Today’s sermon delivered by Pastor Tzeng was from Romans 1:17-32 entitled “The Knowledge of God.” The sermon explained our limits of coming to God and how God comes to us by grace, revealing our own self-righteousness, allows us to turn back to him.
We will be looking at Romans 1:17-32 today, it is from one of the most important chapters in the Bible and for our lives of faith. Paul gave this message to the people of Rome and it is the message we need in America, as modern Rome.
First, in Romans 1:18-23, we read how Paul proclaims the Creator God’s existence as obvious and without excuse based on the creation. It also speaks to how, as God’s creation, we are limited in the created cosmos and cannot break through by ourselves to God of heaven, eternity. Instead, God must come us instead, just as He revealed Himself to us in Jesus Christ and scripture. So we see that our relationship with Jesus and understanding Bible is not by intellect, but a transformative faith. Our intellect is limited and in our fallen nature, we will simply turn towards evil knowledge, created things, and idol worshipping of money, sex, and fame. We cannot find God in created idols, but how can we find God? It is in our invisible, intangible spirit and image of God that God comes to us most presently. That breaks our understanding of how we can know God – that is not by progressive intellectual understanding. We know God by a transcendent receiving of Him into our hearts, as we are transformed.
Next, in Romans 1:24-27, we see how depraved sin made an extreme turning away from God, so God let us go. Does that mean we are free? There is biblical, righteous, true freedom that God has given and this country of America was built on this type of holy freedom, so God blessed this nation greatly. However, there is such thing as twisted freedom that has blinded us in self-righteous justification of sin. Because I am free, does that give me the freedom to sin and leave God? Twisted freedom blinds us with an arrogance to reject the fact that I’m a sinner. We think, “Why am I a sinner? I have my right to freedom.” However, we must know that freedom to sin is not freedom, it makes us a slave to sin. We misunderstand God’s rules and commandments as restricting our freedom, but in actually those rules are what gives us true freedom. Athletes train hard with discipline in order to “free” their potential to be elite sports stars. In the same way, God’s rules, commandments, faith discipline are there to give us freedom to live by the Holy Spirit and not in sin.
Finally, in Romans 1:28-32, we see that us self-righteous blinded ones didn’t retain the knowledge of God, and this led to all kinds of depraved list of sin that Paul shows. Our loving relationship with God is absolute, it either exists or doesn’t exists. What breaks our relationship? That is sin. Therefore, all sin, whether big or little will break our relationship. It is our sin, breaking our relationship with God that puts me in a place of fiery hell, separated from God. The wrath of God is automatic when I leave God in sin. We are so foolish in our self-righteousness and we don’t even see our own self-righteousness. However, the good news is that God of loves saves us, sending his some Jesus Christ who bore the punishment of our sin. How about us? Us sinful self-righteous ones from before, need only to receive the righteousness of Jesus Christ by faith as Romans 1:17 says, there is nothing we need to do, just accept. Why is Romans so special? It speaks of the full, transcendent, eternal grace of God in every aspect of our life. It seems impossible to see our self-righteous image, but actually when we receive the full grace of God, we see our self-righteousness and it convicts us. This becomes the starting point where we can return to God.
Let’s pray we can open up our hearts to receive God’s amazing grace. Through that, let us return our hearts back in a loving relationship with Him.
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