welcome to real Christianity mission is to bring the church back to the Bible my name is Dale Partridge and I'm the president of relearn. Org and Reformation Seminary the premise of the show is simple the culture is growing darker the church is in need of sound Doctrine and many Christians are hungry for the truth join me here each week as we look to scripture and discover what it really mean to be a Christian
 you're welcome to the show for the past 4 years this podcast has been a place for me to address issues facing the culture from a Biblical perspective I have enjoyed the ability to serve a wide variety of topics and tens of thousands of you guys have listened too long of encourage me through your reviews and messages and in many of you even financially supported our ministry a tree learn.org has a pastor of a local church specifically a house church it's been incredibly difficult and time-consuming for me to prepare not only a podcast episode each week which takes about 10 hours but also a fool expository sermon for Sunday which takes about 10 to 15 hours in fact I probably delivered over 150 sermons to the families in our house church it's nobody's ever heard except for those those individual members
 it's so when you combine my duties with leading Reformation Seminary managing the ministry a tree learn.org and caring for the members of our local church I just have enough time in my work week to do all of it without compromising my family for that reason and no I'm not ending the podcast but for that reason I have decided that what I preach locally will be what I post each week on the podcast now these are going to be recordings from Sunday I'm still going to sit down and record each sermon specifically each week for just you guys my podcast listeners
 three things I just want to make clear never one just because I'm preaching a sermon doesn't mean I'm not going to apply the content of the sermons to the current culture and daily lives of Christian listeners I want to say this is always been and always will remain my focus it's a preacher is to make sure that I'm confronting those issues that are facing the church today so yes we're going to hit the lgbtq stuff at some point as we get through a handful of of sermons yes we're going to hit marriage and pornography and addiction and various facets of theology these things will still be touched on it number to this doesn't mean that I'm simply going to go back to back through biblical books forever as we all know that they're just comes a time when a pastor has to address certain cultural issues that are consuming the hearts and minds of the Christian public or when you know the church at large might need Clarity on a certain Christian doctor is he
 what I'm saying is that I'm not going to remain silent on vital issues that confront God's people I think you guys all saw that in my multiple episode series on covid in the vaccine mandate those things will come and I will confront those things never three every sermon I release Here will be prepared with a careful application of the grammatical and historical hermeneutic at each week I'm going to block diagram in English and in Greek and you know it's for the text in Hebrew Hebrew I'm not the best at but I have a wonderful library to leverage those tools and able to Faithfully extract the author's intended meaning but I'm also going to bring the historical and cultural context of the passage as well as the practical application for the modern-day believer the truth is this all kind of came to be in my brain I was sitting at the shepherd's conference a few weeks ago
 serving men like John MacArthur Steve Lawson voddie baucham Paul Washer and one of the things that they all have in common is that they spent the vast majority of their lives simply preaching verse by verse Through the Bible I really want to do that and I want to do that well and so on that note and after much prayer I've decided to teach through the entire book of Romans I don't expect as deep as Martyn Lloyd Jones did in his over 300 sermon survey but I do expect to go thoroughly into text so I'm expecting somewhere between 5270 surmont 5270 episodes that can unearth and present the beauty of this incredible the New Testament book and again that doesn't mean that scattered through in there and not 5270 episode.
 why not have someone off episodes here and there but we are going to be able to confront so many cultural issues of the day from apologetics to biblical sexuality to idolatry addiction Calvinism there's so much that we're going to touch through this book and so today I want to offer a comprehensive introduction to the Book of Romans that I think will make you excited to join me on this important journey to a before again I just wanted to make one
 quick announcement every day this is not an exaggeration everyday I get a message or an email from somebody asking me if we have a house Church in their area
 do you know how strict here in Ohio to have a house church here in Texas do you have a house church here in Florida. A house church here in Canada to the house church here in Australia
 everyday and I have to say no 99% of the time now we have just launched our new house Church Network there's only eight or nine how shirt is in the network at this point at Reformation fellowship.org
 that being said we really do need more men to come and be trained to plant and Pastor house churches in this network now we have five guys that are going to be planting in June and potentially 15 to 20 more guys planting in November which will grow the network and there's those churches grow and multiply but we need more men in Reformation Seminary so if you're listening and you feel called to pastoral Ministry but to buy vocational Ministry keeping your job you know receiving a little bit of financial support from the local church planting and Pastor in a body of 10 to 15 families in your local area that multiplies into other churches other house churches
 we want to hear from you so please tell somebody tell your friend tell your husband whatever it maybe we need more men House Church is becoming in my opinion I think it will become a much more widely adopted
 expression of the church in future years I think more and more people are interested in close-knit
 tightly connected highly intimate biblical Church in a home and so I think that that is something that's going to continue to grow and not stop we have been doing House Church in our family for over eight years it's been wonderful it's like the difference between maybe homeschooling and public schooling once you do it you never go back wheel of the traditional church but there's something special about the house church so again Reformation cemetery.com we have a class starting here in the mid mid part of June and we need some more men
 okay I will stop answering there but we are going to begin now with the discussion about the introduction to Romans I titled this message Romans an introduction to the world's greatest book
 theologians often claim that Romans is the most
 theologically complex book in the New Testament and fortunately that this is this is really caused intimidation for many Christians and it's it's prevented them from reading it or studying it but we have to remember Romans was not written to the Illusions or academics or even the pastor's Romans is written to a local church of first century Christians living in Rome and in other words what is perceived to be the taxes for only the elite mines of you know the time it gets really intended for everyday Christians like you and me
 it's too often pastors what they do with a jumper right into Romans and they move too quickly through an introduction
 that's that's not right thinking A Book Like Romans deserves a comprehensive and informative introduction in fact Martyn Lloyd Jones spent the first 5 1 hour sermons introducing the book of Romans a touchdown versus 11 and so I do know I'm a major proponent of analyzation and observation before interpretation and application and was starting to book like Romans where we're going to live in it for sometime we have to be willing to spend a fair amount of effort analyzing the historical and cultural context of the author the audience the outline of the book before we dive into the text
 2 I mean just imagine imagine seeking to run into a Wilderness without knowing the landscape you be a fool right to run into the Rocky mountains of Colorado without learning about the terrain the animal like the geography of the weather patterns that that would be brainless that we have to prepare beforehand so that we can properly interpret as we go
 the Romans is ancient literature from a foreign land in an extinct form of Greek language to a fusion of people from radically different backgrounds and cultures if we hope to grasp not only the sheer beauty of this letter but also the accuracy of what's being taught we have to be willing to examine the foundation that the historical cultural foundation on which it is built it so this is a magnificent book The epistle to the Romans is Paul's magnum opus it's his most exceptional work and is working to see it is the most important exposition of the Gospel ever written it is in my opinion the most meaningful and vital piece of literature on Earth
 and when you understand this you know why the Lord and his Providence has chosen to place Romans as the first New Testament epistle not because it's the longest epistle which it is or because it was written first which it was not it's because it is the most magnificent explanation of the Gospel available to the human soul now we have to know that the Old Testament books what do they do right they point us to and prepare us for Christ at one of the gospels do the gospels declare Christ then acts preaches Christ and then the Epistles explain Christ Romans is the chief Expositor of Christ of his gospel is Martin Luther once said Romans is the chief part of the New Testament and the Very purest gospel
 John chrysostom said of the book of Romans Romans is unquestionably the fullest deepest compendium of all sacred foundational truths
 j.i. Packer just adding here j.i. Packer one said all roads in the Bible lead to Romans and All Views afforded by the Bible are seen most clearly from Romans if if if Romans wasn't evangelist guys I believe it would be responsible for more conversions than any other biblical texts in church history it was the book of Romans that the Lord used to convert Augustine John Wesley Martin Luther reformation and the face of men like John Calvin Jonathan Edwards and Martyn Lloyd Jones John Piper when writing a commentary on Romans John Calvin begin to see the heart of the gospel and he wrote the book of Romans was my entrance to all the most Hidden Treasures of scripture
 the subject then of these chapters may be stated this man's only righteousness is through the mercy of God in Christ which being offered by the gospel is apprehended by faith essentially John Calvin summarizes what most people think is the central passage of the book of Romans it's scene in chapter 3 verses 23 through 25 and I wanted you guys just to see just for a second how much depth is packed into a single sentence it says quote for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift
 through the Redemption that is in Christ Jesus who God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith and quote one sentence that this is the kind of text that we're going to find a drum it it is a book full of dents sentences it's not a book that you necessarily casually read you can it's a book that you take in bite-sized pieces that hold a mint quantities of spiritual nourishment and every single bite so we want to just take our time to get through it now we first we also want to talk about the author we want to know who wrote this book and why Paul and so we know that it was written by the Apostle Paul because it stated in 1:1 but I want you to take a moment and I just want you to understand the unique relationship Paul has to this letter
 I guess in a sense he's just the author but as you're going to see God uniquely designed him for this task and this is essential because it reveals how God intricately prepares his people for their specific Ministry and for a man like Paul was such a clear Ministry we can see such clear preparation and having said that this is not only true of the Apostles but of all believers the life that you have is the life the Lord has ordained for you to prepare you for the specific Ministry God has for you and you're going to see this unfold here in a minute so just look at Paul the Apostle Paul
 add we know Paul was a zealous man he was introduced in the scriptures as saw the great persecutor of Christians in the early church he approved the stoning of Stephen he just sat in silent approval watching him die for this man in the flash hated Jesus Christ they hated everything his followers believed to him they were blasphemers and sinners Galatians 113 Paul writes for you have heard of my former conduct in Judaism how I persecuted the Church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it and quote
 so then you know we know the story right we know the stories that on the road to Damascus Paul is radically converted
 he's blinded then he's spiritually trained up in Arabia a lot of people miss that meeting that before Paul isn't go from conversion to to missionary he goes from conversion spend about ten years being spiritually developed by revelation of the Lord and then goes out in the ministry and then Paul's called to preach the gospel to the Gentiles throughout the known world
 but we have to see is God's intentional design of Paul's life from birth Paul was stubbornly placed it in a world that equipped him for this specific Ministry and for writing this specific letter and let me explain Paul was a man of Two Worlds the first world Paul was a Jew Board of the The Tribe of Benjamin trained as a Pharisee in other words Paul was thoroughly educated in the Old Testament under Gamaliel and he was the premier teacher of the law in that time according to church tradition that by the time Paul was 21 either earned the equivalent of 2 Advanced academic degrees and as a result was an intellectual he was a scholar of the old Covenant ultimately Paul was extensively equipped by his Heritage spiritual gifting is economics and social status to what to exhaustively
 understand Judaism
 on the other hand the Otherworld Paul was a Roman citizen born in the ancient Metropolitan city of Tarsus that was as culturally influential as Athens or Rome he was a thoroughly acquainted with Greek philosophy and the polytheism of the day he was socially refined and sophisticated and as a result he was extensively equipped by his geography is social placement and education to what two exhaustively understand the Greco-Roman culture we have a Jewish Pharisee who's a sophisticated Roman citizen amazing Clash of Two Worlds within one man killed the Jews hated the Romans and the Romans hated the Jews so God produces a Jewish scholar who has a Roman intellect to reveal to Jewish Messiah to the Roman Gentile world
 using reality of preparation God takes the man who hates Christians and hates room and makes him the foremost advocate for Christ to the Roman people I mean this is what God does he is in the business of creating humble men and women and this is why Paul said and 1st Timothy 1:15 the saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save Sinners of whom I am the foremost might have heard the translation that he is the chief of Sinners Paul is incredibly humbled in the way that God designed his life for Ministry
 for my own personal Ministry I spent the first half of my life starting businesses I started I don't know 15 different businesses I understood the art of the start I was really good at getting something from idea to completion getting something from nothing to turn into something and now and I didn't even know this until you know maybe five years ago I'm a church planter I I go places and I take a group of people and I preach the gospel and I have this training and gifting and ability to take something really and through God's grace turn it into to a group of people that love the Lord and in so it's just this Unique Kind of mr. Miyagi you know wax on wax off you don't really know what you're doing but you're actually learning karate kind of moment where that Jesus is preparing his people
 for their Ministry and he did the same with me he's he's giving me all these historical skills to run these Ministries in the business World he's allowed me to learn how to form and produce and motivate and lead people in the business world that I now absolutely utilize in my gifting as a pastor and church lighter and so Paul was broadly developed and uniquely equipped to comprehend the religious realities of both the Jews and the Greek it upon his conversion in training in the scriptures by the Holy Spirit as he was able to not only see the overwhelming grace of God
 but also the fallacies in the weaknesses of Judaism and Greek philosophy and as a result was able to confront the religious views of the day exploit their flaws and humidity in in love and replace them with the truth of Jesus Christ I mean this is why Paul could write things like 2nd Corinthians 10:4 through 5 he says for the weapons of our Warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds first five potential we destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God this is being said in a Roman culture which is huge Greek philosophy lots of opinions lots of arguments and take every thought captive to obey Christ
 see more portly Paul was able to communicate the gospel to both groups of people in a way that very very few people could ultimately Paul is the Apostle to the Gentiles he was divinely prepared for the ministry that God gave him and this should really affirm everyone who is listening that even your tragic childhood and your sinful history in mistakes and your family's Heritage they can all be used by God in your ministry God is designing your life every single step of the way God prepares his people for Ministry and this isn't seen more clearly than in the Book of Romans and as we're going to see Paul leverages every single gift and resource an experience that he has to produce an epistle that squarely addresses both the Greeks and the Jews with the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the most eloquent
 in persuasive Christian arguments known to man
 we touched on the author let's briefly touch on the location the relevance of Rome to Rome is the capital city of the Empire and the epicenter of influence in the Known World the population of the city was over 1 million people what does a huge group of people that are walking by foot and using animals and and so this is the heart of modern thought architecture academics and Paul states in the first chapter that he was unable to make it physically to roam at this point and this letter becomes his mode of delivering vital gospel truth to the Christians who were living in the world most powerful City and so many of Paul's letters as you guys know that some of them are either response letters or corrective letters but romance is neither Romans is a universal exposition of the Gospel aimed at the church that God had placed inside the area of
 influence it would be the equivalent of someone riding a letter to the church in Washington d.c. or New York City or Los Angeles or London if the Lord can capture the heart of these people that have such great influence he can expand the church more rapidly strategy everything he's doing and and his will is perfect and we have to admit that it was the spirits work of this letter that permitted the early church to go from 12 murdered men to the church that overtakes the Roman Empire in less than 300 this is an amazing fact into this this Roman letter is a vitally important for the outline of Romans it's a structural Symphony into the metal narrative the grand Narrative of the epistle is this righteousness before God can only be found by grace through faith in Christ so it's it's the Roman
 text of the book of Romans that produce the central source of the great Reformation dr. Wright Sola gratia salafi days till Krista's saved by grace alone through faith alone In Christ Alone by Romans is such an effective tool for gospel Clarity even for Christians I actually expected million a false convert people who think they're Christians but aren't people who have came to church but never came to Christ I bet that Romans is been probably the most effective tool in Saving the falsely assured we have to remember Martin Luther had a doctorate in theology before he was born again
 and he was born again to reading the book of Romans we have to remember that John Wesley was a graduate of Oxford he was a deacon in the Anglican Church a missionary to the Indians before he was born again through hearing the preaching through the book of Romans so Christians we have to remember that Romans is powerful too powerful tax cuz it it's powerful Clarity on the gospel in fact Evangelistic Lee speaking there is a phrase you may have heard, the Romans road which is a series of seven Bible verses from The Book of Romans that walks a person through God's Plan of Salvation the Heidelberg Catechism actually follows the same structure of the book of Romans it's a very influential zoom out there is a general structure that we have to be aware of the first eleven chapters of Romans are a systematic presentation of the Gospel while the chapters
 12416 are about the Practical outworking of that gospel Doctrine in the lives of Christians in the church very common structure for Paul we know that that happens in most of his letters he always opens up with a beautiful exposition of the gospel and then practical application later but the first eleven chapters are really the heart of that and the 12 through 16 get into orthoprax so it's clear that Romans is the greatest systematic presentation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ known to man now why should you be excited to study it why should you be willing to labor to understand it what why should you be committed to listening to someone like me
 Teach through the book of Romans the answer is simple because when you know Romans you know God
 it would you know Romans you're going to know God Jeremiah 9:23 224 says that says the Lord let not the wise man boast in his wisdom but not the Mighty Man boasting is Mike. The rich men boast in his riches but let him who boasts both in this that he understands and knows me that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love Justice and righteousness in the Earth for in these things I Delight declares the Lord
 as if you want to understand and know God join me as I preach the real that's if you want a stronger grasp of the Gospel join me as a priest the rummage if you want to be able to defend what you believe and communicate clear Doctrine to others if you want to see the doctrinal diamonds and jewels of the Christian faith the pearls anchor a person to Jesus fraternity the join me as I go through Romans let's pray
 oh Lord I Thank you for this wonderful opportunity to preach the Romans father I ask that you permit me to remain faithful to the text Lord I pray that you will use this book to save your people from their sins I also pray that you strengthen your Saints who are fighting for truth in this world and I ask that you give them a gospel Clarity and biblical wisdom that edifice him and strengthens the church to continue Burning Brightly in this Dark World in Jesus name I pray amen
 God I hope this is been a Define for you I hope you're excited to get through Romans with me if your regular listener to this podcast thank you we love just having so many loyal listeners if you haven't left the review would you consider leaving a review just tap the stars in the podcast app you can also write a review you guys know I read every single review with over 6,000 reviews and those reviews really do help the exposure of the show also would you consider inviting somebody to listen to the podcast as we go through Romans together what a wonderful time for you to invite someone to hear a systematic presentation of the gospel and we would love to have them as a part of the journey
 I thank you guys for joining me on this episode of real Christianity my name is Dale Partridge and I'll see you next week
 thank you for joining me on this episode of real Christianity Christianity is a listen to audio Ministry of relearn. Org our mission a tree there. Or days to bring the church back to the Bible we achieve this through strengthening Christians and biblical and Theological literature find biblical articles podcast sermons and videos at our website at relearn. Org our team is small but our mission is large and we need your help if you'd like to support our ministry financially you can always do so at relearn. Org forward slash donate thank you again for joining me today and I hope to see you next week for another episode of real Christianity