Romans 10:16-21: Culpable Religious Unbelief
Introduction: Unbelief is a cockroach! Cockroaches can survive without food for prolonged periods of time; they are 8-15 times more resistant to radiation than vertebrates; some can go without air for 45 minutes; some have revived after being submerged underwater for 30 minutes; they can survive sub-zero temperatures and continue to have bodily functions even after they have been decapitated. Cockroaches are hard to kill and so is unbelief. The atomic bomb of Christ’s death and resurrection has hit the nation of Israel but unbelief like the cockroach continues to thrive. Paul in chapters 9-11 of Romans is dealing...
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James 2:14-16: Faith without works is dead: Reconciling James and Paul
Introduction: ‘The Bible is full of contradictions’ is one of the many things that unbelievers throw in our faces. My standard response is, ‘Show me one.’ This usually calls their bluff and reveals that they are only repeating things they have heard and using them conveniently as arguments but have no proof. It reveals an unwillingness to believe the truth and a willingness to believe anything against Christianity. And it also reveals a basic faith commitment to believing things without proof, which contradicts the naturalistic approach they supposedly disprove Christianity with. However, one of the things that some have...
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Romans 10:10: Evident Faith
Introduction: It is claimed that Christianity is the biggest religion in the world with over 1 billion adherents, only just beating Islam. I think that there is a lot less than that. People included in those statistics are those who are baptised as infants in any Christian church including the Roman Catholic and it includes all the cults who call themselves Christian. Not to mention that cultural Christians and those who may have made some sort of confession of faith as a child and have never gone on to live the Christian life. How many say that they are...
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Romans 10:10: Heart Faith
Introduction: As a young Christian my friend and I were always willing to learn from what we considered to be any zealous, consistent and effective Christian. One early example was a man called Don Leonard, we called him Oom Don. He was a converted actor and alcoholic who was turned into a raging evangelist. He was the boldest man I have ever met. He would drive a car around that said, ‘TURN OR BURN’, and ‘Hell has no fire escape.’ He would walk through the streets of Randburg preaching loudly in the shopping malls and squares. However, he was...
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Romans 10:5-9: Saving Faith
Introduction: Martin Luther said that if anyone knows the difference between law and Gospel, make him a doctor of divinity and let him preach. The distinction between the law and the gospel is the heart of Reformation and the heart of the difference between the religion of the first century Jews and the message Paul was preaching. The whole of chapter 10 is a prolonged discussion on why the Jews are to blame for not being saved, it is because of their unbelief. We have seen Paul commend their zeal, but reveal that it is without the knowledge of...
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