EPISODE 91 ROMANS CHAPTER 1 Part 1 " The good news and the bad news"

Welcome to Share the Word. With this episode, you'll notice that our instructors have opted to split Romans chapter 1 into three segments in order to bring you important foundational information. And I am so excited to hear Margie Biasotto's voice on the other end of the microphone, bringing you her incredible insight. This episode is jam-packed with so much. Let's get started. Margie?

Hi, I'm Margie Biasotto, and you are listening to Share the Word. Today we're beginning the book of Romans, which is the sixth book in the New Testament. The title for Romans chapter 1 is The Good News and the Bad News, because today's big idea is a hard one. Ready for it? We have all sinned, and we are all without excuse. Well, from that, you can probably figure out that the big idea is the bad news.

But before we get too far into that, the good news and the bad news, let's put this text into historical context. Just to review, in case you're joining us for the first time, and if so, welcome. I'll give a little background on our boy, the Apostle Paul. Arguably, I mean, with the exception of Jesus, Paul has made the greatest mark on Christianity. Much of his story is found in the book of Acts, which is set just before this book, and it has been covered by Share the Word, if you want to check it out. Our introduction to Paul began with his fierce and zealous persecution of the early church.

The Lord used his misplaced passion to get the Jewish believers out of Jerusalem, scattering them to other places to carry the good news message to all people. While actively pursuing Christians, Paul had a fascinating encounter with the risen Jesus. The subject of the good news. And immediately after realizing that the good news was the truth and was indeed very, very good, Paul began sharing that good news with others. Paul was highly educated and familiar with each language and culture of the day. In regards to his Hebrew faith, he trained under the most sought-after, well-respected teacher at the time, so he was very well versed in the law, the scriptures, and the customs of Judaism.

It's so ironic that Paul would become a missionary to the Gentiles. He most likely, intentionally, had very little interaction with the Romans, preferring to stay in his holy huddle of Judaism. And he certainly had very little concern, compassion, or love for them before his call. As a matter of fact, the Romans were the enemy, the enemy of his faith, his culture, his people. They were Israel's conquerors and captors. But once a Christ follower himself, biblical scholars believe that Paul ended up traveling around the known world four times, carrying the good news to his beloved Gentiles, who he refers to as the Greeks in this book.

Paul was focused, intent, brilliant, committed, but most of all, loving. He followed up with the Gentile churches that he founded with heartfelt, biblically sound, fervent, encouraging letters. Those letters make up most of the New Testament. Paul is actually credited with writing the most books in the Bible. In this particular book of the Bible, much like a prosecuting attorney, Paul presents his case with hard and irrefutable evidence to show that. Everyone is guilty before a just judge.

Everyone is without excuse. Everyone is deserving of the death penalty, and everyone desperately needs a pardon. Paul begins with greetings, describing himself using common Greek terminology. He refers to himself as a servant of Christ Jesus, and though he was technically a free, natural-born Roman citizen in good standing, he chose to submit himself, his purpose, his will, his life to Jesus. He was willing to serve his master and his master's people. He also calls himself an apostle.

Apostle means one who is sent. Paul was clarifying his call as one who was sent to give the good news of Jesus to the Gentiles. Another reason that Paul needed to introduce himself and explain his intent is because, unlike most of his letters, Paul had not been to the Roman church before this letter was composed. Usually, Paul was writing in response to letters from the churches that he had founded, answering their questions or confronting issues facing the church. It seems that this Roman church was probably founded by the Jews from Rome who had been at Pentecost, which we learned about in the book of Acts chapter 2. Though this book follows the book of Acts, as it's bound in the Bible, it does not follow the book of Acts chronologically.

The book of Romans was most likely written during the events of chapter 20 in the book of Acts, while Paul was on the end of his third missionary journey, staying in the city of Corinth, approximately 57 A.D. Another unique, and I think heartwarming, feature of the book of Romans is how much time Paul spends excitedly encouraging the Roman believers. He congratulates them on their great faith and their impact in the community. And though he had not been there yet, he personally greets by name some 26 members of the church that he knew, or he knew by reputation. At the time of this writing, Rome was the epicenter of the known world and the capital of the Roman Empire, which spread across most of Europe, the Near East, and North Africa. Rome was at the top of her game, culturally, economically, and militarily, but at her depths morally.

To simplify the hugeness and heaviness of the book of Romans, most Bible teachers divide the book into two parts: chapters 1 through 11, believing, and chapters 12 through 16, behaving. Okay, it is time for the good news, bad news, big idea. But first, a joke to lighten the mood. Two lifelong buddies, Sam and Abe, were on the park bench one warm day feeding the pigeons and talking about America's favorite pastime and their favorite subject, baseball. Sam says to Abe, I wonder if there's baseball in heaven. I tell you what, no matter which of us goes first, let's see if the big guy will let us come back and tell the other whether or not there's baseball in heaven.

Two days later, Sam dies. After the funeral, Abe is alone on the bench feeding the pigeons when he hears, Abe! Is that you, Sam? Sure is. I got some good news and some bad news. Which do you want first?

Abe answers, Well, the good news, of course. Sam excitedly shares, They've got baseball in heaven! Relieved but curious, Abe asks, And the bad news? Oh, the bad news? You're in the lineup Thursday. All right.

Unlike Sam giving Abe the option of the good news or the bad news first, Paul decides for the Romans, and he hits them full guns with the bad news. Looking at verse 18 in chapter 1, Paul says, The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness. So, ladies and gentlemen, that's it. That is the bad news, that the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all godlessness and wickedness of men. Wrath is not a fun word, but it is found in this book 12 times. Only the book of Revelations mentions wrath more times, 13 times, but it is a bigger book.

Wrath is defined as God's just, divine, righteous judgment in response to our human depravity, our sinful condition. Acting like a prosecuting attorney, Paul uses the books of the law and the prophets as his witnesses and begins to present his case that we are all guilty before a holy and righteous God, who is the just judge. Paul is adamant that each person is godless and wicked, that we all have sinned by failing to adhere to God's way and God's will. Sin in the Greek means to fall short, and in this case, to fall short of God's perfect standard. It's actually an archery term referring to an arrow falling short of its intended goal. I've told this story before, but it's a cute one, so I'm telling it again.

A few of us developed a scripture memory curriculum for the five-year-olds. We wanted the kinders to be engaged and interested while learning the verses each week. So we came up with some exciting, memorable, tactile, kinesthetic, and alphabetically based lessons to support each verse. And since we wanted to start with a bang for the A verse, which, by the way, is from this book, Romans 3:23, A, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We marched the littles outside and gave them bows and arrows to aim at the awaiting target. However, just in case one of them accidentally hit the bullseye and ruined our illustration, we sabotaged the feathers on the end of each arrow.

We really did not think that through very well because there were arrows flying everywhere. Really, it's a wonder no one was shot. But the point is, spiritually speaking, we are all sabotaged by sin and fall short of God's bullseye of holiness, purity, and perfection. And that, my friends, is bad news. Sin is not just intentionally rebelling against God, disobeying God, or ignoring God. Sin is falling short, even if it's unintentional, even if we're trying really, really hard.

Our sin separates us from God because He's pure and perfect, morally just and fair. No matter how hard we try, or how much charity work we do, or money that we give, or how much we want to do good, we cannot be good enough to be perfect, pure, and holy. We cannot save ourselves from the guilty verdict. I warned you that it was bad news, but we've got to have the bad news to understand and appreciate the good news. When my girlfriend went to meet with her oncologist, she was hit with the good news, bad news scenario. The bad news was it's cancer.

The good news was that they caught it early and there was an effective treatment. We cannot really understand our condition or why we need a cure unless we realize that we need a cure. And here Dr. Paul is giving the bad news before he gives the good news, the treatment and the cure. The bad news on the human condition is that we are all really sick, terminal, helpless and hopeless. The worldview tends to be, Oh, we're not that bad.

We're born basically good. Okay, okay, we can all agree about the Hitlers and the Ted Bundys of the world, but they're the exception, right? That's not the rule. We just have to keep trying to be gooder. But the truth is, we have a deadly condition and there is only one cure: Jesus. The end of that five-year-old Sunday school class story is just as funny because the lead teacher calmly walked up, loaded her arrow into the bowstring and let it fly.

And with a big whoop, she not only hits the target but the bullseye, and of course all the kids went wild with excitement. Again, the point being that there is only one who hit the mark. Only Jesus can hit that bullseye. He alone is holy, righteous, pure, and sinless. We cannot save ourselves from the guilty verdict. Only faith in Jesus and believing upon the sacrifice that He made on our behalf can remove our guilty sentence.

And that is really, really good news. The second part of the bad news is that we are all sinful and guilty, and we're without excuse. Looking at the same verse in chapter 1 plus verses 19 to 20, Paul says the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness. Now listen to this. Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, His eternal power and His divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.

And here it comes, so that men are without excuse. So besides the bad news that we are all sinners, all guilty, all worthy of the death penalty, Paul explains why we are without excuse. Now we might want to plead ignorance, but God, through Paul, says that will not work. So just like in an earthly court of law, in God's courtroom, ignorance is not a legal defense. Once, as a novice driver, my eldest son missed a sneakily hidden speed limit sign and got a ticket. When he appeared in court, he honestly admitted he had no idea that the speed limit had changed.

But the judge still pronounced him guilty and said, You might be telling me the truth, but ignorance is not an excuse. You need to pay the fine. Specifically, Paul says that we are without excuse because of creation. Listen to those verses again, but just hitting the high notes. For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities have been clearly seen so that men are without excuse. I know it's kind of an oxymoron.

The invisible God's attributes are clearly seen. But I feel like this is a wonderful response to most people's argument of ignorance. You could say it applies to the hypothetical imaginary person that folks worry so much about, or at least debate about. Yeah, well, what about the guy in the Amazon? What about the gal who's never been to church? What about those folks who have never heard Share the Word?

You don't mean that they will be held accountable. The bad news? God through Paul says yes. The uninformed person who hasn't heard the good news will be held accountable because creation testifies of Him. Nature screams of a Creator. The eternal, powerful, invisible God has revealed Himself to all of us since the beginning of earthly time through creation.

We can all see creative beauty and order, and therefore we are all without excuse. In several of his books and talks, Pastor Louie Giglio gives statistics on microcellular level of the inner workings of the human body and also the huge, majestic scientific information on the celestial bodies. Here are just a couple cosmos fun facts. Our sun, 93 million miles away from Earth, is so big that one million Earths could fit inside of it. The largest known star is Canis Majoris. It's so incredibly massive that seven quadrillion of our Earths could fit in it.

The planets and the suns do not collide randomly because of a perfect gravitational force balance between them. In our own solar system, each planet is on its own orderly path as they orbit predictably around the sun. Between the gravitational force and the velocity, they carefully follow their own elliptical path. Orderly, beautifully, logically, intelligently designed. The invisible God is so plain to see in the universe surrounding us. And as for us peeps, we begin in a microscopic cell in our mother's womb, fertilized by a father.

These two cells form one cell with completely different set of DNA from the parents or anyone else on Earth, ever. And that stream of DNA contains three billion characters of code. That one tiny cell holds all the information needed to make each of us. God is just too obvious in the universe and in our mirror. Think about it. A watch says a watchmaker.

A building says a builder. A bridge says an engineer. They didn't just happen chaotically or accidentally. The last comment on this topic, and I will wrap it up. It also seems that our Roman counterparts had inverted the creation and the Creator. They'd flip-flopped the order of things.

In verse 25, it says, They exchanged the truth about God for a lie. And they worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator, who should be praised forever. Amen. They exchanged the creation for the Creator. They worshipped the creature instead of the Creator. Creation became supreme and sacred instead of the Creator.

We do see the same in our day too, don't we? There seems to be a lot more focus and value put on the environment, the state of the earth. We hear more about global warming, carbon footprints going green, saving the animals, recycling, than about God or our fellow man. Creation is valuable. It is. It is precious, and we should care for it.

God calls us to care for it, to be stewards of His creation. But it is not more valuable than God or our fellow man. And on that happy note, thank you for hanging in there with me, covering some of the bad news. Just remember, the good news is coming. Just a couple more court cases, a couple more doctors' visits in chapters two and three before hearing about the precious pardon and the eternal cure found in the chapters ahead. Just like with our buddy Abe, the Thursday lineup is coming for all of us one day.

So we have a big decision to make. Make it now. Choose the good news. Please tune in for the next installments of Share the Word. This is Margie. Thank you for listening.

Thanks, Margie. We pray that you will continue your spiritual journey with us here at Share the Word, and you'll come to believe in Jesus rather than believing that Jesus. And there is such a profound difference. With so much in this podcast, one point that Margie made that stuck out for me was that we are all without excuse. How did the Holy Spirit speak to you in this podcast? Check out our archives and remember that everything at Share the Word is free for you to use and to share.

From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.