Transcript

John Barnett here. Welcome to our brand-new study of the book of Romans.

The reason we're studying it is, coming soon, artificial truth, and you know that as AI that is invading our world, the fake Jesus, who is a deceiver in the Anti-christ. And my goal for every session that we're gathering is don't get deceived, unleash the Scriptures.

So how do we unleash the Scriptures into our lives? That's what I want to talk with you about in our class together. First of all, I'm going to challenge you to get into the Word to actually decide you're going to, on a daily basis, have a structured systematic plan. Now, several that I'm going to share with you. This is my current plan. This is what I worked on even this morning when I was going through my quiet time with the Lord early this morning. I'm doing the book of Romans in the 17:18 series. Now this is in addition to what many of you are already a part of, and that is our Paul's Life and Letters course.

And if you remember the Paul's Life and Letters course features, and I'll pull it out for you here, the whole book of Acts with all of Paul's epistles interleaved within the appropriate chapter. And so, we, all of us in the class, we have already done the book of Romans chapter by chapter. So, I'm merging everything that we've done in our group study through the book of Acts that hundreds of you are joining us on a daily basis doing with this brand new 17:18. And what that is just a whole another way to examine the Word of God by handwriting each verse.

And I can't tell you Bonnie, and I just got in night before last, and we were stuck on planes all day long, and I just popped out every time they told us that a mechanic was coming to fix something or there was a ground stop or weather. I just pulled out my Bible and my 17:18 book and I was just dutifully copying every letter and every word of the book of Romans. I'm going to share with you today how effectually that makes the Word of God work in our hearts. Just tuning our heart to a message from Him.

But let's go to the slides. As we go to the slides, what you're joining right now is this summer, it's today is Saturday, July 12th. As we travel, I'm teaching the book of Romans to students enrolled, and notice this, Discover The Book Ministry Academy. Now the, every time we get together, I tell you what the Discover the Book Academy is, but there's always one new person. So, if you were in my class, I would always explain something that any student had a question about. And that's our normal practice is Bonnie, my wonderful wife that's on the other side of that camera, and I always do. Wherever we travel in the world, we minister on a one-on-one basis with the students.

So, one of you'd say, wait a minute. What was that the, what did you just say about the Discover The Book Academy there that DTBMA? Well, that is thanks to the generosity of some of you very precious donors. And I have to pause and say that Bonnie and I could not be traveling and teaching and having equipment like this that's in front of me right now to teach you via this recording in the internet if it wasn't for you, faithful donors. And every day I hear from one of you.

So, I want to today thank each of you, one of you has given faithfully a dollar a month since we started in our mission in 2017. Others of you have given 1% of our needed support, which is $61 a month. $ 6,100 is our total need for our personal, covering our food, and our housing, and our medical copays, and everything else, and prescriptions. But some of you are one percenters and give that $61 a month. And I thank the Lord for you. Others of you do incredible things above and beyond that, like a group of you got together and put all of my books onto my phone. And so, I thank the Lord for major donors like that. Others, and some of you gathered together and funded the launch of our Academy, and it cost an awful lot of money per class. But I'll never forget I had a check handed to me before I spoke in Florida. And I pulled out the check, after I got done speaking, I opened it up, and it was for $25,000. And it's because I had mentioned in one of the sessions that to get the team together, to go in to film overseas and to capture a class and then to transcribe it and use the script to make the study guides and correct all of my mistakes when I get off course teaching and go off camera or whatever I said, and then to load it and then to host it on AWS, Amazon Web Services. It probably would cost about 6,007, $8,000 total. They said, I want to pay for three classes, and I pulled that check out of my pocket and I looked at it and I thought, the Lord knows the sacrifice that so many people have made to make this possible.

So, when I talk about DTBMA, what I'm talking about is this course that you're watching is Live The Truth In An Artificial World- Starting by Unleashing the Book of Romans and you are coming through that class with me. And what we're going to do is, and what I'm going to show you, because this is Class Zero. The next one tomorrow, Lord willing, if I can get everything ready and get down to the studio is going to be going through chapter one, but today is the whole basis for the study.

So, let's go through the slides and let me show you what I mean. So, we want to unleash the Word of God heeding Christ's warning, take heed that no one deceives you. The reason is because Jesus said that coming soon we're going to have deception. I call it artificial truth. And we're going to have a deceiver that is going to launch onto the world stage.

Now, many small letter "a" antichrist are all around us who are opposed to Christ. But the big one, the fake Jesus, the deceiver, the Anti-christ is coming. And so, whenever we have a class like this, it's all about how to prepare. So how do you prepare for the Anti-christ coming? I don't believe we're going through the Tribulation. I believe we're going to be kept from the hour. That's what the Lord says. So, I trust Him. And He says that in Revelation chapter three, and in many other places where Paul promised that they would not face the wrath of God and the Tribulation. But with this deceiver coming, what do we do? Well, we don't get deceived by unleashing the Scriptures. How do we unleash the Scriptures?

So, I just made a slide. How do I protect myself from mega-deceptions? That's how Jesus described the end of the world. This ever-increasing crescendo of deception and the ever-darkening world. How do we do that?

Well, three things I'm going to share with you personally: study God's Word, join a small group, use a systematic theology and a study Bible. And I'm going to go through these each one at a time.

But what I want you to see in this class is and you could go back when that time comes, if you get confident enough, and you've been underlining and you've been learning the devotional method and writing out every truth and principle you find, and you've been marking your Bible with all the doctrines and truths. Once you get to that position, you want to start a small group, come back to this Romans class zero and in it, I will remind you how you start a class. So, let's go through them one at a time, okay?

And what we do, number one, I personally studying and memorizing the Word of God. And when we do that, what we're talking about is what Jesus said. Look at that reference, Matthew 4:4. So here's what the Bible says in Matthew 4:4. Jesus, remember, in His temptation in the wilderness 40 days and 40 nights without eating. He is facing the devil in the devil's territory, in the wilderness and everything is just seeking, Satan is seeking to derail Christ's ministry. And this is what Jesus says when He answered the slandering adversary, diabalas, the devil, Satan, the serpent from of old, the dragon. He said this is the only way to face off with the deceiver and deception, man shall not live by bread alone. We all eat every day.

I heard Joe Rogan, I don't watch him, but someone said he's into eating only whole grain bread and sourdough. Well, great. So, eat healthy bread. That's good. See, man, should not live by bread alone. And make sure if you're eating it, you eat healthy bread, but by every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God. If you're so careful to not get chemicals and preservatives and whatever else is in bad bread, why not think about the vital importance of every Word of God? Someone asked Billy Graham once, how he knew God was real and they said they thought God was dead. He says, God's not dead. Why, I talked to Him this morning. I would add to that I not only talked to Him this morning, I heard His voice. I heard every Word of God in the section that I read in Romans this morning. That's what I live on and that's what you need to live on.

Okay, number two, the second imperative for overcoming deceiver is joining or starting a small group. Now look at the reference there that we're going to Hebrews 10:24-25. Now, if you've heard me teach or speak or do one of these classes very often, this is one of my favorites but let me go to Hebrews 10: 24 and let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good work. And I'm looking forward tomorrow's the Lord's Day and Bonnie and I always seek out a local church. I would say that 48, 49 Sundays out of the year we're fellowshipping with a group of believers. Sometimes we're actually on an airplane somewhere flying on a Sunday during the Lord's day, but most of the time we're gathering together, singing, and witnessing baptisms and celebrating communion and hearing the Word taught.

Okay, but this says, this is why we do that, why we gather together, verse 24, in order to stir up love and good works. When we gather as a church, we're gifted in such a way. In fact, just yesterday I was challenging a person that I had gotten to know and I said to them where is it that you're reading in the Scripture these days? And they look so shocked at me. And what I realized is there was no one in their life that was close enough to get right up next to them and say, are you spending time in the Word of God? Are you reading God's Word? Are you listening to every Word of God? Are you hearing His voice? Is it causing you to have the Word of God that effectually works inside of us?

But now listen to verse 25, not forsaking the assembling of yourselves together, as is the manner of some. Now, I want to share with you, being a part of a local church is an imperative. It's not optional. It's something that God asked, but within that local church, if you are merely a spectator, if you are merely sitting there listening and leaving, coming in at the last minute, finding a getaway spot, hearing the sermon or the music or whatever, and leaving and never get close enough to anyone that can look you in the eye like I did to that fellow yesterday and shocked him.

If you are not in that in your local church, then this is what you need to do. What that slide I just showed you says, join or start a small group. Why? Now look back at this verse, don't forsake the assembling of yourself, of ourselves together as a manner of some is. But exhorting one another in so much the more, as you see the Day approaching. Now, do you remember the slide at the beginning, with the white horse I showed you and said that the artificial truth, the false Jesus, fake Jesus, the Anti-christ, the deceiver is coming in the Last Days.

The Scriptures tell us that Satan is going to pull out the stops on deception, and this verse is pointing toward that when you see that Day approaching. What's that Day? That's the day of Christ's return. Christ has a return for His Church, and then a return for Israel. We're going to talk about that in just a minute. That's part of what the whole book of Revelation is about, that God has two groups of people He's working with. He has His chosen people of promise that He's made an unconditional election of called the Nation of Israel. And those are ethnic genetic descendants of Abraham. Then He has the Church, and those are the sons and daughters of Abraham by faith, and they get a part in this covenant.

But I am not Jewish, and I'm not an ethnic descendant. I'm a spiritual descendant of Abraham. I'm not a genetic ethnic descendant of Abraham. And God has a plan for both groups. We'll see that in just a moment. But today, of coming for me is Jesus coming to take me out of this world when He allows Satan to rampage through it and He's going to take me out and deploy 144,000 Jews to be as missionaries.

Okay, now we're going to talk about that, but let's get back to what that slide is talking about. That slide is saying that you need to be a part of a small group. A small group that exhorts. Do you understand what, see, verse 24 says, we need to be close enough to other believers to stir up love, to stir up good works, to ask us what verses are you memorizing, what part of the Scripture are you feeding your soul on, how long has it been since you last shared a verbal witness?

Bonnie and I just this week had an incredible opportunity. I mean, I rarely have. We were renting a car and the rental agent said they'd follow us out to the car. They'd show us where it was. I mean, we went from the counter and went out and they just walked with us and they said, what are you doing here? And I said, well, I mean, I had to tell the truth. And I told them, proclaiming the Word of God, teaching the Bible. And I went right into and shared the Gospel and it was an Islamic, I believe, someone that teaches in the Islamic Center and they just launched into the Prophet Muhammad and all this. And I was just smiling and listening to everything they said. And after a little while, Bonnie, I mean she gave them about three or four uninterrupted minutes and they never took a breath. They just went into it. And she said, but it's not. And they were talking about how they do good and they're honest and they help people and they want to, and Jesus is good and they're good. And Bonnie said, I'm not good. I'm a lost sinner. And Jesus Christ took my sin, died in my place, died for my sins, and God raised Him from the dead. And she went right into a beautiful Gospel witness.

And of course, and here I've got one right here. Let me lean forward and get it. And. Out came my Gospel track and I handed it to them and I said, and this is what the Bible says. What a blessing to share the Gospel. Does someone ask you, how long has it been since you shared the Gospel? Anybody in your life that close? If not, if you go to church as a spectator, then either seek out and find a small group of like-minded believers that want to be in the Word, that want to be digging through and chasing down all the truths they want to witness. In fact, they want to cover every chapter of the Bible and become conversant in the truths and doctrines. That's what God wants for us, and that's what all of us should be doing.

Okay, back to the slides. So, number one, you and I should be personally involved in studying and memorizing the Word, Matthew 4:4. We should be in a local church, but within that local church, find or start a small group where we can not only study the Bible, but apply the Bible and be held accountable.

But number three, we need to use and learn how to use a study Bible and a systematic theology. Now notice that verse there, 2 Timothy 2:15 and let's see. Jesus said, and the writer of Hebrews said, and now Paul is saying something in the Word of God, and here it is in 2 Timothy 2:15.

In verse 15, it says, be diligent. That's New King James, the old King James says, study to show yourself approved to God. A worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly, dividing the Word of truth. Now, some of you think that's your pastor. Well, you shouldn't go to a church where that isn't your pastor. But Paul was talking to Timothy as an individual follower of Jesus Christ that was living what he was preaching.

Now I remember when I was being trained, my mentor said, don't try to live up to your preaching, preach only what you're living. Now that, that really pierced me through that. That's what seminary is about. Where you're held to the standard that you don't get up and tell a group of people, God says, you should do this. You say, God tells us this is what we should do, and I am by the grace of God, resisting sin, resisting the flesh, resisting the devil, and seeking and following Jesus Christ and living so that, 1 Corinthians 11:1 says, I ask you to be followers together of me like I am of Christ.

Okay, so, what am I talking about in 2 Timothy 2:15? This study to show yourself approved unto God. Well, I'm going to show you in just a second, a page from Systematic Theology of Wayne Grudem. Wayne Grudem takes the top seven divisions of theology, and I'll show them to you in just a second, using only those that have a high view of Scripture. In other words, they hold to the inspiration of Scripture and the doctrine. Not people that deny the deity of Christ, not people that deny the truth of the Scriptures, he uses the seven branches of historical theology, and I'll show you how he uses them and then I'm going to show you how. This MacArthur Study Bible you can see right there.

But at the bottom, and before every book of the Bible. This is the Gospel by Mark. It has Mark and the author and the date and the key areas that people have disagreed on through the years, the interpretive challenges, they're called the historical and theological themes, and then an outline, and he does this for every book of the Bible. But at the bottom of every page right here are questions that are answered by way of study notes, footnotes that tie to verses.

Now, think about when I'm teaching in a class. As I spend 13 weeks traveling between Word of Life classrooms and teaching books of the Bible to hundreds and hundreds of next generation students headquartered Word of Life, Schroon Lake, New York. Some of you are interested in studying the Bible, I always say this, you ought to take a whole year of your life if you want to and go to the Word of Life Bible Institute. For one thing, I teach the book of Revelation four weeks a year, two weeks in New York, two weeks in Florida. Then I teach other books of the Bible in other, but those are international. So that if you live near New York or if you live near Florida, either one of those parts of the country, I would love to teach you for two weeks of your life and you're there for entire calendar year. During that two weeks, Bonnie and I spend our entire two weeks either teaching or counseling or discipling or what I was just talking about, answering questions.

So, the students come up to me and they say, wait a minute. How do you reconcile these two verses in the Bible? Or how do you understand and interpret this book of the Bible, or how do you apply the Bible to, this person with this need? They're constantly telling me about questions they have about God's Word, and we answer them. In the dorms, at the meals, walking here and there, it is just an incredible investment of life into the next generation we get. So, if you want to do that, you ought to look up Word of Life Bible Institute that's headquartered in Pottersville, New York and go to their site, Word Of Life, Bible Institute, and see the Bible Institute and see how you can be a part of that. And I'd love to meet you. In fact, when you sign up. You can tell them that, that I recommended it and there's a scholarship for board members and I'm a board member and I can send you a scholarship a thousand dollars off your first semester in school if you want to go. Okay. But back to the study Bible.

What happens if you can't go to a Bible institute or a Bible seminary and you have a question about a verse in the Bible? The MacArthur Study Bible is like going to a Bible institute or a seminary, and you say, wait a minute, I have a question. Let me get to a good one. Here, I have a question about what it means that Nicodemus was a ruler of the Jews that's in John 3. Okay, that question is answered right there. Look at that whole paragraph. Just like you were sitting in class studying a passage and having a question. And at the bottom of every page of the Scriptures, it's like a good teacher that stops the class and answers your question, connecting history, theology, and every other part of the Scriptures. Analogia scriptura, the Scriptures interpreting the Scriptures. So, all of that is available in one package.

Now I have this big heavy three-pound MacArthur Study Bible, and so many of you write in and say, what version do you use? I use the New King James Version, but I also like the other versions I use the ESV at times, I use the New American Standard. At times I use the new Master Seminary. I forget what they call that [Legacy Standard Bible], their new translation. Any that follow the verse-by-verse method of translating the Scriptures, the literal translation, not the dynamic equivalence, but the fact that each Greek word has to be translated.

But sometimes I don't have space for a three-pound study Bible. I have it on my phone. MacArthur Study Bible that weighs nothing. It doesn't add any weight to my phone. And I constantly sitting on planes when I'm doing my writing and I want to understand, or I'm summarizing chapters with the Paul's Life and Letters course. I'm looking up the grammar, the verbs, I'm looking up the Greek etymology of the words, everything right here on my phone when I don't have the MacArthur Study Bible with me. So that's what I mean by what I'm encouraging you to do.

Now, back to the slides. To get ready for the dark days coming you need to personally study, memorize the Word, that's what I'm doing. You need to join or start a small group to exhort one another and stir up love and good works, and that's what I'm doing. And I'm a part of a small group. I've been a part of small groups way, way back when I was in Bible school and then seminary and on through. I've always been a part of some small group that's discussing reading, praying, memorizing, and holding one another accountable. And then use your study Bible and your systematic theology for the Lord. So that's my encouragement to you.

Now, what I'd like to do, and let me get there, is to now jump into the quick summary of the book of Romans and why I picked Romans, and then I'll let you go.

And so, my next slide is this. Why do we study Romans? Well, I teach Revelation a lot. Revelation is an illustration of the ultimate victory, and it's an illustration of the attributes of God. It's an illustration of more of Christ and Christology than the other part of the Bible, but Revelation is different than the book of Romans. Romans is called the most important book of the Bible. Many call it the drivetrain, the most important vital doctrinal book of the Bible. The reason for that is, look at the slide, Romans prescribes the daily pathway that we have to follow in order to live this life of ultimate victory.

So here is my outline of the book of Romans, and it's of the main doctrines of every chapter. So here it's the book of Romans. These are the chapter numbers. Going all the way down here is the kind of the standard way people interpret the book of Romans.

The first 11 chapters are very doctrinal. The last, from chapter 12 through 16, the last five chapters are very applicational. The first 11 talk about our position in Christ. The last five talk about our practice. So, Romans 12 to 16 is highly practical right here, and one through 11 is deeply doctrinal. So, what I'm going to do with you is go through these 16 chapters, one by one, and help you understand them. So, this is going to be a whirlwind and I know that some of you, you say you go too fast and others of you say that you go too slow. So, I'm praying that I'll go at the right speed that will help all of you in your understanding. But let me just survey what we're going to learn, why we're going to study, why the book of Romans is so important as the day's dark and as deception grows. As artificial truth abounds, how do we get ready? And that's really why I'm doing this course. Let's go and we'll do them one at a time.

First of all, the book of Romans solves something. Romans explains God's future plans for Israel, and some of you are very prophetic and you want to know what's going on out there with Iran and Russia and China and everything else. Well, let me just summarize the Bible. We'll see this in a second in Romans. The Bible shows that God chose Israel. God uses Israel. Then, we find in the New Testament, God uses the Church, but then by the time we get to the Book of Revelation, God again is using Israel. So basically, we have creation, Abraham, Moses, that's all centered around God's plans for Israel. Then we have the time of Christ and Pentecost and the epistles, and then we have the epistles and Revelation talking about the Tribulation. And if you notice, the yellow is the Church and the red is Israel. Now look at this. This is one of America's bestselling cookies. You recognize it, don't you? You notice the distinctive it, it has these the two cookie covers, top and bottom, and then it has the filling. That's what I think about when I think about what God explains to us about Israel. Because in Heaven, God merges Israel and the Church in the New Jerusalem with Israel as the 12 gates, kind of like the beginning and ending, and the Church as the 12 foundation stones, what pulls it all together. Everything is built on the foundation. So, God has plans for Israel. He chose them. And He's coming back to use them again. And right now, we're that beautiful filling right there. And we're going to see the book of Romans explains that. Okay? But we'll get to that in a second. Okay.

Sound or healthy doctrine. What do I mean by that? Remember the book of Titus, if you've studied that with his talks about sound, it's hugiainó, healthy doctrine. What are the healthy doctrines of Romans? Number one, humanity descended away from God. Tomorrow when we cover that chapter, we're going to see what happened, what humanity did, especially in not only the fall into sin in the Garden of Eden, but when God gave humanity a brand-new start through Noah, they went right back and even worse. And that's all chronicled in chapter one. And it just basically shows us anthropology and the history of religion in the world.

Chapter two of Romans is that God chose Israel as His conduit. Conduit of what chapter two, we're going to see all the Scriptures except for a very tiny part of the Scriptures came through Israel. And salvation, you say, what's that? Well, the promise to Abraham, but the promised seed of the woman, which is Christ, but He came through as the son of David. So that's vital for us. Understanding all humanity is infected by sin except for one, and he was the only one that could be the perfect sacrifice.

Chapter four, it's all about God seeking and rewarding faith and it's built around Abraham. And when we go through this chapter, it's going to be exciting to show you how incredible Abraham's world was. Bonnie and I were just teaching in England last year, and I took our class to the British Museum and they have an entire room. That is from Abraham's hometown Ur of the Kals. Entire room of the museum. And it shows the clothes that people wore in Abraham's time. It shows the board games, their musical instruments. It shows the women's decorative headdresses hats and everything. It shows everything that surrounded Abraham. And it reminds us Abraham was a real person living in a very deeply idolatrous false religion, worshiping the moon god in Ur. And God called him, and Abraham responded by faith and just the power of faith, and the great faith, chapter Hebrews 11, we're going to look at the power of faith.

Okay, back to the slides. God seeks and rewards faith. And we're going to talk about that in many different directions. Then we're going to talk about the greatest doctrine of all justification Christ became sin for us and the byproducts, and we're going to mark those in our Bible.

I think the fifth week might be your favorite week. We're going to talk about how God unleashes justification into our lives by the Holy Spirit. Chapter six, the greatest struggle of all, and I'm going to show you how memorization-. I'm actually going to show you the verses that I take with me everywhere I go. And those verses are built around how God delivers us from this body of sin our flesh that's constantly opposing everything.

It's like a traitor that lives in the same house with us. Our flesh is a traitor. And our spirit is and we are regenerated with the Holy Spirit living within us, and our new life in Christ is spiritual and it's constantly being attacked by our flesh. And we're going to talk about that conflict. Okay? And especially 1 Corinthians 6, and it talks about that God says that the warfare is in our body and that our life is a series of choices to no longer yield ourselves, our body and our mind and our instrument says, the book of Romans calls it instruments unto sinful desires, but rather offering ourselves unto God. And that's the incredible blessing of chapter six, that promise of how we can have victory through Christ.

And then what's a blessing is chapter seven. Paul also struggled with the sin, the flesh, and the devil. And chapter seven is a highly personal chapter. Paul talks about himself in the first person more in that chapter than the other part of the Bible. And we're going to mark him and study him and learn the implications, but this is what he says, but thanks unto God who gives us the victory in our Lord Jesus Christ, and the power of the Spirit can be unleashed into our lives. And in chapter eight, we're going to talk about how to unleash the power of the Spirit. We're going to do a pneumatology, that might become your second favorite chapter in Romans after five.

Then probably chapter eight when we look at all the different ways the Holy Spirit can be at work in our lives then we get into what I just talked about, the Oreo cookie. God's plan for Israel are huge in the future. He had the past plans, God unfolded His plan of getting the Scriptures and salvation to us. But He has a future plan, the evangelization in the Tribulation and we'll talk all about that and look at what chapters nine, 10, and 11 are all about the sovereign election of Israel.

Now we get into the application, the practical part, all of that I just mentioned is hugely doctrinal and positional and everything crisis has done for us. And this is what because of what Christ has done, we're supposed to respond. And the first step is the dedication of our body to Christ and chapter 12, and it's going to talk about that dedication and His gifting and his baptism of us into the body of Christ and how we use spiritual gifts and how vital that is.

And then he talks about how to live in a pagan world. And, boy, this is so important because we're not supposed to waste our time trying to Christianize America or France or Australia or Canada. There's so many of you students that are from all over hundreds of you in Europe, and hundreds in Africa, and hundreds in Asia that join the thousands of DTBMA students that are in America. Don't try and Christianize your culture, try to lead one person at a time to Christ. And you can do that by following Christ and then telling them, can I share with you what Jesus has done in my life? What Bonnie just did with that Islamic car rep. That just went on and on about how hard he was trying to please Allah. And Bonnie said, I can never be good enough to please God. And get ready to lead one person at a time to Christ and take them with you to Heaven. And that's what we're going to cover when we're in this incredible chapter about how to live in this pagan world, okay?

And living in the pagan world, it works when we've taken that first step of dedication to Christ. So, see dedicated to Him, and then we start living as a lighthouse in a living sacrifice for Christ. And then living with other Christians is challenging. That's what chapter fourteen's about and gray areas and questionable things, and how to know, what is right for me and for I don't judge you.

And then, oh, this might become another of your top three. Our purpose in life is to live and serve and hope. And I'm going to read to you from chapter 15. In fact, I think I will just read it now because some of you maybe won't make it for 15 weeks. You'll tune out and get tired, not want to do this. So let me just tell you what is. What is the heart of Christianity and what Paul shared with those people living in Rome. They were living in the living, beating heart of Roman culture, which was anti-God and anti-Scripture and anti-everything the Scriptures say, and it just grieved their hearts and it was very fleshly and lustful and materialistic kind of sounds like living in America today in 2025.

But look what Paul said for whatever things were written before, he's talking about the Old Testament, were written for our learning that we, through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures, might have hope. So, what he does is he just summarizes the entire Old Testament and says all of those stories about David and Daniel and Elijah, and all the struggles that Noah had with drunkenness, everything else in the Scriptures. Abraham's lapses of faith and David's lapses breaking all 10 Commandments were written for our learning. So, the Old Testament it's kind of like a National Geographic full of pictures illustrating for us to learn how to avoid sin, how to seek God, so that we can have patience and comfort through the Scriptures to live in hope.

You know what the most powerful thing to do in our world that's worried, I mean, Bloomberg, today, I was reading Bloomberg in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. You know what they said? Housing is into this huge slump and something crazy is going on with equities and there's the bond market, and it is talking about the international world is all in a panic because of the tariffs and China is developing super weapons and super mother drone ships and North Korea is testing missiles that are going to get more and more into America's heartland and the Iranian problem and the Ukrainian Russian war and all of that stuff. Guess what the Bible says? Now I myself, this is now verse 14 of chapter 15. We're going to go through all this, but Paul said, now I myself am confident concerning you, my brethren. People that were far off, Paul was in Corinth, by the way, remember that? We covered that last time. Paul was in Corinth sitting in the shadow of the temple of Apollo, which was the oracle and the mouthpiece of Satan and Paul was sitting in the shadow of the temple of Apollo in one of the most godless cities he'd ever served in Corinth. And he was writing the people that lived in an even worse place in Rome. And this is what he said. I myself am confident concerning you, my brethren, that you are full of goodness filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish one another. How? By the power of the Holy Spirit. That's what we're going to see in chapter 15. That's why this might be, as you see right there, your third most favorite part of the book of Romans. Our purpose in life is to live and serve in hope. We serve other believers, and then we serve the pagans around us and share the hope of the Gospel.

And finally, God uses people who suffer for Him. And that's how the whole chapter 16 starts. Okay?

Now, this is an example of the 17:18 book I showed you where I'm handwriting every verse of Romans. This is an example of the Paul's Life and Letters course that's on YouTube where we're going through every one of Paul's epistles, interleaved with every chapter. And it's a yearlong intensive study. And that's all available on YouTube.

This is a picture of Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology right here and this is the MacArthur Study Bible.

I told you, Wayne Grudem, if you're going to learn how to use a systematic theology this is these are the seven theological streams: the Anglican, which is the Episcopal, which is the Roman Catholic church in the UK is called Anglican. The American form of the Anglican Church is the Episcopalian church. But there are true believers within the Anglican Stream that Litton and Thomas that he cites. There are Armenian believers, those are the Wesleyans and the Methodist, and he cites them. There are Baptist dispensational you've all heard of the Ryrie Study Bible and Theon and Lewis Sperry Chafer. Lutherans, like Martin Luther. Reformed, like Calvin right there. Edwards, Hep, Hodge, Dabney, Warfield, Shed, Murray, Berkoff, Buswell. Or re member, John Knox, the Scottish Presbyterian Church also Reform. And then look, so that's the sixth stream, and then number seven, the seventh theological stream, all of which hold to the inerrancy of the Scriptures and the deity of Christ.

Okay, so they're all within the camp of believers, the charismatic and Pentecostal. And he uses Williams, one of the 35-40 years ago theologians that wrote. And so that is why I use the Grudem's Systematic Theology because Wayne Grudem, what he does and I know him personally and I've eaten with him and visited him at Phoenix Seminary where he served so long. Wayne takes, and to understand this is what a systematic theology is. It takes every verse of the Bible and sorts them into systematic theology, the branches of theology. Which are the doctrine of the Word of God, which is bibliology, the doctrine of God, which is theology, the doctrine of man, anthropology, the doctrine of Spirit, pneumatology, and on through every major division of the doctrine of God. He covers every attribute of God, he covers the deity of Christ, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So back to the slides. The reason I'm encouraging you to join this study of the book of Romans is we are to prepare ourselves to not get deceived as the white horse of artificial truth fake Jesus. The Deceiver and Anti-christ is coming our way. The only way to not get deceived is to unleash the Scriptures.

The way we protect ourselves from mega-deceptions is to personally study and memorize the Word, join or start a small group.

Start using a study Bible so you can answer every question right within the passage you’re studying. Look for the big topics in the Systematic Theology, and that's the purpose of this time we're going to spend in the book of Romans.

Let's pray and then I look forward to seeing you, I hope, tomorrow as we launch into Romans chapter one and look at the decline and fall of humanity and the spread of religions, how we got everything from the Meso-American, Aztec, and Mayan, and Incas to the Egyptian, all of their worship, to all in the Indus Valley and eastern religions, and how we got all the religions of the world, the animism and everything of Africa, everything where it came from. That's what chapter one is, the decline and fall of humanity away from the creator God, and into images and religion.

Let's pray. Father in Heaven, I pray that You would stir some hearts. That this would be like a small group. It's just me talking to whoever's listening and watching this right now. And my prayer for them is that their heart would get stirred and they would want to get consistent in Your Word and that they would want to begin sharing and being accountable with someone else, other believers, through a local church in a small group, and that they would deepen their studies so that they study to show themselves approved to You, God.

Rightly divide into the Word of God and getting that theology and their study Bible and really knowing what they believe and understanding it. And I pray as we launch tomorrow into chapter one, that you would bless in a unusual way, each one that starts, and starts copying down if they're going to follow the 17:18 plan or just get a journal and do the devotional method, whatever they do, I pray that You would just unleash the Word of God, that it would effectually be at work in the hearts of each of one of Your children that believe and want to avoid deception and want to be full and overflowing with Your Word. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. God bless you. Thanks for joining us. See you tomorrow. Romans chapter one.