In verse number one You go into some churches and scare folks to death if somebody was to glorify God Romans chapter number 10 and verse 1 There is no book in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation that that deals with the issue of sin and justification, faith and salvation, like the Book of Romans. Christians have always loved the Book of Romans. When you get to the 10th chapter of the Book of Romans, the Apostle Paul tries to make it as plain and simple as he possibly can as to how a sinner can be right with God. Men want to complicate it. So let's read this in Romans 10 verse 1. Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be saved. For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. For they being ignorant of God's righteousness and going about to establish their own righteousness have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. For Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, that the man which doeth those things shall live by them. But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise. Say not in thine heart who shall ascend into heaven, that is to bring Christ down from above, or who shall descend into the deep, that is to bring up Christ again from the dead. But what saith it? The word is nigh thee even in thy mouth and in thy heart, that is the word of faith which we preach. That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture saith, whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek. For the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Father, bless this holy book now. God, I pray that you'd grant to me unction to preach it. In Jesus' sweet holy name, I pray this morning. Bless the Lamb, bless the Lamb, bless the Lamb. In thy name I pray. Amen. You can be seated. So the Apostle Paul in verses 1 through 13 has laid out for us a very clear declaration that the only way that you can ever be justified in the sight of God is by faith. And this faith that justifies also saves. For it is what we call saving faith. And faith, therefore, in the New Testament is a very powerful thing. Faith is something that can come from God and God alone. There are people who have all kinds of different faith in this world. They have faith in each other and faith in their job, faith in their abilities, and this and that. But the faith that the New Testament's talking about is what we call saving faith. And saving faith is a marvelous thing. And once you have it, it changes your life. The word pistis, pistou is the verb form of it, is a Greek word that means to be persuaded, to put your reliance upon someone, to reach forth in trust and embrace that individual or what they say or who they are or what they mean to you. That's what it's talking about. It's not talking about agreeing to a bunch of things said or assent to a bunch of facts that you may agree with. That's not faith. Saving faith is putting your faith in someone. And Simeon said plainly, now thy servant can depart in peace. I have seen thy salvation. And he was holding in his hands a newborn babe. But Simeon understood by prophecy and by revelation from God that that baby that he had in his hands was the salvation of God. The baby. Christ Jesus the Lord. The person is the Savior. And it is faith in that person. So the Bible tells us in the book of Romans chapter number 10 that we have faith, that this faith in verse number 8, the word is nigh thee even in thy mouth and in thy heart that is the word of faith which we preach. In the book of Acts chapter number 20 and verse number 21 we read these words, testifying both to the Jews and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. I want you to consider that the New Testament is comparing two things here, and I'm going to try to remove some roadblocks as I preached to you this morning. Verse number 21 says, testifying both to the Jews and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. Now I'm going to ask you a question this morning. Do you believe that repentance will save you? If you do, you don't know your Bible. I am not in any way going to denigrate repentance, but I'm not going to put the cart before the horse either. They're those that teach that absolutely repentance is part of salvation. That this act of repenting is what gets you saved. And I'm going to tell you right now, right straight on, as plain as I know how. Repentance of itself is human effort to try to make things right between you and God. When you think that by stopping anything that that is going to make you right with God, you are dead wrong. Saving faith produces repentance. Is repentance part of it? Absolutely. Can you remove repentance from saving faith? Absolutely not. Does an individual who has been born again, does that individual repent? You better believe it. You better believe that repentance is as much a part as, my friend, your soul and your spirit make up who you are. But do not put repentance before faith. If you have true, saving faith, New Testament, Bible-believing faith, it will produce repentance. But the faith must come first. The reception of God's Word, the reception of God's promise, to believe God at His Word, to take Him at His Word, to take what God said about you and your condition, who you are, where you're headed, and then what Christ did for you at the cross, that is absolutely primary. First, you've got to believe God. The Bible said that Abraham believed God, and it was a candidate hymn for righteousness. My friend, repentance follows. If you have true faith, if you truly believe, if you've truly received Christ, repentance is going to come. It's going to happen. My friend, that measure of repentance, how deep it is, how broad it is, how much it encompasses your life, is a matter of how much faith works in you to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. There are those of you that have been saved for 20 years and you haven't repented yet of some of the things that God wants you to repent of. Sometimes your salvation, my friend, is produced in your soul and your spirit, and it takes decades for the Holy Spirit to begin to open you up to the things that you need to repent for. But that is the work of the Holy Spirit, and that is the work of saving faith. As long as we are in this world, as long as we walk on the face of this earth, as long as we desire to live for God, there will always be things the Holy Spirit of God points out in our lives that need to be made right. But you cannot make them right. They must be made right by the power of the Holy Spirit of God. And that's what the Holy Spirit does when He brings you before God and begins to move in your soul and produce repentance in your heart, if you believed on the Lord Jesus Christ. if you truly put saving faith in Him. If it was not a joke and not an act and not something to get someone off of your back, but it was something that moved you inside. You realized that you were a lost, hell-bound sinner. You wanted God to help you. That's saving faith when you reach up and you take hold of the Son of God and say Lord Jesus I embrace you I have no hope outside of you. There is absolutely nothing I can do to save myself Jesus save me I can't put words in your mouth because that'll do you no good. You can repeat sinners prayers from now here throughout eternity, it'll do you no good. But what will help you is from your own heart and your own soul is to reach up and embrace the Lord Jesus Christ, the only Savior of mankind. Once you have embraced Him, once you have received Him, once you have said within your heart, there is no other way. I cannot be saved without Him. Jesus is the Savior. Jesus is my Savior. Lord Jesus, I receive You. Once you've done that, that faith itself will begin to work in you and produce repentance toward God. and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Notice in Acts 20 and 21, the reciprocation of it. Notice how closely they work together. Notice how one complements the other. But you can never come to God saying, Lord, I've stopped this, I've stopped that, I've stopped this, I've stopped that, I've stopped everything. What can I stop? God says, He'll look at you and say, what about my son who paid the sin debt for you? Who died on the cross for you to be saved, to be born again, He is what you need. Not stopping anything will do you no good. He is what you need because if you do not embrace Christ, you will spend the rest of your life telling people of all the things you've quit. It will fill you full of self-righteousness. You will become judgmental of all men. And everybody that doesn't march to your tune, cross their T's, and dot their I's according to what you say, are denigrated in your sight, and it only builds you up from the inside with your own self-righteousness, and self-worth, and self-esteem. That is not salvation. But the church is full of people like that. I want you to listen to something that was sent to me the other day. And I want you to listen carefully to what was said. This man says, I seen the pastor deceive a 32-year-old drug-addicted mother by way of the Roman, and he implies Roman road. The whole church shouted, minus me, the piano player. Two weeks later, she was arrested for drugs and overdosed in the jailhouse. And then he has much more to say, but I excerpted that part because I want you to hear what's going on. I want you to begin to understand what's happening here. You say, preacher, if she had truly been saved, she would not have gone back to drugs. You say, preacher, if she had truly been born again, she would not go back to her liquor. She would not go back to the fornicating bed. She would not go back here. She would not go back there. You say, preacher, when you're truly saved, all these things stop. As I say to you this morning, and hear me and hear me well, the moment that you were born again, you became a new creature in Christ Jesus. But that old flesh is still the old flesh. And my friend, it is a progressive sanctification that you are born into. God gives you power to overcome the power of the flesh. But sometimes it takes time. Sometimes it takes effort. Sometimes it takes prayer. Sometimes it takes mature Christians to come to your side and help you along the way. To overcome drug addiction is a powerful, powerful thing. I thank God today that I have never been addicted to drugs. But that doesn't make me one bit better than anybody in this house. Because I know people that are addicted to drugs. And it ain't easy. to overcome the power of drug addiction in the flesh. It will suck you right back down into a hell hole that you came out of, and the only way you can get power and victory over it is by the blood of Christ and embracing once again the one that you truly believe in. He will give you power to repent. Sanctification is a progressive thing. It doesn't happen overnight. You will find out a hard lesson that once you truly believe in Christ, once you truly accept Him, a real battle starts in your soul from that moment on. And then to sit back and say, well, There's no way that the Roman road got her saved because she was back in drugs and OD'd a couple of weeks later is to raise yourself up on your pedestal of self-righteousness, your pedestal of self-righteousness, your pedestal of self-righteousness and judge the whole world. You don't have that right. Amen. Only God can do that. Now I need to say this, if you've made a profession of faith in Christ and then spend the rest of your life throwing, walking, trotting underfoot His blood, making a mockery and a joke out of the Christian faith, you never met Him to begin with. I have never known a drug addict yet. I have never known one yet that came out of hell itself, that did not have a struggle once they were born again. But they had a struggle, thank God, when they were born again. That old man wanted to cling on, but the new man began to rise up. And faith became the victor. And faith gave them life. And faith gave them victory. And faith carried them through. And your faith will carry you through. Your faith will become the victor. Glory to God, hear me today. It won't happen overnight. It'll take a battle. The Apostle Paul said, and such will have trouble in the flesh. Making a clear reference to people who had had problems before. They had delved into the depths of Satan. They had drunk deep from the dregs of sin. They understood the pleasures of this world. And the flesh does not like to turn loose easily. Amen. Amen. Some of you've had a struggle for decades. It wasn't easy. Some of you have been in church and out of church. You've been right with God and not right with God. You've had battles and some of the battles have put scars in your soul. And you realize sometimes how weak we really are. and how easy it is to fall back to the old man, and how easy it is to go back to what you used to be. But there's always that light, there's always that fire, there's always that presence of God, there's always the truth of the Word of God. If you have ever truly been born again of the Spirit of the Living God, that faith will be with you till you die. You cannot distinguish it, you can't do it. You can't do it. It may be smoldering. It may be covered up. It may be hidden. It may be forgotten. It may be cast aside. It may be a faith that you say doesn't exist anymore until you are put to the test. And sometimes that test is holding a little girl in your hands that you love dearly or watching a mother die Or it may be that you put in a straight that you can't do anything about You start to hurt skin for skin all that a man hath will he give for his skin Satan said that's 99% true Amen, it's not God talking but the devil knows us. He knows us. Well, he knows you well, he knows your weaknesses He knows how far to push you. He knows what button to push. He knows what to do to you and And if you have true saving faith, it's not that easy to get rid of it. If you've ever been born again of the Spirit of God, it's not easy to just turn it off. It doesn't work that way because you can't just turn it on. It doesn't work that way. And so we put roadblocks in the paths of people. We put up doors. We put up walls. And my friend, it's an amazing thing to me at how quickly we can become so judgmental. I have been told in the last few days that I'm a whore. I've been told in the last few days that I'm a church of whoredoms. I've been told in the last few days that I've been preaching easy-believe-ism to people. I've been told in the last few days that I'm leading people to hellfire and damnation. Why? Because I believe that Christ died on the cross for all men. And I believe when He died on the cross for all men, that if you come to Him, He won't turn you away. I believe if you come to Him, He won't turn you away. I believe that He'll save your soul. And I believe the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, meekness, gentleness, longsuffering, and all the rest of that. I believe all that. I believe that the power of the Holy Spirit of God working in the heart of a man and a woman will change them. But I've been saved since 1973, and there's still stuff in my life that God needs to get out. Amen. And he does that by working repentance in your heart. So quickly that we raise ourself up on a pinnacle and we become God's high sheriff and we start calling people whores and start calling a church a church of whoredom. I've been here for 38 years and I've preached the gospel to the grace of God for 38 years. I have preached the same gospel and never changed it and I don't know who this individual is, but come in here and walk up to me face to face and I'll tell you eyeball to eyeball, nothing's changed. Let God be the judge between the two of us. I have preached the truth. This is not a whore church, and I'm not a whore, and we don't preach whoredom. I preach the gospel of the grace of God, but I'll tell you what happened. The rock went down the alley and hit a dog, and that dog started barking, and it was a dog full of self-righteousness and Pharisaism. It was a dog that said, it's my way or no way. I'm the judge of all Christianity, and I'm thankful to God. As a pastor of 38 years, I've been in the drug wards. I've been on the street corners, I've smelled the liquor all over their bodies, and I know they're saved, but they're not right with God. And that's what it takes for all of us. Self-righteousness will be one of the worst things that ever happened to you. Somebody say, Lord Preacher, you don't preach the old-fashioned gospel. Are you talking about what they preached in the 1800s? Are you talking about what they preached in the 1700s? I'm going to preach to you what they preached in the first century. tell me how more old-fashioned you can get than that. I'm going to preach to you what was written in the book of Romans chapter number 10. Amen. It's not a game, folks. We're not playing with your soul. I have to give an account to God. I've got to answer to Him. And there are those who get up and leave this church and walk out the back door and they get sucked off into the five points of Calvinism. And they believe that you've got to be one of the elect or you'll never be saved. They believe it's only those that God chose before the foundation of the world that'll ever be saved. Show me one passage in the Bible from the book of Genesis to the book of Revelation Where it ever says that only those chosen from the foundation of the world will ever be saved Now I put that question to one one time on the phone that he was grilling me and I said now answer that please He started choking on his tongue and all he could say well, I'll see you later And I'm going to tell you why. God does elect and God does choose. I don't question that for a minute. There is no question whatsoever that God does elect and God does choose and that he has chosen those from the foundation of the world. But nowhere in the word of God does it ever say that just because you're not one of the chosen that you're chosen to go to hell. He doesn't say that. Amen. Amen. It's not in there. So if your buddy's a five-point Calvinist, present him with that problem. That's another wall between a sinner and God. You've got the wall of self-righteousness and the wall of Phariseeism and the wall of election. You've got all these walls that you've erected between the sinner and God. that I can go into any hell hole on the face of this earth. I can go anywhere men live and I can get up in the pulpit and I can say, I don't care who you are. I don't care what you've done. He'll forgive you. He'll save you. In the name of the Lamb's book of life. Amen. I went down here to Brushy Mountain Prison, got up on a platform out there in the middle of the field. They had hundreds of men gathered around down there, murderers, rapists, everything in the sun. And I got up on that platform at Brushy Mountain Prison, looked at them eyeball to eyeball, and I said, I'll tell you something, I don't care what you've done, Christ died for you. Amen. And I remember it, it's been decades, but I remember how they received that. They appreciated the fact that and they knew how sorry they were and what they'd done. Nobody's making excuses for anybody and nobody's condoning anything, but the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men. Even behind the maximum security prison walls of Brushy Mountain Prison, they can get right with God. Can you be saved in prison? You can be saved in the prison of your mind. Can you be born again? You nice, clean, church-going, goody-goody, to-shoot people that have never done anything wrong, you can't understand how powerful the grace of God is! Amen. And the man who wrote the most, the biggest majority of the New Testament was a murderer! Yes, he was. The Apostle Paul was guilty of murder. And he was headed to Damascus to carry more back to Jerusalem to stone them to death. And he, my friend, came face to face with God Almighty. And that was far enough. And that's what's wrong with the churches full of religion, full of this self-righteous crowd. I don't know of a man that's ever come face-to-face with God, that's ever really come face-to-face with Him, that's been broken down and exposed for who we are. If you ever come face-to-face with Almighty God, you won't walk away from that bragging. You can be sure if you ever come face-to-face with that Almighty Eternal Being, He'll take you apart, but He'll put you back together again. That's the good thing about him. Hallelujah to God. That's the good thing. Long suffering. He's put up with me for decades. Long suffering to us, Lord. Not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. There's one thing I want to do. I try to preach theology to you, and I'm going to do that, but I'm going to also preach the love of God to you. I want to preach justification to you. I want to preach redemption to you. I want to preach holiness to you. All the things that are the attributes and the things about God, but I also want to preach the love of God. The love of God. Over there when Judas Iscariot was sitting at the table and the Lord reached forth his hand and dipped it in the sop. That Bible says in the book of Matthew that Judas' hand went in at the same time. That's what I got from it. That their hands touched. He said, he that dippeth his hand with me into the sop. That gets pretty close. Pretty intimate. Their hands touched and Judas looked up at him and Christ looked at Judas and out of the eyes of the Lord Jesus Christ went forth love to the very one who was about to deny him. He loved Judas. He loved him. He didn't choose him to deny him. He chose him to give him a way out. But because he was a thief, it blinded him to the truth. He wouldn't give up what he was, but Christ offered him. And it says in the book of Psalm, I think it is chapter 41, my own familiar friend has lifted up his hand against me. To the apostle Peter, he said, you're gonna deny me three times. Peter said, not so, no way, Jose, it's not gonna happen. But he did deny him three times. And on that third time when he denied him, the Bible said the cock crew. And Peter, realizing that he had just fallen prey to Peter, went out and wept bitterly. Some of you will never really get right with God till you hit the bottom. You'll never make it. This man writes me this letter and says, I'm the piano player in my church. And he said, I watched this drug addicted woman and I watched this pastor deceive her. Why? He wasn't trying to deceive her. He was trying to help her. Anybody that takes you to the book of Romans isn't trying to hurt you. If you go to a pastor and that pastor opens up the book of Romans, he's trying to help you. But he writes me this letter and he tells me that she prayed the sinner's prayer. The sinner's prayer, he says it, the sinner's prayer. And then she got up and she went out and two weeks later she was in jail with an overdose of drugs. And therein the overdose of drugs. And I don't know what O.D. means. I don't know if he means by that that she died. Usually an O.D. means died. But some of you in this house are drug addicts. Now the born again part of you never has been nor will be. But your flesh is addicted to drugs. And you should have enough of the wisdom of God to leave, if it's even, you even think somebody's gonna be where you're going and they're gonna be using dope, you don't even go there. Because you've got a weakness in the flesh. And you'll find out how strong that flesh is. And some of you men right now that are so pious and so holy about your families and about your children, about your home. I'm glad that you love your family. I'm glad you love your children. I'm glad you love your home. But in a moment of weakness, a female could enter into your family, into your life, and fire up a passion inside you that's been lying dormant for a long time. And the first thing you know, you're out, and you don't even know, can't even imagine how you made it, how you got out like that. And it happens. I just got a prayer request this morning. This man says, pray for my daughter and her three children. He said, please pray for my daughter and her three children. He said, her husband left her and ran off with another woman. And he said, my daughter, he said, my daughter and my children are turning away from the Lord. And he said, it's a constant dog fight now inside the home. He said, the children are in each other's throat. Well, that's what it shows. That's what happens. That's what happens. I remember the church that I got saved into. I got saved into that church in 1973, and I remember that one of the men in that church left his wife and ran off with another woman. Ran off with her. Left his wife, broke up his home, and ran off with another woman. And he was one of the most respected men in that whole house. And yet, in a moment of passion, in a moment of weakness, whatever, however it came about, he wound up leaving his family. You say, preacher, what happened? The flesh. You say, if he'd been saved, he wouldn't have done that. Oh, you really believe that? You really believe that? If you're truly born again, you're born again forever. but your struggle only began. Only began. This is why the Apostle Paul said, I put no confidence in the flesh. What he means by that is he said, I have learned to make a difference between the flesh and the spirit. My flesh will never please God. My flesh is an enemy to God. My flesh is an obstacle and an impediment and a burden before God. I've got to learn that by the power of the Spirit, I overcome the power of the flesh. You've got to learn that. You've got to learn it. You've got to learn it. We've got three preachers out. preach the word. Three of them, out. So what are you doing preacher? I pray every day for them. Do you? I pray every day for them. And I'm nothing, but I shut that closet door, I turn that light out, and I turn that fan on so I can't hear anybody. And I go in there and get down on my face, and I know that if we don't intercede for them, nobody's interceding for them. And the only hope they have is that some Christian will bear their burdens and intercede for them and carry them before God. And that one day God will turn the light on because the light's still in there. Still in there. The crowd that's your friend today If you march to their tune, sing their song, cross all your T's and dot all your I's according to what they want, what they say, the way it ought to be, just remember that when you're lying flat on your back, or you wind up out of church, or you wind up with your family broken up, it'll be that soul that comes to you, not in judgment, but in love and mercy. to restore you and help you and bear your burdens. That'll be a witness to you like nothing else could possibly ever be. That is a witness. A little seven-year-old girl sits right over there. That little seven-year-old girl sings right up here. She walked out of this choir about three weeks ago, and I always give her a little kiss on top of her head. And she walked out of this choir about three weeks ago, and that little seven-year-old girl looked up at me, and she says, I love you, preacher. And I said, I love you, too, Hannah. With all my heart, I love you. And I watched that little seven-year-old girl go over there and sit down. And you know folks we are what we are by the grace of God. God's got a special grace for little children. He really does. Suffer the little children, forbid them not to come to Him. There is something, you don't have guile like we've got. I've got 68 years of guile being September, 68 years of guile built up in me. These little kids don't have it. They just got that simple honesty about them. What you see is what you get. could ever learn the lesson that these seven year old kids have it would make all the difference in the world between us and our relationship with God. Pull off your face. Take off all your robes. Take all that garbage off. And just get down and get honest with God. You'd be amazed at how you can get things right with Him. Amen. Amen. This is why little ones, I'd rather have a seven year old like her praying for me than a whole deacon board. Because she'll get a hold of God. She'll get a hold of Him. She'll get a hold of Him. That's why I stay in good with the kids. Y'all figure that one out. Yeah, that's why I'm kissing the kids and staying in good with them. I got me a prayer team, brother. Y'all get that? Amen. We say, I'm praying for you, preacher. Good. I'm glad to hear it. But the little ones do. Amen. Don't mess with their faith. Strengthen it. Help them. Love on these kids. Show them that there's something real about our Christian faith. That we've got something to rejoice about. It's a good life. It's not perfect. No. We got problems, but it's a good life. You want to swap it for something? No. It's a good life. God's been good to me. So give them a good environment. Love these little children. and God will bless you and he'll return it to you. Father, in thy holy name I pray and for Jesus' sake I ask it that you'd use what I've said for the glory of God. There may be some that center in this house this morning, Lord, been stopped by people, been stopped by election, been stopped by Pharisees, been stopped by self-righteousness, been stopped by religion, been stopped by churches, been stopped by everything. Lord, every time they try to come to you some kind of an obstacle comes up between them. I pray this morning, Father, in Jesus' name, by the Holy Spirit, by the power of the Holy Spirit of God, Lord, Move those obstacles out of the way and show the center in this house today that he's got a friend in Jesus, that the Lord Jesus Christ loves him, he or she. And we'll receive them. In your holy name, I pray for Jesus. I ask it. Amen.