Welcome back everyone! I am not able to share too much for this weeks entry because I am on my way to the Ligonier Conference in Orlando, FL! So check out Shai Linne’s exposition on the book of Romans. The song is called “Gospel Music” and it is off the 13 Letters album.

Intro to the book of Romans (a glance):
16 chapters, 433 verses. Romans is rightly regarded as the most comprehensive and systematic summary of Christian doctrine anywhere in Scripture. It is the Bible’s own systematic theology—a summary of saving doctrines that serves as a Bible within the Bible. Like the other NT epistles, Romans was written by one of the apostles (Paul) to the church in a particular city (Rome). In this case, though, it was a church the apostle had not yet visited in person. So rather than addressing his own pastoral concerns about the church or answering specific questions that had arisen in the course of a partnership in ministry, Paul instead introduces himself to the Romans by offering a full statement of his understanding of sin and salvation in Christ. Although the interpersonal context is evident from the opening greeting and closing remarks, the main body of the letter is a sustained doctrinal argument that is directly relevant to any person, at any time, in any place. The universality of the book is highlighted by its theological scope. Romans addresses the plight of every guilty sinner in the whole human race, whether Jew or Gentile, laying out the whole plan of salvation from eternity past to eternity future.

Hook:

I’m not ashamed of the gospel, y’all
It’s the power of Christ that can save us all
In the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed
And who lives by faith? The righteous will!

(Verse 1)
Awake from your slumber, rise! A letter from the wise
The book of Romans- the Christian faith summarized
By Paul, a bondservant of Christ Jesus
Called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel (1:1)
Chapter 1:16-17 is the thesis
Because our sins are colossal, hearts are harder than fossils (1:21, 29-31, 2:5)
That’s everybody’s plight; cant’ solve it- goodnight!
How do sinners get right in a Holy God’s sight?
Amazing is the answer, see- Romans states it candidly
The first three chapters- God’s case against humanity
Whether it’s idolatry (1:23) or religious hypocrisy (2:1, 23)
No one can possibly see the charges and say “It’s not for me”
Everybody’s guilty, everybody’s filthy (3:9-19)
Before God on judgment day is where everybody will be (2:5, 16)
For those who believe in Jesus who suffered and died
“It feels so good to be justified” (3:21-26)

hook

(Verse 2)

At the cross the wrath of God was spent on Jesus
On behalf of all who repent and believe this (3:25)
We receive His perfect righteousness (4:5)
In exchange, believers cursed lives are His (4:25)
Behold the blessedness for earth’s cold residents
Chapter 4- Paul defends it from the Old Testament (4:1)
Up to this point, we saw the need for justification (3:19-20)
In chapter 5 and following, we see it’s implications (5:1)
In service and purity, we yearn for maturity
Empowered by Christ, who gives eternal security (5:9-11)
Slowly but surely, He removes every vice
Raised to newness of life through our union with Christ (6:4, 14, 17)
But chapter 7 finds us struggling with sin (7:15, 21)
It’s buggin’ us within but He loves us to the end (7:24-25)
Even with complications through sin’s occupation
For God’s consecrated there’s no condemnation (8:1)
The Holy Spirit inside, He comforts like no other
He convinces us we’re God’s children even when we suffer (8:16-17)
Nothing in creation could ever separate us
From the love of God in Christ Jesus who saved us (8:39)
In chapter 9 we see God is sovereign in His mercy (9:15)
His dealings with Israel shows He’s working out His purposes (9:11)
By the end of 11 it’s Jew and Gentile together
United in Christ to His glory forever!

(hook)

So in view of God’s mercies
We remove our worldly uniforms and throw on crucified jerseys
Holy and acceptable, ruled by the divine
Being transformed by renewal of the mind (12:1-2)
Yeshua’s design- obedience to the Scriptures
With love as the key ingredient in the mixture (12:9-10. 13:8-10)
The godly man’s picture under the new covenant
Mindful of God, we submit to the goverment (13:1)
Not passing judgment on weaker brothers
Instead we spread love to them to keep them from stumbling (14:13-15)
When we do this, God will truly then smile
As Christ is glorified through jew and gentile (15:5-6)
And the God of peace at His judgment seat
Will soon crush Satan under our feet! (16:20)
Now this is just an overview- go and read Romans through
And I pray the God of Romans will grab a hold of you!

Those who are familiar with my ministry know that I am committed to expository preaching. It is my unshakable conviction that the proclamation of God’s Word should always be the heart and the focus of the church’s ministry (2 Tim. 4:2). And proper biblical preaching should be systematic, expositional, theological, and God-centered.

Such preaching is in short supply these days. There are plenty of gifted communicators in the modern evangelical movement, but today’s sermons tend to be short, shallow, topical homilies that massage people’s egos and focus on fairly insipid subjects like human relationships, “successful” living, emotional issues, and other practical but worldly—and not definitively biblical—themes. These messages are lightweight and without substance, cheap and synthetic, leaving little more than an ephemeral impression on the minds of the hearers.

Some time ago I hosted a discussion at the Expositors’ Institute, an annual small-group colloquium on preaching held at our church. In preparation for that seminar, I took a yellow legal pad and a pen and began listing the negative effects of the superficial brand of preaching that is so rife in modern evangelicalism.

I initially thought I might be able to identify about ten, but in the end I had jotted down a list of sixty-one devastating consequences. I’ve distilled them to fifteen by combining and eliminating all but the most crucial ones. I offer them as a warning against superficial, marginally biblical preaching—both to those who stand behind the pulpit and to those who sit in the pew.

1. It usurps the authority of God over the soul. Whether a preacher boldly proclaims the Word of God or not is ultimately a question of authority. Who has the right to speak to the church? The preacher or God? Whenever anything is substituted for the preaching of the Word, God’s authority is usurped. What a prideful thing to do! In fact, it is hard to conceive of anything more insolent that could be done by a man who is called by God to preach.

2. It removes the lordship of Christ from His church. Who is the Head of the church? Is Christ really the dominant teaching authority in the church? If so, then why are there so many churches where His Word is not being faithfully proclaimed? When we look at contemporary ministry, we see programs and methods that are the fruit of human invention, the offspring of opinion polls and neighborhood surveys, and other pragmatic artifices. Church-growth experts have in essence wrested control of the church’s agenda from her true Head, the Lord Jesus Christ. Our Puritan forefathers resisted the imposition of government-imposed liturgies for precisely this reason: They saw it as a direct attack on the headship of Christ over His own church. Modern preachers who neglect the Word of God have yielded the ground those men fought and sometimes died for. When Jesus Christ is exalted among His people, His power is manifest in the church. When the church is commandeered by compromisers who want to appease the culture, the gospel is minimized, true power is lost, artificial energy must be manufactured, and superficiality takes the place of truth.

3. It hinders the work of the Holy Spirit. What is the instrument the Spirit uses to do His work? The Word of God. He uses the Word as the instrument of regeneration (1 Pet. 1:23; Jas. 1:18). He also uses it as the means of sanctification (John 17:17). In fact, it is the only tool He uses (Eph. 6:17). So when preachers neglect God’s Word, they undermine the work of the Holy Spirit, producing shallow conversions and spiritually lame Christians—if not utterly spurious ones.

4. It demonstrates appalling pride and a lack of submission. In the modern approach to “ministry,” the Word of God is deliberately downplayed, the reproach of Christ is quietly repudiated, the offense of the gospel is carefully eliminated, and “worship” is purposely tailored to fit the preferences of unbelievers. That is nothing but a refusal to submit to the biblical mandate for the church. The effrontery of ministers who pursue such a course is, to me, frightening.

5. It severs the preacher personally from the regular sanctifying grace of Scripture. The greatest personal benefit that I get from preaching is the work that the Spirit of God does on my own soul as I study and prepare for two expository messages each Lord’s Day. Week by week the duty of careful exposition keeps my own heart focused and fixed on the Scriptures, and the Word of God nourishes me while I prepare to feed my flock. So I am personally blessed and spiritually strengthened through the enterprise. If for no other reason, I would never abandon biblical preaching. The enemy of our souls is after preachers in particular, and the sanctifying grace of the Word of God is critical to our protection.

6. It clouds the true depth and transcendence of our message and therefore cripples both corporate and personal worship. What passes for preaching in some churches today is literally no more profound than what preachers in our fathers’ generation were teaching in the five-minute children’s sermon they gave before dismissing the kids. That’s no exaggeration. It is often that simplistic, if not utterly inane. There is nothing deep about it. Such an approach makes it impossible for true worship to take place, because worship is a transcendent experience. Worship should take us above the mundane and simplistic. So the only way true worship can occur is if we first come to grips with the depth of spiritual truth. Our people can only rise high in worship in the same proportion to which we have taken them deep into the profound truths of the Word. There is no way they can have lofty thoughts of God unless we have plunged them into the depths of God’s self-revelation. But preaching today is neither profound nor transcendent. It doesn’t go down, and it doesn’t go up. It merely aims to entertain.

By the way, true worship is not something that can be stimulated artificially. A bigger, louder band and more sentimental music might do more to stir people’s emotions. But that is not genuine worship. True worship is a response from the heart to God’s truth (John 4:23). You can actually worship without music if you have seen the glories and the depth of what the Bible teaches.

7. It prevents the preacher from fully developing the mind of Christ. Pastors are supposed to be under-shepherds of Christ. Too many modern preachers are so bent on understanding the culture that they develop the mind of the culture and not the mind of Christ. They start to think like the world, and not like the Savior. Frankly, the nuances of worldly culture are virtually irrelevant to me. I want to know the mind of Christ and bring that to bear on the culture, no matter what culture I may be ministering to. If I’m going to stand up in a pulpit and be a representative of Jesus Christ, I want to know how He thinks—and that must be my message to His people too. The only way to know and proclaim the mind of Christ is by being faithful to study and preach His Word. What happens to preachers who obsess about cultural “relevancy” is that they become worldly, not godly.

8. It depreciates by example the spiritual duty and priority of personal Bible study. Is personal Bible study important? Of course. But what example does the preacher set when he neglects the Bible in his own preaching? Why would people think they need to study the Bible if the preacher doesn’t do serious study himself in the preparation of his sermons? There is now a movement among some in ministry to trim, as much as possible, all explicit references to the Bible from the sermon—and above all, don’t ever ask your people to turn to a specific Bible passage because that kind of thing makes “seekers” uncomfortable. Some churches actively discourage their people from bringing Bibles to church lest the sight of so many Bibles intimidate the “seekers.” As if it were dangerous to give your people the impression that the Bible might be important!

9. It prevents the preacher from being the voice of God on every issue of his time. Jeremiah 8:9 says, “The wise men are ashamed, they are dismayed and taken. Behold, they have rejected the word of the Lord; so what wisdom do they have?” When I speak, I want to be God’s messenger. I’m not interested in exegeting what some psychologist or business guru or college professor has to say about an issue. My people don’t need my opinion; they need to hear what God has to say. If we preach as Scripture commands us, there should be no ambiguity about whose message is coming from the pulpit.

10. It breeds a congregation that is as weak and indifferent to the glory of God as their pastor is. Such preaching fosters people who are consumed with their own well-being. When you tell people that the church’s primary ministry is to fix for them whatever is wrong in this life—to meet their needs, to help them cope with their worldly disappointments, and so on—the message you are sending is that their mundane problems are more important than the glory of God and the majesty of Christ. Again, that sabotages true worship.

11. It robs people of their only true source of help. People who sit under superficial preaching become dependent on the cleverness and the creativity of the speaker. When preachers punctuate their sermons with laser lights and smoke, video clips and live drama, the message they send is that there isn’t a prayer the people in the pew could ever extract such profound material on their own. Such gimmicks create a kind of dispensing mechanism that people can’t use to serve themselves. So they become spiritual couch potatoes who just come in to be entertained, and whatever superficial spiritual content they get from the preacher’s weekly performance is all they will get. They have no particular interest in the Bible because the sermons they hear don’t cultivate that. They are wowed by the preacher’s creativity and manipulated by the music, and that becomes their whole perspective on spirituality.

12. It encourages people to become indifferent to the Word of God and divine authority. Predictably, in a church where the preaching of Scripture is neglected, it becomes impossible to get people to submit to the authority of Scripture. The preacher who always aims at meeting felt needs and strokes the conceit of worldly people has no platform from which to confront the man who wants to divorce his wife without cause. The man will say, “You don’t understand what I feel. I came here because you promised to meet my felt needs. And I’m telling you, I don’t feel like I want to live with this woman anymore.” You can’t inject biblical authority into that. You certainly wouldn’t have an easy time pursuing church discipline. That is the monster that superficial preaching creates. But if you are going to try to deal with sin and apply any kind of authoritative principle to keep the church pure, you must be preaching the Word.

13. It lies to people about what they really need. In Jeremiah 8:11, God condemns the prophets who treated people’s wounds superficially. That verse applies powerfully to the preachers who populate so many prominent evangelical pulpits today. They omit the hard truths about sin and judgment. They tone down the offensive parts of Christ’s message. They lie to people about what they really need, promising them “fulfillment” and earthly well-being when what people really need is an exalted vision of Christ and a true understanding of the splendor of God’s holiness.

14. It strips the pulpit of power. “The word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword” (Heb. 4:12). Everything else is impotent, giving merely an illusion of power. Human strategy is not more important than Scripture. The showman’s ability to lure people in should not impress us more than the Bible’s ability to transform lives.

15. It puts the responsibility on the preacher to change people with his cleverness. Preachers who pursue the modern approach to ministry must think they have the power to change people. That, too, is a frightening expression of pride. We preachers can’t save people, and we can’t sanctify them. We can’t change people with our insights, our cleverness, by entertaining them or by appealing to their human whims and wishes and ambitions. There’s only One who can change sinners. That’s God, and He does it by His Spirit through the Word.

So pastors must preach the Word, even though it is currently out of fashion to do so (2 Tim. 4:2). That is the only way their ministry can ever truly be fruitful. Moreover, it assures that they will be fruitful in ministry, because God’s Word never returns to Him void; it always accomplishes that for which He sends it and prospers in what He sends it to do (Isa. 55:11).

-Online Source-

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