Study Through Romans: Lesson 10 :: By Sean Gooding

Published on: March 15, 2020 by RR7

Chapter 3: 1-20
You’re Not Okay and Neither Am I

“What advantage then has the Jew, or what is the profit of circumcision? ² Much in every way! Chiefly because to them were committed the oracles of God. ³ For what if some did not believe? Will their unbelief make the faithfulness of God without effect? ⁴ Certainly not! Indeed, let God be true but every man a liar. As it is written: ‘That You may be justified in Your words, and may overcome when You are judged.’ ⁵But if our unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unjust who inflicts wrath? (I speak as a man.) ⁶ Certainly not! For then how will God judge the world?

“⁷For if the truth of God has increased through my lie to His glory, why am I also still judged as a sinner? ⁸And why not say, ‘Let us do evil that good may come”?—as we are slanderously reported and as some affirm that we say. Their condemnation is just. ⁹ What then? Are we better than they? Not at all. For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin.

“¹⁰ As it is written: ‘There is none righteous, no, not one; ¹¹There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God. ¹² They have all turned aside; they have together become unprofitable; there is none who does good, no, not one.’¹³ ‘Their throat is an open tomb; with their tongues they have practiced deceit’; ‘The poison of asps is under their lips’;¹⁴ ‘Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.’¹⁵ ‘Their feet are swift to shed blood; ¹⁶Destruction and misery are in their ways; ¹⁷ And the way of peace they have not known.’ ¹⁸ ‘There is no fear of God before their eyes.’

“¹⁹ Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. ²⁰ Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.“

We have this system here in Canada called the Amber Alert. I am sure this exists in other areas as well. Two nights ago, the alert went off multiple times, and my wife and I were awakened by our phones alarming with a very distinct sound. The cause of the alert was that a young lad, just 14 years old, had been abducted. He had not been seen since he left for school in the morning; and through a series of improper recording and alerting, his parents did not find out until later in the day that he, in fact, had not turned up to school. By the grace of God, this young man was found safely, even though he was a bit shaken.

Why was he abducted? The head of the Major Crimes Division in a press conference told the public that this young man was taken as a revenge for his step-brother stealing in the range of $4,000,000 in cocaine from a rival gang. This young man, just 14, had nothing to do with it, but he was abducted by the rival gang in a van on his way to school.

Over the past year, our Provincial government, State government, for those in the US, have been looking at the scourge of human trafficking here in Ontario. Sadly, we are one of the major areas for human trafficking in North America. Recently, we learned that some of the people actually setting up the abductions were High School kids who were befriending and selling their classmates. This is big business with each abducted person going for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Most of us are familiar with the movie Taken, where the abducted daughter was sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars because she was a virgin. Why, Sean, are you writing about this? Why bring up these heinous incidents? Because we need to get it into our thick skulls that mankind is intrinsically evil. There is nothing good about us. Were it not for the grace of God, it could be you and I out doing these crimes and seeing nothing wrong with them; just doing business would be our mentality.

Total Depravity, verse 10

You and I are not okay. You and I are evil to the core, and you and I are incapable of any goodness in and of ourselves. We are rotten to the core. The Bible calls us sinners; people who consistently miss the mark of God’s holiness.

I watched a critique of a sermon by a prominent preacher here a few weeks ago. The preacher was saying that we should not be defined by our mistakes. He used the analogy of a famous baseball player who had a great batting average, good fielding percentage and was an all-round star; but in a playoff game, he misfielded a ground ball that allowed the opposing team to get their momentum back and eventually win the series. He was known for this misfield even up the time that he was inducted into the Hall of Fame. It was sad that for all his accomplishments, he came to be known for this one mistake.

The implication is that we are all superstars on God’s team – we are good; good minds, good hearts and in general good people; but every now and then, we make mistakes; and this one thing or these few things should not define us. This is basically heresy; we are evil, sinners, rotten to the core.

The list of evils that proceed verse 10 is lengthy and horrible, and we can all find ourselves in the verses somewhere. Maybe we are not seeking after God; we just have a general indifference to Him and His ways. Maybe like verse 13, our very words are death, our mouth is a tomb, maybe our words are poison to those we say we love. At the very least, we are liars (verse 13). Maybe we curse God and man (verse 14), we are murderers (verse 15), and on and on we can go with the depth of our evil.

Murder has become normal here in the Toronto area. When I was a young man just moved here, gun violence was almost unheard of. But just a few evenings ago, a man was shot in a public bus in the sight of many witnesses; the shooter had no fear of being seen and arrested.

We are evil to the core.

I am a fan of police and FBI shows like Criminal Minds and the CSI shows. It was not until a few years ago that I came to understand that most, if not all of the shows, were based on actual events. The murders, the killings and the seemingly inhuman things that other humans do to others are jaw-dropping at times.

Paul, a former Pharisee, would have thought himself righteous before God. He kept the Law. He followed every little instruction; yet, now he understood that it all meant nothing. He lays this out in Philippians 3: 1-7:

“Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you, to me indeed is not grievous, but for you it is safe. Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision. For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh. Though I might also have confidence in the flesh. If any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more: Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; Concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ.”

Paul had a lot to boast about as a Pharisee concerning his own self-righteousness and keeping the Law. But once he came face to face with Jesus, he saw that all of his righteousness was nothing. In another place, he calls it dung (Phil. 3: 8), poop in our modern terms. So great was his transformation that Paul claims that he was the ‘chief of sinners,’ the head sinner (1 Timothy 1:15). If there was a chapter for sinners, I, Paul says, would be head sinner. Paul saw himself as totally depraved, incapable of goodness at any level and in need of a Savior; Jesus is that Savior.

This seems to be a missing doctrine in many churches today. We are sinners. We are not doing okay and have just a few mess-ups along the way. Rather, we are evil to the core and, on occasion, we do some good. Many have never had to come face to face with the depth of their own sins; many never understand that they are the enemy of God because God cannot stand sin nor be in its presence. Many, myself included, do not appreciate the wonderful gift of salvation because we do not understand the depth of our depravity. We take for granted the grace of God. We take for granted the Mercy of God. We take for granted the kindness of God, and we take for granted the gift of eternal life. A gift that is offered freely to us, but a gift that cost God the precious life of His Son.

You cannot Save Yourself, verse 20

No one will be saved by keeping the Law. No one. In fact, if you were to be able to keep the entire law, you can’t, and neither can I; we would still die in our sinfulness. Why? Because we are born sinners by nature. We need to be born-again. All of our righteousness is not enough to erase our nature, that being evil. You will not win God’s favor or earn eternal life with good deeds. You must simply be born again; be born from Heaven with a new spirit in us, the Holy Spirit of God in us.

If we consider the verses from Philippians 3, Paul was telling us that he’d had something to boast about. He was zealous, as were many of the Pharisees. They were devoted, committed, and all in as far they knew; and yet, all of his righteousness that he thought he had from the Law was not, and could never be enough.

Jesus’ righteousness is all that God the Father accepts when we are born-again; we become clothed in Jesus’ righteousness, and that covering is all we need. The prophet Isaiah says it this way, “I will rejoice greatly in the LORD, my soul will exult in my God; For He has clothed me with garments of salvation, He has wrapped me with a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels” (Isaiah 61:10).

God hath clothed me with the clothes, the garments of salvation. I cannot save myself. You cannot save yourself. You and I need to be saved from our complete sinfulness, not just our actions but our very nature. This is the problem for a lot of people; we have lied to ourselves and, in many cases, to our church people that they are good people. They are not, neither are you, and I am not. God is good. Any goodness I have must come from Him. He is the one who can wash us clean and make us good.

The Psalmist in 51:2 and verse 7 says this: “Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, And cleanse me from my sin.”

“Purify me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.”

In the last days, many, the Bible says, will claim ‘righteous deeds’ as their ticket to salvation. Jesus will tell them that He never knew them. Oh my, what a sad day that will be!

I leave you with these words of hope from the Apostle Paul in Acts 16:31:

“So they said, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household.’”

God bless you,

Pastor Sean Gooding

Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church

missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca

Ripening Times #6 – World Urbanization: Part II :: By Wilfred Hahn

Published on: March 13, 2020 by RR7

(Urbanization Cities Part 2)

We continue our series on “ripening trends” of prophetic significance seen around the world, completing our examination of worldwide urbanization. Very definitely, the manifestation of more and bigger cities qualifies as a prophetically significant trend affecting the world today.

The Bible uses the metaphor of ripening grapes to indicate the time for judgment. “Swing the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come, trample the grapes, for the winepress is full and the vats overflow—so great is their wickedness!” (Joel 3:13; cf. Revelation 14:18). In this sense, we indeed see that the world is ripe with last-day trends and is quickly approaching the time of fruition. However, the secular humanist will prefer to recognize “significant” new trends optimistically, as the great advances of mankind and its emancipation.

And so, our age today is “ripe” with many end-time trends. No one will doubt that the world has embarked on an accelerating course of change over recent decades and centuries. Humanity is on a rushed agenda to “rendezvous with history.” The indicators are plain to see for all who wish to see them. After all, information is more easily available to people today than ever before. Unfortunately, at the same time there is less understanding.

Thus, we are systematically identifying the “trends of significance”—this meaning worldwide developments that have recently erupted on the scene in line with Bible prophecy and the promises of the Lord. These end-time “enabling” trends, we show, are so widespread and advanced that it would be plainly unreasonable to not conclude that the times are ripe for judgment and the return of our Lord.

To date in this column, we have qualified five “significant trends”: 1. A Wealth Explosion; 2 spreading Post-Familialism; 3. Honored Elites (emergence of global plutocrats); 4. Advances of the Titans (the sudden emergence of multinational companies); and 5. Rising Asia. There are yet more ripening trends to review. We now complete our examination of the sixth “ripening” trend—World Urbanization.

Cities: No Biblical Endorsement

Generally, we see that the Bible does not reflect an approving view of great cities. Indeed, cities are necessary. Yet, according to secular anthropologists, greater urbanization tends to go hand in hand with the deterioration of the family unit, lower marriage rates, and consumerism. The value of children becomes their consumerism. As such, we note that world demographic trends interlink with the trend of urbanization.

Commenting on demographic trends and their linkage with urbanization, says Stratfor, “The process [of declining fertility] is essentially irreversible. Why? […] It is primarily a matter of urbanization. […] In a mature urban society, the economic value of children declines. In fact, children turn from instruments of production to objects of massive consumption.”

As seen from the Bible’s perspective, the aforementioned characteristics of urbanization are not developments that the Creator designed as preferential and most blessed for mankind.

The Bible goes further, indicting other moral pitfalls of city life. Several times it decries large cities for their violence and immorality. For example, of Nineveh, Nahum says: “Woe to the city of blood, full of lies, full of plunder, never without victims!” (Nahum 3:1). Isaiah describes Jerusalem as such: “See how the faithful city has become a prostitute! She once was full of justice; righteousness used to dwell in her—but now murderers!” (Isaiah 1:21). Sodom and Gomorrah are shown as cities at the apogee of great moral failure.

The woes of Bible prophecy are frequently addressed to cities. One characteristic noted is the potential for smugness and self-determination, the same attitude that afflicted Babel. For example, Babylon the Great boasts in her heart: “[…] I sit enthroned as queen. I am not a widow; I will never mourn” (Revelation 18:7). Sodom is said to be “arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy” (Ezekiel 16:49). Seen in this light, big cities tend to be hotbeds for both humanism and immorality.

One earthly city will be venerated as perfect some day in the future. “This is what the LORD says: ‘I will return to Zion and dwell in Jerusalem. Then Jerusalem will be called the Faithful City, and the mountain of the LORD Almighty will be called the Holy Mountain’” (Zechariah 8:3; cf. Joel 3:17). That will occur in the Millennial period. As we will yet show, there will be a final eternal “great city.”

Points to Ponder

Today, we see a world of larger and larger cities, ever higher population density, and globalism (this being a form of a global city)—unified, smug and intent upon constructing a world apart from God. The sins of Babel are today being replicated on a massive global scale.

Here is an interesting side note that has prophetic implications: The UNPD projects Baghdad (Iraq) as being the 62^nd largest city in the world by the year 2030. If we are to go by the UNPD’s forecast, it will yet be some time before Babylon (which is a southern suburb of Bagdad, Iraq) can again rise as a “great city” in the world and serve as the world’s nexus point for commerce and trade. A number of prophecy teachers do believe that a physical Babylon will again be revived to be the world’s “great city” … one that qualifies to “[reign] over the kings of the earth” (Revelation 17:18 KJV). This writer does not hold to this view. The emergence of Babylon as a “great city” would be impossible, let alone occurring within the next 7 years (the maximum time this can happen, should the imminent Rapture occur today and the Tribulation Period immediately follow).

Therefore, the “great city” of Babylon mentioned in Revelation twice cannot be interpreted to indicate a physical re-emergence of ancient Babylon. A commercial “great city” has already engulfed the world, in this writer’s opinion.

The trend of urbanization definitely qualifies as a “ripening trend.” It meets at least seven of our “ripening” criteria. It is an emerging trend that shows “acceleration” … particularly so since the 1800s. Up to that point in human history, urbanization was relatively stable.

It is a trend that shows acceleration in the recent past, and suddenness. We find ourselves asking, why is urbanization occurring now and not at some other time in history? Yes, it is a trend attributed to industrialization. However, then we must ask, why did industrialization take off when it did? The very improbability and inexplicability of this trend indicates another sign of “significance.”

Also, urbanization is undoubtedly a development with global impact and scale. It has confluence or interconnection with another accelerating trend of “significance”—interweaving and reinforcing demographic developments. And, finally, it is a trend that reflects humanism and breeds immorality.

But, where in the Bible is it prophesied that urbanization will occur—or be a symptom of the last days? All seven indicators of significance are noted, but to this point we have not yet referred to any biblical passage about future conglomerations taking place.

We cannot find any such specific statement in the Bible. However, we do note many aligning developments. The 7 indicators of “significance” are compelling proof. But biblical provenance of this development remains important nonetheless.

We can point to several supportive deductions. For example, the word pairing “great city” occurs only 13 times in the Bible. This word pairing is found nowhere outside the prophetic books of the Bible. Revelation alone refers to a “great city” 8 times (also, “mighty city” once). No mention of any “great city” is found elsewhere in the New Testament. This writer does not believe it accidental that “great city” is linked with prophetic events.

In the end, there is one more alignment that is significant. It is a wonderful and benevolent outcome, considering mankind’s poor experience with cities. We observe that God provides the final version of a city … a virtuous one … a “great city.” It is called the New Jerusalem: “[…] that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God” (Revelation 21:10 KJV). Among a number of features, it also has a “great street” (Revelation 21:21; 22:2).

In a sense, we may see that the world’s immoral cities finally have their redemption in the form of the New Jerusalem. Just as God redeems people, so also eventually the great city.\

Wilfred J. Hahn is a global economist/strategist. Formerly a top-ranked global analyst, research director for a major Wall Street investment bank, and head of Canada’s largest global investment operation, his writings focus on the endtime roles of money, economics and globalization. He has been quoted around the world and his writings reproduced in numerous other publications and languages. His 2002 book The Endtime Money Snare: How to live free accurately anticipated and prepared its readers for the Global Financial Crisis. A following book, Global Financial Apocalypse Prophesied: Preserving true riches in an age of deception and trouble, looks further into the prophetic future.

Contact Wilfred at: staff@eternalvalue.com