December 7, 2025 | Romans 1-3
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Introduction and Christmas Series Overview
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Hey, faithful podcast listeners. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast and happy Sunday. It is the first Sunday of our Christmas series called Christmas Reminders, and so this week we're gonna be reminded of the significance of the baby in the manger. A lot of times we drive by the nativities or you look at the nativity that you've got on your mantle.
And it can become background noise and we can forget about really the who and the what is behind why we celebrate Christmas to begin with.
Refocusing on the True Meaning of Christmas
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So this is gonna be a message on refocusing and really gearing ourselves up to, to worship Christ over this next month. During the Christmas season.
There's a lot of busyness going on, a lot of parties, a lot of decor going up, a lot of things like that. And the goal here, at least the hope and prayer for this opening sermon today, is that we will reset our focus and our hearts on making sure that we have a posture of worship. This Christmas season that we remember that even though this baby in the major there, the temptation can be to domesticate him.
That this is the baby of Isaiah nine. This is the the wonderful counselor, the mighty [00:01:00] God the everlasting father. The prince of peace is this baby in the major. And so hopefully it'll be a good opportunity for us to pause from the chaos of. Busyness going on right now in your life and my life, I'm sure, and to remember what we're really called to do with this baby, with the incarnation this Christmas season.
So, looking forward to it.
Upcoming Events and Personal Anecdotes
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We do have communion as well today. So if you're on your way and you haven't gotten here yet. Be preparing your hearts for that, observing communion together and celebrating the, not just the birth of Christ, but also looking towards his death and the significance for us when it comes to our relationship with God.
So it'll be a good bookend between the sermon focusing on the incarnation and the time together with communion focusing on his death for us as well. And then next Sunday, mark your calendars. Right now we've got our kids Christmas choir that's gonna be up with us on Sunday the 14th, so that should be a great time as well.
And your lights up. My lights are I What day is they? Sunday? No, I think they're going up tomorrow actually. [00:02:00] Monday? Yes, Monday. Okay. Yeah.
The Significance of Christmas Lights
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We are eagerly anticipating your celebration of Christmas. I know, man. I feel behind and I am behind, but everybody else in my neighborhood, their lights are up.
And I, mine are not up yet, and so I drive by them at night. I'm just going, oh man. I just feel you could be that guy that has ditto on his garage and points to your neighbor except Yeah, me too. My neighbors to my right and my left don't have lights. Oh, that's not gonna work then. No. You have to have a longer arrow pointing over the house next to you.
Jumping over. Yeah. Yeah. We have one house on our street that does. I can't figure it out. They have the same light set up every single year, and it's like the warm yellow on the house, and then there's one tree that's like orange and one tree that's red, and I just don't understand. It's the most non Christmasy appearance that I've come across, and yet they do it consistently every single year.
So there's gotta be a rhyme to their reasoning. Are they Hindus? I don't know what it is. No, they're not Hindu. [00:03:00] No, no. Well, I can't make sense of it, but I'm impressed with the showing of our neighborhood. There, there's quite a few people out with putting lights up. So that was encouraging.
Well, across the street from you on the same street on the other side. Yep. They do it really well. They do. They go all out. It's amazing. Yeah. It's one of those areas that in California I think it would draw a lot of attention. Yeah. But in Texas it's kind of a meh Yeah, it's still impressive, but it's not as impressive.
As some of the other neighborhoods here that are really just outlandishly celebratory, which I appreciate. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I think we, we alluded to it in a previous episode, but you know, really the reason why we put lights on the house is because we're testifying to Christ as the light of the world.
We're testifying to the light of the gospel. We're testifying to the fact that we want to shine in the midst of the darkness of the world around us. Even as you're driving around. May not be everybody's motivation, but that is kind of the genesis there. That's why we do lights. That's why we put 'em on the tree.
That's why we put 'em up on the houses to testify to the light that's associated with Christ.
Introduction to the Book of Romans
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Well, we get to start a brand new book today, and it is the [00:04:00] longest of all of Paul's letters. It is the letter to the Romans, and it is a letter that is chock full. It has probably his most dense theology that we find in any of his.
His epistles. People have argued that this is Paul's systematic theology. And I think in some ways it is. He begins in chapter one by laying out what it's about, and that is the gospel of Jesus Christ. And that's in his opening there in the first six verses or so. He's really saying, this is what this is gonna be about.
And it is. It's about the gospel.
The Need for Salvation and the Gospel
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And he's gonna lay out in the book as he goes through in the first four chapters the need that we have for salvation because of sin. And that's not just the Pagan, but also the Jew. Jew and Gentile, everybody alike. He's gonna indict all of humanity. Say everybody needs Christ, everybody needs the gospel.
And then chapter five through eight, he's gonna break down and get into the results of the gospel and how that should transform our lives. In chapter five, it gives us peace with God. And then in chapter six really seven and eight, he gets into the Christian life. Specifically sanctification and growing in godliness, growing in [00:05:00] Christlikeness themes like walking by the Spirit in chapter eight.
And then in chapters nine through 11, he's gonna get into the relationship of Israel to the. Plans of God and his heart, his affections that he still at that time had for his countrymen in Israel. And then the book ends with some very practical instructions for church life, for body life and what it looks like, what the Gospel's impact should have on that.
So it is a systematic theology in a lot of ways. But this is this is kind of Paul's magnum opus here in the book of Romans.
Paul's Message to the Romans
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He begins, like I said, in chapter one by talking about what this is gonna be about. But then he gets onto writing to the church there in Rome and personally addresses them and even says in verse 11 that he desired to be with them.
And we referenced this in our study of second Corinthians when he talks about the second experience of grace. I. We see a similar sentiment here in verse 11 where he said, I, I wanted to impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you. That is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith, yours and mine.
So Paul wanted to be with them, and yet it says, Hey, thus far I've not been able to be there. And then he says something interesting [00:06:00] in verse 15. He says, I'm eager to preach the gospel to you also, who are in Rome. He's writing to believers, and yet he says, I'm eager to preach the gospel to you there.
And so I think there's a couple things to take away from that. Number one that we never really graduate from the gospel the importance of the gospel. And then number two, I think Paul means by the gospel here, not just the nuts and bolts of the gospel, but the implications of the gospel as well.
And I think that's evident by the, what he writes in the rest of the epistle too. The Romans here that he's not just gonna unpack the nuts and bolts of the gospel, but also its implications for our everyday life. So I think that's what Paul's driving out there in verse 15.
Verse 16 then is essentially the theme of the gospel. And that is that the righteous shall live by faith. And he says, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for eight is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith, for faith as it's written, the righteous shall live by faith.
That's his thesis. And he's gonna unpack that in the rest of the letter here. And he's gonna begin in the rest of chapter one by saying. Everybody needs salvation. This is why the righteousness is [00:07:00] required because unrighteousness is here in the world. And that's what he unpacks here in the rest of chapter one saying, this is where we see unrighteousness.
And there's a lot here that can be pointed to even points to the suppression of truth because of looking at the. Evidence in creation and saying, yeah, we're gonna refuse to acknowledge there's a God, even though that we can see his power, we can see his design, we can see his character on display in creation itself.
But then he gets into the darkness of humanity too, and the expression of that that darkness through various sins that he says ultimately result in the main problem being that. Mankind is worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forevermore. And that's his main indictment there, that the problem humanity has is you worship a problem and whatever expression of that looks like in sin, it comes down to not worshiping God, but worshiping his creation instead.
This is instructive educational, insightful for us to see that Paul begins the gospel presentation with a really difficult starting place. He starts detailing and itemizing all the areas wherein we have failed in our relationship with God, and I think that's why it's so helpful that he starts where He [00:08:00] does, because it tells us then when we're talking to people about the gospel, but we often have to start with the bad news before we get to the good news.
This information, as painful as it is. As it is to read, and even as uncomfortable as it is, because you see some stuff here that has to do with human relationships and the penalty that they're due because of these things, not fun to read, but necessary for us to have a heart that's prepared for the gospel to be received.
And so he starts where I think most of us should probably start, we're not doing as well as we think we are. We need to be confronted with our failures and our flaws and our unrighteousness. And ultimately the reason for those things, which is again, to your point, PPJ, the sin that dwells within all of us.
This is the good news in a nutshell, it starts with the bad news. We did not make it, we have not shot appropriately. In fact, that's what sin means. We miss the mark and all these areas are evidence of that. In fact, one in one really helpful thing to look at here is in the second part of chapter one.
And Paul talks about God giving people up to their sin. Sin creates and furthers and births more sin, [00:09:00] but it's also one expression of God's righteous wrath against sin by letting us have it. It's like saying to the kid who likes to stick his finger into the electrical socket. Don't do that. Don't do that.
Don't do that. And so finally you say, okay, go ahead. See what happens. And then the kid does it, and of course they're electrocuted. This is similar to how God treats us when we continue to persist in sin. At some point God says, okay, you can have what you want, but it will be to your destruction. And that's a really scary place for us to be.
But again, it has to be where we start and we talk to people about the gospel. We have to start with the truth about who we are and where we stand before God. Yeah. Not always easy to get into that conversation with someone because we're. I'm trained to be those that are afraid of offending people.
We're trained to be those that are afraid of being rude or stepping on toes and there's a winsome way to do it. There's a loving way to do it. But I'm with you on that. We have to get there. We have to get you them understanding why they need to be saved. 'cause if you never present the bad news, all they're looking at is, well, you have, you're asking me to give up my Sunday mornings and you're asking me to not do things that I really like to do for what?
To what end So that I can join your club and call [00:10:00] myself a Christian. Now, there's gotta be a feeling and a burden of man, no, I need salvation. I, you, I'm on the sinking ship. You're telling me you're pointing out the ship is going down. So now I have a desire to get off the boat and you're telling me where the lifeboat is.
Right? And as difficult as that conversation is, it is so necessary. We all had to have that conversation at some point. Yep. We all had to be confronted with this truth. And it is. Profuse are the kisses of an enemy but faithful are the wounds of a friend. Yeah. A real friend is gonna let you see things as they really are.
Somebody once wrote, my best friend is the one who tells me the most truth. And I could say, this is what Paul's doing for all of us. He's telling us the truth about who we are, and it's a necessary starting place. Yeah, yeah. Well, in chapter two, he turns to the person that thinks that they are better than and he goes after them as well.
And it, it basically is going to indict in a lot of ways in chapter two the hypocrite here, and he's talking about the person that judges, the people that do these wicked things and yet has a problem themselves, their own sin problem, and they're refusing to turn to the Lord, they're refusing to repent.
And he says in verse four, do you presume upon the riches of his kindness and [00:11:00] forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance, but he says, because of your heart and in penitent heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of judgment, on the day of wrath, rather, when God's righteous judgment will be revealed.
The picture that comes to mind there for me is the storm cloud. That the believer that storm cloud is just darkening and growing bigger and bigger and more ominous and more threatening as they're continuing in their life and they're oblivious to it. But eventually that, that if they don't repent, if they don't turn to faith, that cloud is gonna break and that wrath is gonna be poured out upon that person.
And so Paul is warning them and warning them about about their own sense of pride, that they're somehow better off. And especially he goes after the Jews as well. And he's gonna do this in chapter two and in chapter three, basically saying. Don't bank on the fact that you are Jews as being the fact that you're gonna be okay.
In fact, sometimes you being a Jew and then going on and sinning is doing more harm to the character in name of God than the gentile who's doing that's not claiming to be a believer in the first place. [00:12:00] He says in verse 24, he says, as it is. The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles.
Because of you, we, we talk about hypocrisy and a lot of times the world will hurl that accusation at the church. Well, Christians are a bunch of hypocrites and I think a lot of times our response is, well, okay, whatever. That's just the cliche statement, but we should feel the weight of hypocrisy that the things that we do can cast aspersion upon the character of God can cause people to despise God because of us.
That's a weighty thought. And we've talked a lot about the pastors in our area recently, over the last year, year and a half that have fallen. And this is the thing that comes to mind there is people are blaspheming the name of God because of the sinfulness of these men who disqualify themselves, who put them out themselves, out as righteous, when in reality what they are is unrighteous.
And Paul saying, the Jews, you may put yourself out as righteous, but understand you have just as much of a need for salvation, for the righteousness of God as the Gentiles do. And some of you are doing more harm to the name of God because you're claiming to be righteous by, but in reality you're casting dispersion upon his name because people see your sinfulness of this.
Same time in verse [00:13:00] seven, it says here, to those who, by patients, in verse seven, it says. To those who by patience and well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. That's a strange phrasing there. Should Christians be seeking for glory, honor, and immortality? I think we have to ask in what?
In the eyes of who? Glory honor. In the eyes of mankind, we would say no. In fact, Paul even says as much in other letters, he says, am I now living for the approval of men? If I was living for the approval of men, I wouldn't be a servant of Christ. But when it comes to the glory and honor from the Lord, I would say, yeah.
That, that is something that we should be living for. We should want to hear well done, good and faithful servant. That is a, that is an honoring declaration from our savior to us. That is, is not about puffing us up in the sense of making us. Proud, prideful in a sinful manner, but we want to honor the Lord with our lives, and as such, we will receive the crown of glory.
Right. When Paul, towards the end of his life, he says I know that there is now stored out for me the unfading crown of glory, which the King of Kings himself will award to me [00:14:00] on that day, which the, which Jesus will award to me on that day. That is. That is the Lord honoring Paul for his service.
And so there is an appropriate measure to that and that's informed and it keeps us humble by the sense that this is all viewed through the lens of the gospel that we are only righteous because of what Christ has done in and through us. Yeah. I find this so incredibly exciting because this is God not only giving us permission to seek for these things, but he's encouraging us to seek for them Yeah.
In their right place. In the right time, right place. That is, it's not human oriented. I'm not trying to get glory and honor from people and even immortality, eternal life. I'm getting those things from God and in the right time, often people will seek for these things here and now they want their face in lights.
They want, all the channels and they want all the promotional stuff. But for those who are rightly oriented toward eternity, this life is a drop in the bucket. It's a terrible trade to get glory and honor and immortality here and not have it in the next life. Lots of people have achieved this in some measure.
There's people in history that we're gonna read about for maybe the rest of human history. There's people that have made it where they have glory honor, and in a sense of [00:15:00] immortality, that is their name continues to live. But for Christians, it's right for us to pursue these things in their right place and in their right time. Time, eternity, place with the Lord.
So. Please seek for glory, honor, and immortality where it really belongs. Don't point all of your efforts in the here and now where it'll ultimately fade away and be meaningless.
The Role of the Law and Faith
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Chapter three Paul turns to this idea that, that may have been there and Paul does a masterful job in Romans, and he does this throughout the entire letter of anticipating objections, anticipating questions that people are gonna have to his argument here.
And he does that here. He says, okay, well if, my unrighteousness, if my sinfulness glorifies God, because now I have to turn in faith to him and in faith to him for. Righteousness that comes from him. Well then shouldn't I feel good about my unrighteousness? Because isn't God glorified? He says in verse seven, if through my lie, God's truth, a balance to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner?
Aren't I helping God out by my unrighteousness magnifying how great he is? And Paul's gonna say in his famous line here, he says, by no means or may it never be. He says that in verse six, and he's gonna go on and say this. Look, [00:16:00] we need to understand that the law is there to show us that we are unrighteous people.
The law is that mirror, right? James refers to it as a mirror, and he says, when we look into the mirror, it should show us what we need to do and what we need, what's wrong and if we walk away and we don't make any changes then the law, we're not realizing the real purpose of the law.
We'll get more into that in chapter seven of Romans. But he says in verse 20, by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight. Since through the law comes knowledge of sin, okay, so you have this knowledge of sin. The conclusion is not, well, my sin magnifies God's righteousness, so let me sin all the more, but instead.
And we need to figure out, okay, how do I get the righteousness? And that's where he gets to really introducing the guts of the gospel, if I can put it that way. In the rest of chapter three here, he says, for all have sin and fall short of the glory of God. We know that verse really well and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a big word here, propitiation by his blood to be received.
By faith that word propitiation [00:17:00] means one who satisfies God's wrath. It's the atoning sacrifice that, that Jesus Christ died for. Our unrighteousness, our sin, which the law reveals. Here's the solution from Paul. You need to look in into the law, see your sin, and then turn to Jesus for the propitiation to understand that God's satisfied his anger against your sin by.
Putting his son to death in your place. That how do we receive that? Re we receive that by faith and that word faith is gonna be such a key concept for Paul in the rest of the letter. But he goes on to say, here, this all had to happen so that he says in verse 26, God might be just in the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
This is the answer to the question. Why couldn't God just simply say to all of mankind, well, your sins are just forgiven. Right? Had a conversation with somebody who, who questioned whether or not Jesus had to be our substitutionary sacrifice. Couldn't there have been another way, and this is the [00:18:00] answer to that for God to be just our sins.
The penalty for our sin had to be. Poured out had to be satisfied and he's either gonna satisfy that on us in an eternity apart from him, or that had to be satisfied by Jesus on our behalf. So the only way God can be just can be righteous, and the justifier of you and me is if Jesus died in our place on the cross.
Therefore, the penalty has been paid. The sentence has been carried out and the consequence of sin has been realized and yet we can be forgiven at the same time. So that's the only way God can be just, and the justifier, the one who has faith in Jesus is through the death of Jesus on our behalf.
One of the things I love about Romans is that Paul so skillfully weaves in. A ton of scripture, depending how much time you have as you're reading. It would be really cool just for you to cross reference some of these passages he quotes in Romans three from, I don't know, 1, 2, 3, 5. Five or six or seven different places in scripture.
A lot of it from some of the Psalms, but if you'll take a look, there's [00:19:00] actually a lot more there than what you might realize as you first read it. I have a question about verse 30. It says, since God is one and God is the one who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith.
You have two different prepositions there. One where it says is circumcised are justified by faith and that the uncircumcised are justified through faith. Is there a, obviously there's a difference, but what is the difference if there is any should, that should, we should understand from a passage like this where you have two different prepositions talking about the way that faith works between the two.
They are different in the Greek and one is EK and one is Dia. So there is a difference in there. In terms of the words themselves, should we ascribe any theological signif significance of this? Or is this something about the comprehensiveness? Well, what is happening here? Should we do anything with it?
It, I think there are times in scripture where prepositions are massive and e even these prepositions are important because they help us understand the relationship of. Faith to the action there of being justified. As far as the difference between buy and through for the circumcised versus the [00:20:00] uncircumcised.
I don't know that I've ever thought about any tangible difference there. I think that the gospel is the gospel for the Jew and the gentile alike for the circumcised and the unc circumcised alike. So I think much like when we are writing, we may use in the same context. Two different prepositions to refer to the same concept as we're writing a letter to somebody or anything like that.
I think that's, in my eyes what Paul's doing here. I don't think he was trying to press a distinction for the circumcised versus the uncircumcised about through versus by. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it was such a rich book, man and having having a study bible out to help you with some of these cross references is gonna be really helpful there.
Paul is a master with using the Old Testament scriptures. He would've been very familiar with these scriptures because being a Pharisee he would've had a lot of this memorized, and so this was gonna be at his disposal. He was ready to bring this to bear in its implications for us. And we talked about it in Corinthians when Paul said that these things were written down for your instruction.
Here he is again, going back to the Old Testament and bringing things to bear for us as New Testament [00:21:00] readers in the Old Testament, that the old original audience of the Old Testament wouldn't have picked up on some of these same things. But you and I today with Paul's help and the spirit's help here can see what the argument was there.
And I love that it's showing. That the threat of the gospel was there all the way through thread, not threat, thread of the gospel was there from the very beginning all the way through that this is not like God. God's in the New Testament was like, all right, well let's try plan B. 'cause plan A didn't work.
Paul's going back to the Old Testament saying, no, this has been God's plan the whole time. And he's gonna do that throughout the book of Romans. So Romans will be good. Stick with us.
Concluding Prayer and Final Thoughts
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Keep reading and let's let's pray. God, thanks for the gospel. That righteousness is by faith. We are grateful for a book like Romans that does lay it out for us.
We are also thankful for the bad news of the gospel. That it does communicate to us that we need salvation, that we can't do this on our own. I pray for all of us, especially this Christmas season. We are gonna be around people that need to hear the bad news. And I pray that you would help us as Christians to be willing to have that hard conversation with somebody, to walk them through the bad news.
To be able to get to the good news. [00:22:00] So look I pray for our lost family members, our lost neighbors, our lost male carriers, whoever, we're gonna have a conversation with this Christmas that you would enable them to have soft hearts to hear these things from us. And also to hear that they're coming from somebody who loves them and cares about them and wants them to know Christ.
Help us to be be prayerful about that as we go into those conversations as well, to be intentional. About that, to pursue those conversations. And God we pray ultimately that you would lead more and more people to that faith that's necessary so that you might be just in the justifier of them as you are the just justifier of us as you've brought us into your family through the gospel as well.
So we pray for this Christmas season, Lord, to be full of fruit, evangelistically. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Keep in your Bibles and tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. See you. Bye.
Bernard: ​Well, thank you for listening to another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast! We're honored to have you join us. This is a ministry of Compass Bible Church in north Texas. You can find out more information about our Church [00:23:00] at compassntx.org. We would love for you to leave a review, to rate, or to share this podcast on whatever platform you're listening on, and we hope to see you again tomorrow for another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast.
PJ: Yeah. I would agree with everything that you said