striving forward together in Jesus Christ, that people can be healed, that addiction can be reversed,

that the things that happened to us or the things that we did in our past do not define us. They don't have to. We are free, and that is very good news. Verses 18 and 19, it says, kind of a summary here, it says, Jesus, sorry, therefore as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as many as one man's disobedience, sorry, for as by the one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners. So by the one man's obedience, the many will be made righteous. Jesus gifts his obedience to us. And this, that right there is exactly and only what makes us eternally righteous. It's because Jesus gives his obedience to us. One man's obedience makes us all obedient. You and I, in 1 Peter, we are called obedient children. It's a title given, okay? I don't always feel like an obedient child of God, okay?

I don't always feel like it, but just because I don't feel like it doesn't mean it's not true. I am given obedience, and that ushers me into a new reality. And you might say, well, I don't feel like a new person. Jesus says, it's coming. I'll make sure. You might say, it still feels like the old reality. Jesus says, it's coming. I'm the first of many. Colossians 1, Jesus is called the first born from the dead. Romans 5, 20, and 21. It says, now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. Again, again, we need to just stop down for a second. You see when it happened, when the law came and we were all condemned, what needed to happen? It wasn't just that we needed to just take back what had happened before, but that something else new needed to happen to overtake what was before. Grace had to abound all the more, so that as sin reigned in death, grace might also reign

through righteousness, leading to eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. I've never walked on the moon. There might be a surprise to some of you. But if you are ever walking on the moon, you need to know something. You need to know that gravity works differently on the moon. Okay, it does. According to NASA, if you are at a standstill position and you jump from that standstill position, you can go nine feet in the air. Nine feet. I'm like, I'm ready to play basketball on the moon. Okay, I'm ready. Nine feet. I could, I could do some damage there against LeBron James if I could jump nine feet. Who am I kidding? beat me. But, but the reason that I could go to the moon or that you could go to the moon and we could jump nine feet straight up in the air, it's not because you got better at jumping, right? It's not because I got better at jumping, it's because where I am, gravity works differently, right? I'm just kind of just

swimming in that. I'm just walking in that. Gravity is different though. And so But when it says in verse 19 and 21, it says, when it says that by one man's obedience, the many will be made righteous. When it says in verse 20 that grace reigns, what it's trying to help us understand is that there is a new reality. There is something else that we are swimming in. We aren't on the earth anymore. We're on the moon, so to speak. doesn't look don't mistake that to mean that we now have new rules to live by. Please do not make that mistake. That is not what it's saying. It's not saying, okay, now that you follow Jesus, now you have less fun and things are a lot harder and you know go, go team. Like it's not it's not saying that it's saying that in Jesus Christ we are invited into a new reality where things work differently and this should change a lot about your life. It should change a

lot of things but specifically and I just want to hone in on this very quickly specifically it should change how you repent. It should change how you say that you're sorry to the Lord Jesus Christ because Jesus's grace is yours. It's given to you. If you accept it, it is it is given to you. It's yours. Your condemnation is gone Romans 8 one we're gonna get there in a few weeks, but Romans 8 one says there's therefore now no condemnation for those in Christ You are free according to a verses. We just read you are free to obey from the heart and when you don't When you are tempted to sin when you fall when you mess up, you do not I promise you this you do not have to cower. You don't have to go, oh, oh, I hope Jesus doesn't disown me. Oh, I hope all those blessings I was counting on aren't going to come now. Oh, I hope I haven't ruined my life. Oh, I hope I haven't...

Look, look man, you do not have to cower. That cowering is... That's what you do whenever death is your king. That's what you do in the old reality. So what do you do in the new reality? When you mess up, you stand and you face it. And you ask for forgiveness. You seek to be made right with the people that you sinned against. And if you haven't sinned against anybody in particular, you're still asking the Lord for forgiveness. And you say, you don't say, Lord, you don't say, oh, oh, you know, please don't disown me. Please don't hurry. Please don't. help me remember my reality. Help me remember that I'm operating under a different set of rules now and I need help to live in the freedom that you already have given me. I need help to love with the heart that you already put inside me. I need, Lord I need help walking into peace that you have already delivered to my heart. It's not, you don't conjure up peace. You don't, look, people

that have peace, people that have real peace in Jesus Christ, they're not just, it's not that they're just normally calm people. It's that they've learned to go to the Lord Jesus Christ and say, listen, Lord, you said that you would bring peace to me and I don't have peace and I need your peace. Help me find that peace. Help me walk in that peace. And the Lord is faithful to answer that that prayer, when you mess up, when you get away from what the Lord's calling you to do, when you are walking in selfishness, you don't need to sit there and lash yourself 40 times because you know, stupid you did it again. That's not of the Lord. That's not of the Lord. What's of the Lord is for you to stand and ask for forgiveness. Own it. Yes, yes, own it. But then your prayer is, Lord help me remember what you've already done for me. What a powerful prayer that could be for you.

Maybe even to pray for the first time. Lord help me remember what you've done for me. Help me to remember how many walk in the reality that you've already given. Help me live in this freedom. Jesus' obedience is your obedience. You are not under the law, you are under the grace of Jesus Christ, but if you have not accepted that free gift of righteousness, then you are still under the law. You are still under the old reality. All that I've said doesn't apply to you. You still have death as your king, and reality is going to be holding you down. My encouragement, accept Jesus' free gift today. Walk in this new reality, and you can do that really at any time. I'm going to be over here after the service is over. We're going to sing another song. And after the service is over, I'm just going to park right over there, just standing. And if you want to come talk, if you want to talk about anything, you're interested in just joining

our church if you have a question about the sermon. But if you want to really understand what it is to walk in that new reality, please come and see me. Again, I'll be right over there. And I just want to encourage you, if that's you, if I was describing you, man, just get some help. Talk to somebody about it. You can't make it on your own. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we love you. We thank you for all that you are doing in us. We thank you for the ways that you care for us, the way that you... Just the new reality that you put us in. Help us to see it, help us to walk in it, and help us to be obedient to it. And even when we're not, help us to understand that that is our call to walk in that new reality.