Here at Portland Gospel, we exist as a church to help you
believe, live and share the good news.
And that's the current series that we're in right now.
What is the good news? So we have a message that we
want every person in our church to believe and then to figure
out how to apply that to their life and live it and then share
it with other people. The gospel is as we saw last
week, the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
And we started this new series called the Gospel Course and it
is overly simplified on purpose to help us understand exactly
what we need to know. What are the most important
truths in Christianity, what will save us.
And though we prayed for politicians tonight out of First
Timothy chapter 2, I believe we're we're told to do that man
praise God. I'm thankful for that.
We don't want to just be political.
We have a message that goes beyond politics.
We we want to see souls saved. So last week we began with what
the gospel is. We gave it a definition.
We landed in First Corinthians 15 and we saw that ultimately
it's a message about a death and a resurrection.
And that that is what saves us. But this week, we're going to
ask the question, why do I need the gospel?
I feel like maybe I'm doing just fine.
Or why does Portland need the gospel?
Or we could say what really will fix all of the world's problems?
So we get to ask why. And this is really important
because with the gospel, we're told to share it with everyone
we saw last week. It's called good news.
We have the best news on the planet, but the good news really
only matters to those that have first heard some bad news.
It's kind of like going to the doctor.
If you would go to the doctor and they would sit you down and
say good news, we have something for you.
You might feel like I don't know that I need anything.
No, we have this. It'll fix it.
Fix. Fix what?
I don't know that I have a problem.
I don't need your medicine. I'm fine.
And that is many of us as we try to share.
The good news is we're just sharing the best part, but we
don't have the why down. So today we're going to look at
the first. We're going to look at Romans
chapter 5. So if you have a Bible, turn
your Bible to Romans chapter 5. Many of the verses will come up
on the screen. And if you want to get real
creative and get 2 places in your Bible, you can go to
Genesis chapter 2 in one hand and Romans chapter 5 in the
other hand. The book of Romans is the first
at least three chapters, is somewhat of a gloomy outlook on
life. We see the sinfulness of man.
We see the holiness of God and this great separation between
them. And it seems like nothing will
save man. It's not the law, it's not moral
conduct. There's something wrong with us
and we need to be fixed. And ultimately what the book of
Romans tells us is that we have a sin problem.
And that's the part that we don't usually like sharing with
the good news. The word sin is simply means to
miss the mark. It's it's kind of an archery
term. I aim at a target and I miss.
And we all do that with our life.
We have a conscience that tells us do the right thing, and yet
we don't always do the right thing.
We have a standard of holiness for who God is.
And we, we try to achieve it, but we always miss it.
So today let's read Romans chapter 5 starting in verse #12
to 15. Let's read together.
The Bible says, Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the
world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for
that all have sinned. For until the law sin was in the
world. But sin is not imputed when
there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from
Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned.
After the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure
of him that was to come? But not as the offense, so also
is the free gift. For if through the offense of
one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by
grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ hath abounded unto
many. Let's pray God, we come before
your word tonight. We confess that your ways are
higher than our ways. God, we want to be good stewards
of the gospel. We need to understand how to
share it with people and how to lay out all the facts.
That man's greatest need truly is you.
Would you help us tonight? Give each of us understanding.
Open our eyes to behold wondrous things out of your word.
I pray in Jesus name, Amen. All right, well, if you're going
to follow along with the notes, point number one is we're going
to ask the question, where did sin come from?
Where did sin come from? We might think, well, who
started this whole thing? Where, where did morality really
come from in the 1st place? And a lot of religions have
different perspectives on that. Some would say we're good and
then we turn bad, or we're a blank slate and we get to choose
either. And we're going to see for
Christianity that it starts pretty grim all the way from the
beginning. But it says in Romans 5 and
verse 12, Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world,
ultimately there is a man responsible for all of the sin
in the world, and that man is the first man, the first man.
Does anyone know who the first man is?
Adam. That's right, the first man that
God created. And many would like to say that
God is the source of evil. He created the problem, it's his
fault. But really what we see is that's
not true. In Genesis chapter 2.
If you have Genesis 2 in the one hand, we'll go over there to
verse 216 and we'll see what what, what began, what happened,
Where did this come from? Let's get an origin story for
the sin of the world. 216 And the Lord God commanded the man,
saying, of every tree of the garden, thou mayest freely eat.
God gave Adam a really simple Bible.
Don't do the thing that I told you not to do.
Adam wasn't a sinful person until he had choose, chosen
along with his wife to do the thing he wasn't supposed to.
So if you're in Genesis, you can go to Genesis 3 and look at
verse 6. I think I have these on the
screen as well, It says. And when the woman saw that the
tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and
a tree to be desired to make one, as she took of the fruit
thereof, and did eat, and gave also under her husband with her,
and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were
opened, and they knew that they were naked.
And they sewed fig leaves to the together, and made themselves
aprons. Ultimately this is the origin
story for the sin of the world. It comes through one man, the
first man that God gave a a command to and he also missed
the mark. He sinned and and ate as it
says, but then through sin it says in Romans 512 and death by
sin. So sin brought with it death.
Death was not a part of the of God's created plan for man.
Man was going to live forever in unity with God.
The world also was different prior to sin entering into the
world. If you read Genesis chapter 3,
you see that there's a curse placed on the planet and now all
kinds of things have changed. If you look at Genesis chapter 2
and verse 17, they were told they were warned in the day that
thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
And This is why the death rate on the planet is 100%.
Every person will die. This is why we die a physical
death. And as we talked about last
week, there is something even worse than a physical death.
There is a second death and we'll get there also in a
moment. This means that because of Adam,
all die. In Adam all die.
You see sin. It always produces death, even
if it doesn't seem like it. To miss the mark is tempting
because we're all drawn away. We all are enticed.
It's pleasant. If we go back to Genesis chapter
3 and we see what happened in the fall, it says that it was
good for food, it was pleasant to the eyes, and it would make
one wise. So there's a lesson here that
sin always, always, always brings death.
We we tend to see the good in it.
Well, you know, there's a way that maybe over here, this
thing, it looks good, but the end result, just like with Adam,
is always way more than we could ever calculate.
We think I'll get, I can get away with it this time.
I can delete my browsing history.
I can get more money next month. I can do something else.
And it always produces something worse than we could imagine.
There's a famous preacher quote that says sin will take you
farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to
stay, and cost you more than you want to pay.
Just look at Adam. He brought death into the whole
world through 1 action. This is attributed to Adrian
Rogers. I think other people have said
it. There you go.
That's a good one. All right, so that was Adam.
But now we see that sin was also passed down to you.
Sin was also passed down to us, it says in verse 12.
So death passed upon all men. So now we're all going to die,
but also we have this sinful nature now that's a part of our
lives. If we go back to Genesis and
look at chapter 5, we look at chapter 2 and we see the God
made man and gave them a command.
Chapter 3, man falls by that command.
And then when we look at chapter 5, we now see continuation after
sin. And in Genesis 5 and verse 3,
the Bible says and Adam lived in 130 years and begat a son in his
own likeness after his image and called his name Seth.
You see, unfortunately God did make you in his image, but he
also allows Adam's image to be passed down from generation to
generation and generation. So I put it to you this way in
your notes, you have a sin nature and it's partially not
even your fault. Isn't that cute?
I mean, it's, it's kind of cute until you realize how real that
that is. But it's almost like whenever a
mother addicted to drugs uses drugs and the baby in the womb
also receives the substance and the baby is born with a chemical
dependency or the consequences of what the mother did to the
baby. Some of us, we have inherited
all kinds of things, perhaps from your physical family,
genetic traits, hereditary traits, sinful habits and
traits. Maybe you've never seen a good
family. You don't know what it's like to
worship God, never seen a good marriage.
In some ways, we have our parents and those before us that
we inherit some of their nature. At very least you inherit Adam's
nature because in Adam all die and death passed upon all men.
None are excluded. All men receive Adam's image.
And I don't know about you, but as a parent, for me, there's
some things in my life that I'm trying to not pass down to my
kids. I haven't seen some of the
things modelled that I'm trying to do in my life.
I've seen some of the opposite. And I have to be the one to say,
my family might have done that. We're not going to do that.
Hopefully my kids don't ever have to even know about that.
That's that's what we should aim to be doing.
But let's ask this question and point #2 what really is sin?
So you can thank Adam for it. We know that you're going to die
because of it. You know that you have it.
But what really is it? I mean, compared to Adam, I
don't know that I've really done anything like blow up the whole
world, right? Let's look at verse 13 in in
Romans chapter 5, the Bible says for until the law, sin was in
the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law.
So what what the Bible's saying here is that the law, we're
going to find out. It is what reveals to us what
sin is. But there was a time from Adam
to Moses when there was no law. God's word was not revealed to
us yet. So even then, when there was no
law, people died. Generation after generation,
from Adam to Moses, people died. And now the law has come and God
has given us His word, and it makes things really, really
clear. So I put it to you this way in
your notes, Our standard of morality is defined by God and
not by the world or our feelings.
It may be tempting to find a particular sin that we don't
like and judge that one and somehow justify our own.
Well, I'm doing it like this and they're doing it like that, and
mine's not as bad as theirs. That's politics.
That's our preference. That's just how we are.
But we don't get to choose. We don't get to let society be
the ones to dictate what's good and evil.
We know around here that's pretty jacked up, and we don't
get to let our feelings be the ones that determine what's true
and what's right. We have an objective moral
standard. As the Bible says in the book of
Romans, by the law is the knowledge of sin.
So, yeah, you haven't done what Adam has done, but let's just
back up just a second and figure out what you have done.
If we take the basic fundamentals of the law, Exodus
chapter 20, the 10 commandments, and we just start with #1 no
other gods before me, man. We all have a time in our life
when it was true that we did not worship the Lord, something else
was our God or distracted us. No idols.
You know, maybe you've got you're OK with that one about no
lying, committing murder. Maybe you haven't killed anyone.
Jesus raises the bar to hatred is murder.
Jesus raises the bar that lusting with your eyes and your
heart is adultery. We all, by the standard of only
the 10 commandments have missed the mark.
We've all fallen short. So what we learned here with
evangelism in sharing the gospel is that we use the law to help
people see their need for Christ.
Without the law, I don't really need to be saved.
I'm fine, I'm good, I'm justifying my actions.
But the law flattens all of us to have the same need.
The Bible says in First Timothy chapter one that the law is not
made for a righteous man, but for the lawless.
So the book of Romans is really clear.
We're not subject to the law. I don't have to keep all of the
commandments. It's it'll actually only reveal
that I am a Sinner. What saves me is something
greater than the law, someone who has fulfilled the law.
But nevertheless, we use this for the lawless man to let him
know, hey, you need to be saved. We see this also in Galatians.
The law was our schoolmaster. It was like a tutor that brought
us to the ultimate conclusion to bring us to Christ, that we
might be justified by faith. We can't be justified by the
law. The law only lets us know we're
sinners. We're justified by faith.
But this is probably the part that we struggle with the most,
isn't it? Hey, Jesus died for you, man.
He loves you. God loves you.
That's true, but how about you're a Sinner?
How about helping someone pin down the fact that you're not
going to go to heaven when you die?
You have a nature that you can't fix or change or do enough good
to overcome. And this is so true.
It's just in us, we don't want to have to confront people.
No one wants to do that. This is also true in the world
of physicians. According to a study in 2017,
fifty, 1% of physicians that were pulled delayed giving bad
news to their patients. That's half of the doctors that
were pulled. I don't know who these ones are
of of this poll would say I struggled to tell my patients
the bad news. And one of them, if you read
this article in particular, says the patient was going to get a
terminal diagnosis and they were going on a vacation like right
after this doctor's appointment. And they said they didn't want
to ruin the vacation. But is that not how we are in
evangelism sometimes? Oh, God loves you.
Just go along your merry little way.
Nevertheless, you have a terminal condition.
Sin always brings death. We can be just like these
physicians. It's in our nature.
We don't want. I don't want to have to offend
you, but I have to for you to have the solution.
I mean, really, would you want to go to the doctor and leave it
up to them? How do I feel like telling you
that you have bad news? Maybe I'll wait at some point.
You could. This is malpractice.
We have the information, we have the science, and we withhold it
from you because of feeling. We do the same thing with the
gospel. We withhold the good news or we
withhold the bad news and we just want to get to the good
news. Let's not do that.
Let's look at point #3 you might ask, but what have I done
really? I don't feel like I have a
terminal diagnosis as many people don't that receive a, a,
a poor diagnosis. And verse 14 in Romans chapter
5. The Bible says nevertheless
death reigned from Adam to Moses even over them that had not
sinned. After the similitude of Adam's
transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come?
So death reigned even over those had that have not done the same
thing as Adam. Similitude means in the likeness
of so you haven't done what Adam has done, but yet if you look at
Romans 5 and you look at verse #12 it says all have sinned and
so you have still sinned, you just didn't blow it as big as
Adam. Isaiah says Romans also says in
chapter 3 all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.
I told you chapters one through three are pretty rough sled and
they let us know who we really are.
But Isaiah says that all we, like sheep, have gone astray.
It doesn't matter how far you stray off target.
If you missed the mark, you missed the mark.
No, nobody's hitting the target. It doesn't matter how far away
you go. This reminds me of this week.
My dad and I ran an errand and walked out of the store and we
had a guy ask us for a ride. And normally I don't answer
people like this, but he I was like, where?
Where are you trying to go, man? It's just me and my dad.
We didn't have the kids. And so I was like, you know, we
can, we can probably take this guy if we need to.
So we give guy a ride down the road and I'm just going to ask
him some questions. Hey, you're in the car now with
a pastor, man. Tell me, what's your faith like?
And I never know whether to believe people or not, But I
think this passed the, the, the test that he's probably telling
the truth. But he said, I only have two
months to live. I'm just going to go back to my
apartment and drink some beer and we're all going to die.
And I was like, Oh my gosh, man. I mean, what kind of a moment
are we in right now? And so I, he, he had some other
thoughts, but I kind of force injected some of the gospel to
say, I don't know if I'll ever see you again, but you need to
know Jesus died on the cross for you.
You can call him Lord up to your last waking breath.
You can still be saved. And after we dropped this guy
off, we got in the car. My my dad and I were going home
and talking and I said how merciful is God?
That we can live a lifetime of sin and in our very last breath
we can be saved just like any other Christian.
How merciful? According to our standard, we
would say that's not fair. I would say, man, how much did
that guy miss out on? If you live your whole life in
sin, you really can't enjoy it and you can't do anything for
the Lord. But how merciful.
It doesn't matter how far we stray.
All have sinned. We all come short in the book of
James in chapter 1, it's it tells us about being enticed
into sin and the Bible says every man is tempted when he is
drawn away of his own lust and enticed.
We all have a responsibility in the permission that we give our
will to do things we know we're not supposed to do.
So you did not sin, as the Bible says, after the similitude of
Adam's transgression, but you still blown it.
And so it's in your notes like this.
We all have to face our wrongdoings with no excuses.
You can try to blame Adam, it's not my fault I inherited his
nature. You can try to blame your
parents maybe, but you're the only one who gets to choose for
you, and we've all chosen the wrong thing.
Ultimately, we have to come to this point before we can be
saved. If we're making excuses, maybe
we think we hear the diagnosis. Hey, your terminal.
And we walk away from the Doctor Who says I have a cure.
But we say, I think I might be able to find a different way.
I don't want your cure. And the doctor says, no, we've
we have the science. It's the only way for you to be
cured. But you would say, I think I'll
find a different way. This is what we do with our
excuses, by not taking responsibility and accepting
that we need the solution. We're desperate for the
solution. Let's look lastly then at what
is the solution? What's the solution to all the
world's problems? What's the solution to death?
Romans 5 and verse 15 says, but not as the offense, so also is
the free gift. For if through the offense of
one many be dead, much more by the grace of God, and the gift
by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ hath abounded unto
many. The solution here is called a
free gift. It's also called the grace of
God and the gift by grace. And So what we learn about God's
solution for sin is not that we can just do more things to outdo
the other things. We must accept the free gift and
being by grace. Grace means it's undeserved,
just like the Sinner on his deathbed that still God
withholds judgment and waits for repentance.
It's grace. Grace is something you do not
deserve. So let's look at a few verses
here. First Corinthians chapter 15 and
verse 22. For as in Adam, all die, Even so
in Christ shall all be made alive.
There is a solution. It's in Christ.
Romans chapter 5 and verse 19 says For as by one man's
disobedience, that's Adam, many were made sinners, so by the
obedience of one, many shall be made righteous.
You see the solution is in another man.
The first man brought death. The second man will make you
righteous, as he's called in First Corinthians 15.
The last Adam, the first man he was made a living soul, but the
last Adam, he was made a quickening spirit.
He will give you life. Quickening is to make a life.
Only Jesus Christ can bring life from the dead, and unfortunately
for us, that means that we are spiritually dead.
We're Walking Dead man. Ephesians 2 says that we had a
past, a history, dead in our trespasses and sins.
But Jesus brings life from the dead.
That's what we celebrate on Easter.
He did that for himself and He can do that for you.
But this solution, just like in the doctor's office receiving
the treatment, has to be accepted.
It's a gift by grace are you saved through faith and that not
of yourselves. It is the gift of God, so we
cannot atone for our wrongdoings, no matter how far
we've strayed off of the path. We can't recorrect and align
ourselves. We have to simply accept the
gift. It is as if you receive a
terminal diagnosis. The solution is infinitely more
money than you can pay. You can't sell enough.
You can't do enough to obtain the solution, but somebody gives
you the solution through no merit of your own.
That is salvation, that is the gospel, and that is how God asks
us to accept and receive it for ourselves.
By grace. You didn't deserve it through
faith. I simply believe that Jesus was
crucified, buried, and rose again.
I call him Lord, and all of my sin was placed on him and I'm
going to follow him. That's the gift of God, eternal
life. If you're here today and there's
not been a time in your life that you've chosen to receive
the solution for your sin, it can happen today.
The Bible says today is the day of salvation and it's as simple
as Romans says. I must not have put the rest of
these verses in there. Romans goes on to say that
whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Salvation is not through a baptism or a church membership
or through your family. It's through a decision that you
make to accept the solution, Jesus Christ and call on Him to
save you. I know most of us, though, we've
already done this, and in this gospel course, my hope is to
equip us that as we prepare for the summer, moments like this
will make us consider, I have to tell people the sin problem.
But if you're saved, you still have Adam's nature living inside
of your body. Paul says in Romans 7 that he
saw another law warring inside of him and his members, that sin
is still physically in our bodies because of Adam.
We have this dichotomy of two natures.
When we're saved, we accept the gift of God.
God gives us His Holy Spirit, He seals and indwells us, and he is
contrary, or rather the flesh, the old nature is contrary to
the Spirit of God. So you can be saved and still
wrestle with what Adam did in your life.
But Romans chapter 6 tells us, shall we continue in sin?
God forbid, how shall we that are dead to sin live any longer
therein? And so we as witnesses with the
solution, we're going to go out on the street, we're going to
tell people, hey, you need to be saved, you're a Sinner.
Here's how to be saved. We of all people ought to be
living the solution. I mean, we don't want to say
don't look at my life, just believe the Bible.
We don't want to do that because Romans goes on to say that sin
shall not have dominion over you.
We don't have to be subject to it.
God's Spirit and His word equip us to overcome what the Bible
calls the natural man. The old man.
Romans 6 tells us he's crucified.
That man is dead. You are a new creature.
Old things are passed away. All things are become new.
So perhaps today is a time to reconcile with God and say, man,
I need to, I need to crucify the old man.
I can't be living like this. I know it's not true.
It ain't right. Jesus died for more than this in
my life. So in, in a moment, we'll have a
time to respond and, and pray. And maybe that's a way that you
want to pray today. But thirdly, for us to get you
equipped, I said last week, we want to set everyone up for
success. And I, I told you in our
introduction that we want to help you share the gospel.
We have a Gospel training April 1st at 6:30 in this room where
we will help you. We'll teach you how to use one
of our tracks. It's super simple.
It says what is the gospel? And on the back, the back it has
just a couple of verses. And we want to help you be able
to share this with other people. You probably won't do it
perfectly and neither will I. You probably won't have answers
to every question that somebody has, but you can point to the
solution. And if people will buy faith,
believe they're a Sinner, and confess Christ as their Lord,
they'll be saved. And it's that simple.
It's the gift of God and we'll rejoice to see sinners born
again. Praise God, man, that'll be so
exciting. I'm looking forward to that.
So plan to come April 1st and we'll, we'll have a workshop
super simple and teach you how to share the gospel.
But for today, we had those three things at the end.
If you haven't accepted Christ, we can do that now.
We're going to have a moment to pray.
If sin has been taking hold of you, let's ask for the Lord to
crucify that and get some victory.
And perhaps you struggle with sharing the bad news.
Or maybe you can think of people in your life that you just would
beg God for mercy, that they would be saved.
I want to give us a moment to pray.
I'll give us a minute of silence and then I'll come back up and
lead us in a prayer and we'll have a final song.
So let's, let's pray.