Simple Grace Radio

The miracle of God Himself becoming man in the womb of the virgin Mary is the miracle that makes the Christian faith true. 

Do you believe in the story of Christmas? Do you really believe it – in a way that transforms the way that you think and feel and live? Luke’s main goal for us is that we would see the sovereign power of God at work for our salvation and that we would believe it! 

There is a gloriously rich and transforming experience of love and grace that is ours through believing: through our grasping, by faith, the facts of our glorious salvation. We are going to look at the word which is at the very center of the gospel – “justification”. 

Why does Paul use such big, weighty words in these few verses? Because the gospel is vast and deep and heavy with glory.  We are going to focus on the gospel word: propitiation.

In these verses we have the truth which empowers and underlies all true Christian faith and practice. This is the gospel in its most basic, essential form. This is the power of God unto salvation for all who believe. 

Many assume that their church membership and moral standing will shield them on the day of judgement.  We tend to see ourselves as “good people”, at least in comparison to the wicked people out there. The one point Paul is seeking to pound home is that there is no native difference among men. All, from the most godly Jew to the most reprobate Gentile, are “under sin”. 

If you ask the question: “What’s wrong with the world?”, the human mind will immediately look outward in search of answers. But Paul answers the question in a profoundly different way: the problem with the world is the universal bondage to sin – and it starts right here in every human heart.

Paul’s goal, in this portion of the letter, is to help people understand that we really are worse than we imagined; to understand that our sin problem goes far beyond a struggle here and that the law leaves us helpless and hopeless under the judgment of God. He wants people to understand this precisely so that they will cast aside all self-salvation projects and trust for salvation in Christ and C...

It is the issue of false assurance that Paul addresses in our text. He’s speaking to Jews who fully believed in the coming day of judgement and yet felt no need to come to Jesus Christ for salvation. This is exactly the world we live in. God has said that there is a coming moment of crisis, when this world will crash to a halt, and every person that ever lived will stand before the judgement thron...

The primary purpose of this letter to the Romans is to display the glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ as the power of God unto salvation. Paul wants people to personally experience its glorious saving power. The only way to experience the gospel truth in life is to accept the designation as sinner. 

Our text deals with one of the most perplexing questions of our time: How did our culture become so perverse? Paul is out to prove that the gospel is the one and only hope for this world – and that salvation must, by necessity, be a free gift of grace received by faith.

Every one of us has done wicked things that have confounded us. What were we thinking? Why do we do things we know are wrong? Why do we do things that we know will offend our Lord and deeply wound those who love? The great evil of mankind is that we did not see fit to acknowledge God as God.  

Paul’s letter deals very specifically with the reality of man’s sin. Paul’s purpose in this is not to discourage. He isn’t angrily rebuking his readers. He is patiently, carefully, like a skilled doctor of the soul, explaining what is wrong with you. It is essential that you have a correct understanding of the reality of our soul disease. 

God reveals himself to be both a God of wrath and a God of love – and in fact the category of wrath exists precisely because of God’s love. The gospel is the stunning news of God’s infinite love in which He rescued us from His own holy and just wrath through the death of Jesus Christ on the cross bearing our sin.

Paul’s letter to the Romans is an exhilarating presentation of the magnificent doctrines of the Christian faith. Paul teaches us about the biblical doctrine of sin – its perversion, power and penalty. But Paul also teaches us about justification, sanctification, and regeneration - and these biblical doctrines are the most incredibly relevant and the most exhilarating message that a dying sinner co...

Paul delights not only in that fact that God saves sinners through the gospel – but in HOW God saves through the gospel. The gospel is specifically the proclamation of God saving lost sinners by not by their works, not by asking them to do their best, but by granting to sinners the gift of righteousness freely received by faith

The first seven beatitudes are personal qualities and they define a person's character. This final beatitude - blessed are the persecuted - is something that happens to you. It is included because those who are truly marked by the first seven will be marked by the eighth. 

In some unique way, peacemaking is the mark of God' children. Peacemaking is the family trait and peacemakers share their Father's heart. You will not be able to embrace the call to peacemaking and persecution without the power of Christ in you. 

We come to the 5th beatitude, the first of the second table of the Beatitudes. The second table of beautitudes are focused on our relationship with other men. Mercy is a heart of compassion that leads to practical, and often sacrificial, acts of kindness in response to the needs, flaws, and failures of other sinful people. 

The rabbis of Jesus' time blessed the acts of people, but Jesus blessed people at the center of where they live. These qualities of the beatitudes are things that flow from our hearts. A pure heart is undefiled and unstained. 

Hunger is a blessing if you think of it. Like a nerve awakens us to injury, hunger awakens us to our need for nourishment and drives us to seek out God-intended satisfaction. Jesus wishes to wake in us a hunger for life!

Tonight, we come to one of the most overlooked and misunderstood of the beatitudes. We don’t tend to pray for meekness. We aren’t familiar with the concept and don’t really have a sense of its significance. What exactly does it mean to be meek? Why does God delight in it so? What is the blessedness that it brings?

We live in a nation committed to the pursuit and pretense of happiness. “Blessed are those who mourn”, is such a counter-cultural thing Jesus says.  Blessed are the desolate, the grieving, the sad. It is thoroughly contrary to our cultural convictions.

We live in a world where every single person is seeking the blessed life according to the path which they believe will lead them there. We live in a culture persuaded that the American Dream is the path to the blessed life. It’s not a bad life. It’s just a wasted one – at least if that’s actually what you are living for.

We will see what this book is truly about, and the essential message for the church. In our text, we see the devastating discrepancy between Jonah’s heart and the heart of God. God cared about Nineveh – Jonah cared about himself. Here we see the fatal sin of Israel, the besetting sin of the modern church, and the marvel of Gods’ grace.