PASTOR TIM JUPP

There is no reason why those who are in Christ Jesus should go on doing punishing servitude, as though they had never been pardoned and liberated from the prison house of sin. (F.F. Bruce)

Conclusion:  It doesn’t get better than that! Joint heirs with Jesus? Are you kidding me? We need to just grab hold of our identities with Jesus and our Heavenly Father and then live empowered by the Holy Spirit with confidence and without condemnation. The Christian life is embracing the grace of Jesus, knowing who you are and who’s you are. This truth will guide and encourage you to let go of guilt and shame. It doesn’t’ get better than that!

Perhaps the most astonishing aspect of our salvation is our adoption!!

Galatians 4:4 when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. 6 And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, "Abba, Father!" 7 Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.

TEXT: ROMANS 8:1-17

SONGS:

YOU ARE MY BELOVED, JONATHAN HESSLER

AMAZING LOVE, YOU ARE MY KING, CHRIS TOMLIN COVER

WHOLE AND HOLY, CAGELESS BIRDS

NO LONGER SLAVES, JONATHAN HESSLER

"Yes, the struggle is real. You do have a dual nature Christian, your mind serves the law of God but your flesh the law of sin. However, we have been delivered (past tense) from this body of death and when it dies, so will your need to serve it. So, thank you Jesus who purchased our redemption with Your very life. And, here is a sneak peek from next week. “There is therefore now no condemnation to those in Christ Jesus!” Romans 8:1"    Tim Jupp

The mark of a true Christian isn’t perfection, but the resilience to keep pressing our foot to sin’s neck by the power of the Spirit.    John Piper

God’s will for strategy in our sanctification is an empowered, Holy-Spirit-shaped-and-driven, blood-bought willing against a particular sin until we kill it. We must stay on it until it’s dead. We will put our foot on its neck and say, “You’re not getting up. You’re dead.”  John Piper

TEXT: ROMANS 7

SONGS:

COME NOW IS THE TIME TO WORSHIP, BRIAN DOERKSEN

AS FOR ME AND MY HOME, BRANDEN LAKE

LORD I NEED YOU, MATT MAHER

I NEED THEE EVERY HOUR, MISSION HOUSE

YOU'VE ALREADY WON, SHANE AND SHANE

 Of course, willfully continuing in sin, making no effort to leave it behind, is great abuse of an even greater grace!  So, who is it going to be? You choose! Are you still living like you belong to your old master. Do you understand the great expense Jesus Christ paid to buy you back? Think: about it: whose commands are shaping your daily life, habits and choices? Do you see some change or growth; are you becoming what you are meant to be?

   Maybe, you have never trusted Christ. Face the reality of who you are: you’re going to serve somebody. Stop working for a paycheck of death and accept God’s free gift of life today.

TEXT: ROMANS 6: 4-23

SONGS:

HERE I AM TO WORSHIP, UPPER ROOM

THANK YOU JESUS FOR THE BLOOD, WORSHIP INITIATIVE

REFINERS FIRE, BRIAN DOERKSEN

SANCTUARY, COVER

NO LONGER SLAVES, JONATHAN HESSLER

JOHN PIPER: If sin is reigning in your mortal body and you are a Christian, it is because you let it reign. But you do not have to let it reign. 

Remember scriptures are the words of God to us from the Son coming to us through the Holy Spirit moving the hands of the prophets writing to us. Every word must be given reverence to understand exactly what is meant! So, when the apostle writes we shall be saved after we are already reconciled, we should sit up and take this in, what Paul is saying to us. What have I to fear? For God is with us!

Think on this, there was no celebration among mankind the night Christ was born but that babe would one day reconcile rebellious man to His father and give His church every reason to celebrate for now “Our God is With Us”.

TEXT: ROMANS 5:6-11

SONGS:

THIS IS AMAZING GRACE, PHIL WICKHAM COVER

LOVE OF GOD, PHIL WICKHAM, BRANDEN LAKE

JESUS PAID IT ALL, RED ROCKS

FOR GOD IS WITH US,  for KING AND COUNTRY

Lead pastor of River City Baptist Church in Richmond, Virginia.“the gospel turns heavens courtroom from a criminal trial into an adoption ceremony.”

Through Christ's finished work, the verdict is not just an acquittal of charges; it changes the relationship entirely. Believers are brought into God's family as sons and daughters.

In the words of Calvin, The Great Exchange of our mortality for his immortality. Our weakness for his strength. Our poverty for his wealth. Our iniquity for his righteousness. We should pause and consider this for a moment.

In this exchange, the spotless Son took on all of my sin. He absorbed it, and then he was broken under the wrath of God. He drank the filth of the cup of wrath so that I might drink deeply of the cup of living water.

Our current standing with God is like a boy who asks his Dad for a new bike for his birthday or maybe go to the hockey game after supper or throw a ball. God is Dad!  We have all the reason in the world to hope for His Glory in our lives. The same grace that saved us, continues with us. It really is amazing! 

TEXT: ROMANS 5:1-5

SONGS:

IT REALLY IS AMAZING GRACE, PHIL WICKHAM,  DAVID CROWDER

SAVED BY GRACE, COMMONS WORSHIP

HE WILL HOLD ME FAST, GETTY WORSHIP

IT IS WELL WITH MY SOUL, COVER

 “The grace of Christ in the soul is developing deep traits of character—traits that will refine, ennoble, and enrich your life.” 
 ― Ellen G. White, 

'Know THIS, … that tribulation, under the influence of divine grace, worketh a calm, humble patience, which is most beautiful and happy disposition of mind.

It is only this man who has found rejoicing in the midst of trials that can sing these words with utter confidence…'

Abraham represents the beginning of the faith journey of post flood man. Like Seth, in an age before him, Abraham begins an era where men call upon the name of the Lord again; an era when there are some people that fear the Lord and seek to be right in His eyes. Abraham’s life is marked by trials that grew his faith and is written for us to understand what mercy is all about. Though all of us are sinful at our core, God's purpose was always to display the magnificence of His grace by freely giving salvation to those of moving faith like Abraham the father of us all.

TEXT: ROMANS 4:16-25

SONGS:

GOODNESS OF GOD, COMMONS WORSHIP

GREAT IS THY FAITHFULNESS, COVER

I TRUST IN GOD, ELEVATION COVER

TIS SO SWEET TO TRUST IN JESUS, KARI JOBE

OCEANS, HILLSONG

We think too much, and talk too much, about graces and gifts and attainments — and do not sufficiently remember that faith is the root and mother of them all. In walking with God, a man will go just as far as he believes, and no further. His life will always be proportioned to his faith. His peace, his patience, his courage, his zeal, his works — all will be according to his faith. C.H. Spurgeon

Chapter three finishes with the conclusion that justification is by faith and is completely without the law but how can a man be acquitted/ justified, who is not deemed innocent/righteous? He cannot or else the judge is not just! The declaration of justification/considered innocent is based in righteousness that is imputed/placed to the account of the man who lives by faith in a God that is eternally faithful.  Romans 1:17

"If the father of the faithful, the ancestor on whom the Jews so much prided themselves, was justified this way, then Paul was advancing no new doctrine in when claiming the same thing might occur now." Albert Barnes

TEXT: ROMANS 4:1-16

SONGS:

GOD SO LOVED, WE THE KINGDOM

YES, WE BELIEVE, PAUL BALOCHE

TIS SO SWEET TO TRUST IN JESUS, SHANE AND SHANE

TRUST IN YOU, 7 HILLS WORSHIP

I KNOW WHOM I HAVE BELIEVED, D.W. WHITTLE

Nothing else but the free love of the Father is the beginning of our salvation, and Christ is he in whom our righteousness and salvation dwells: and faith is the instrument or means by which we apprehend it! GBN COMMENTARY

“Faith is a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that a man could stake his life on it a thousand times” ― Its kind of like this….“Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.” 
 ― Martin Luther

Nobody was ever good enough, no, not one! The law clearly told us we were guilty but the words of God also brought mercy. Oh the benefit and blessing of divine revelation to enlighten the eyes, rejoice the heart and quicken the soul.  It compares to gold for profit, honey for sweetness, milk for nourishing and to food for strengthening. The Jews had this advantage; but we Christians have a privilege beyond them; the revealing of the gospel of Jesus; the mystery of salvation by grace through faith in the resurrected Christ was made crystal clear. It is the free gift we could have never earned!

There is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

 This is the character of all unregenerate men. It is a true description of the whole race of mankind, whether Jews or Gentiles. In their natural state, “there is none righteous . . . there is none that seeketh after God . . . . there is none that doeth good, no, not one.”

TEXT: ROMANS 1:1-20

SONGS:

SON OF SUFFERING, BETHEL

AMAZING LOVE HOW CAN IT BE, CHRIS TOMLIN COVER

LORD I NEED YOU, MATT MAHR

GREAT IS THY FAITHFULNESS, AUSTIN STONE

We think we can make our own set of rules and determine for ourselves what is right and wrong. This is delusion: this is the great lie; this is the slippery slope that leads to eternal destruction! Woe to those who speak it; cursed are those who dare to teach it! But most Jews were consistently guilty of condemning those without; teaching that only people who joined them and followed their interpretation of the law could be saved. They rested in their identity instead of their holiness. But holiness is being set apart toward God, not baptism, not church membership, not knowledge or theology but a heart that seeks to be like Him.

Randy Alcorn: "Grace never ignores the awful truth of our depravity; in fact it emphasizes it. The worse we realize we are the greater we realize God's grace."

"People who have their own depravity in the forefront of their mind have the greatest understanding of God's mercy." – MoriahPeters for KING + COUNTRY

TEXT: ROMANS 2

SONGS:

AMAZING GRACE, TOMMEE PROFFIT

HIS NAME IS JESUS, JEREMY RIDDLE

CLEAN HEART,  BRYAN & KATIE TORWALT

CLEANSE ME, SEARCH ME O GOD

JESUS, OUR JUDGE AND OUR SAVIOR,  SOVEREIGN GRACE WORSHIP

What makes mankind think he can create God in his own image? What audacity to attempt to give the creator of all whatever attributes we want? We don’t get to determine our own personality yet we think we can give our creator His. We think we can make our set of rules and determine for ourselves what is right and wrong. This is delusion: this is the great lie; this is the slippery slope that leads to eternal destruction! Woe to those who speak it; cursed are those who dare to teach it! 

 “We have sinned against God, and it is inevitable that sin should be followed by punishment. “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” 

"Christians, too, often find God’s wrath troubling. As C.S. Lewis said, “There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this, if it lay in my power.” There have been times in my life where I too have thought, Give me a divine eraser and 10 minutes, and I’ll take wrath out of the Bible."

TEXT: ROMANS 1:18-32

SONGS:

YOUR NAME IS HOLY, PHIL WICKHAM

ONLY A HOLY GOD, CITY ALIGHT

IN CHRIST ALONE, ACOUSTIC COVER

I STAND AMAZED IN THE PRESENCE, ACOUSTIC COVER