Why only spend a few months studying Romans?

Hello everyone. Thanks again for sending in questions related to our recent sermons. This last week, we began our series in Romans, um, which we said we’re going to cover in the next few months, um, leading up, going into summer. If we don’t finish by summer, we’ll come back for a little bit in the fall to cover anything we weren’t able to get to before the summer. Um, we said Romans is probably the most comprehensive explanation of the Christian faith ever written.

It’s Paul’s magnum opus. Um, covers primarily what the gospel is, and then later what effect the gospel has on us. You know, many churches, I say, I’ve said, you know, might spend a year in Romans, or one church that I know of and really respect spent eight or nine years studying Romans. And so the question comes in this week, um, why not spend, you know, um, a lengthy period of time studying Romans?

Why are we only going to study Romans for a few months? Um, I I believe probably, um, asking, you know, are we going to miss anything by going through it more quickly? Um, and so, uh, that the answer is, I no, I don’t believe that we’re going to miss anything. We’re going to go slow enough that we can cover everything. Um, but we also won’t, uh, won’t read every verse from the book of Romans in our services. And in the real reason for that is, uh, the way that Paul wrote Romans. Um, he’s developing

an argument, um, from from from beginning to end. He’s, um, putting different building blocks, um, on on what he had just said previously. Um, and the way that Paul argues is he’ll make a point, and then he will defend that point about six different ways. Um, and so, uh, we can make the point, make reference to all the different ways that he defends that point, um, without spending a tremendous amount of time on all the different ways that he defends the point. Um, so for instance, in in this week

coming up, um, in service, we’ll only read the first few verses of chapter two, um, because all of chapter two is really proving the same point that these people who, um, believed they were okay with God because of their own righteousness, he’s he’s proving to them that they’re that they’re really not righteous, that they have also failed God’s law, um, just like other people who they see as, um, kind of wildly disobedient to God.

Paul’s showing them, hey, you’re disobedient too. And so, uh, yeah, he proves that several different ways throughout chapter two. So we can make that point without going through every single word in chapter two. Um, and then even at the beginning of chapter three, he kind of reiterates the same conclusion. No one is righteous before God.

And that’s a whole another large section. Um, and so we can kind of condense his argument, uh, down to a to a shorter time frame, um, than than going through everything, um, you know, very individually. Um, and so, so that’s really the reason. Believe we can cover the whole the whole thing in a shorter amount of time without really zeroing in on all the tiny little specifics.

We we can get the picture. And especially, we give you his his argument from each chapter. If you go back and read through the chapter, even if it’s verses that we didn’t specifically mention, you’ll know exactly what he’s talking about because it will fit into, uh, the argument that he’s made, which we’ve already shown. Um, so that’s why. Uh, we hope that’s helpful. And of course, if we skip anything, you can always send in a sermon question, and we’ll circle back to it.

We’ll see you next time.