Romans Series - Part 4 - Romans 1:10-19 - David Bercot

Well, good morning to everyone. We are going through the book of Romans, and we got through verse 9 last Sunday, so we're going to pick up from there. If you weren't here last Sunday, just by way of very brief review, Paul is writing Romans. His main purpose in writing is to help the Jews to understand that the Gentiles come into the church as equals, that the Gentiles do not have to come under the law, and that the Jews themselves are not saved by the law.

And since there's a bit of hard counsel in his letter, Paul starts off by assuring the brothers and sisters in Rome how much he loves them, that he's writing this letter because he cares for them, so that they're not going to take offense at what he says. And I think he does a very good job. And we're going to pick up; we'll see even more of this. Verse 10, he says, "If you want to turn in your Bibles, Romans chapter 1, and yeah, just follow along with me as we go." Now, as I explained last week, I'm reading from—I took the King James and modernized it and changed a few things to fit how the early Christians were understanding Romans so that it would fit what they were saying.

Now, nothing you're going to be hearing this morning or in any of this is original with me. This is all from various early Christians taking their thoughts on what Romans meant to them. I've been looking at Christian writers before Augustine. Now, when we get to Augustine in the early 400s, then there's a big change.

And unfortunately, he totally affected the Western Church. He lived right at the time when the Western Roman Empire was crumbling, was being taken over by the barbarians. And so he was like the last of the major Latin church fathers, you might say, who the church looked to as church fathers. I don't look at Augustine as a church father, but yeah, he had this outsized influence on the Roman Catholic Church, and then he also influenced the Reformation. So if you're a Western Christian, which we all are, yeah, you've heard Romans through the eyes of Augustine. It's pretty hard to get away from that. So we're going to be looking at it from how did people read this book before Augustine?

How did they understand it before this man came and influenced everybody, everyone in the West? Now, the Eastern Church is still—they ignore Augustine. They would not be influenced by him when it comes to Romans. Okay, so verse 10, Paul says, "Making request if by any means now at length I might have a prosperous journey by the will of God to come to you." We just got through praying for Brian and his trip later on today.

And we have the example in the scriptures of praying before we travel that God will give us a prosperous journey. So there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, it's a very scriptural thing to do, and it's why we do that when we're traveling. Now, in his case, it's a little bit different because he's making request if by any means I might have a prosperous journey to come to you. God hadn't necessarily given him the green light. He's anticipating that God is going to allow him to go. He's not going there. This isn't like family, business, or a personal trip. I mean, as an apostle, he only could go where God allowed him to go.

So he's praying that God is going to bless his journey and also allow him to go there. Now, do any of you remember how Paul got to Rome, the circumstances? He did get there. He was arrested as a prisoner. Yeah, I don't think it's the way that he was anticipating when he wrote this letter, but he had gone down to Jerusalem, and then he thought he was going to go to Rome after that, and he did go to Rome. But yeah, he was arrested in Jerusalem, and it was years later before he finally got to Rome, and it was as a prisoner, but he did get there.

Now, verse 11, he says, "For I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to the end you may be strengthened, that is, that I may be comforted together with you by the mutual faith of both you and me."

So he continues to assure them, "I long to see you." I mean, he says this a number of times. He really wants to get there because he loves these people, even though most of them he has not met yet. But he's heard about them. He knows a number of people there. He knows they're his brothers and sisters. And so he has this deep love for them, and he wants to get there. And he wants to emphasize this. So again, when some of the hard counsel in the letter comes, they'll remember, "Okay, this is somebody who loves us. He's going to great lengths to get up here to see us." He says he wants to impart some spiritual gift.

So he's telling him, "Look, I'm not coming to Rome to rebuke you. I want to bless you when I get there and visit you to impart a spiritual gift if God allows me to do that." He says, "To the end you may be strengthened." Now, the King James, if you're following in it, I believe it says, "So you may be established." And I'm guessing the English word established has probably changed meaning since the time of the King James translation in 1611. I'm guessing they were using it in the way Paul meant, but the word has changed meaning since then. Today, when you think of establishing something, you think of starting usually from the ground level, from scratch.

But the church was already there. He had been there a long time. So he wasn't going to establish the church, not in the English sense of the word. The Greek word he uses is sterizo, which meant to strengthen something that was already there. So the church is there, but he wants to strengthen it through his visit, not to take away from what others had done in establishing it, but yeah, he wanted to do what he could as an apostle to help strengthen the church there.

But then he goes on, and this really shows his humility. He says, "That is that I may be comforted together with you by the mutual faith of both you and me." So I'm not coming here as someone to lord it over you.

I want to be strengthened by you. We have a mutual faith. I'm going to be comforted by seeing and meeting you and hearing your testimonies and seeing your faith in action. And hopefully, I'll be strengthening and comforting you. It's going to be a mutual thing. So Paul is approaching them as a fellow brother, not as an overseer, as a lord over them, even though he is an apostle.

Okay, now let's move to verse 13.

He says, "Now I would not have you ignorant brothers that I have often intended to come to you." Okay, back to what we were saying. I've been wanting to come to you. I love you. He says, "But I was prevented until now so that I might have some fruit among you also, even as among the other Gentiles." So he says, "I have been wanting for a long time to come to you." So don't think the fact you've never seen me in Rome is because, "Hey, I don't care anything about you. You're at the bottom of my list." No, you've been near the top of my list. I've been trying. He says, "But I've been prevented until now."

Now, we don't know. He doesn't say what prevented him. And there's two possibilities, I guess only two in the general realm. One is God prevented him. The apostles weren't just free that, hey, someone used the expression free radicals that Patrick has invented that identifies Christians who, yeah, I'm not under anyone's authority. I just roam wherever I want to. That's not how it worked. If you were an apostle, you went where God wanted you to go. And when you read the book of Acts, it'll mention, "Oh, we wanted to go to a certain place, and the Holy Spirit said no." Now, at one time in my Christianity, I just thought this was an arbitrary thing that, "Oh, I want to go here."

No, the Holy Spirit said, "Nope, doesn't suit me today." I kind of doubt it was that. I can see two possibilities why the Holy Spirit would not let Paul go somewhere that he was thinking of going. One might be it wasn't quite the time. Maybe the people weren't receptive at that moment in time, but they would be later, or that there's someplace God wanted to send Paul before there. But another reason is you read the book of Acts and it's very in Paul's letters, and it's easy to get the idea that this is this lone ranger out here. And if a church was going to get planted, well, then Paul was the one who had to do it.

It wasn't that way at all. I mean, all 12 apostles went out planting churches. And then you had other people, apostolic men like Barnabas and Mark, who were planting churches. So yeah, one reason the Holy Spirit would have said no is because, "Hey, I'm sending Peter there. I don't want you, Paul, to go. I want Peter to go to this place." So that's maybe why if it was God preventing him that, "Hey, Peter was at Rome too." Now, we don't know the timeframe, whether Paul was there first, Peter later. We know in the end, they were both there at the same time, but we don't know who was there first. But yeah, God may have prevented Paul because he may have wanted Peter or maybe one of the other 12 to go there and get that church further off the ground.

But it was planted, like I say, not by apostles as far as we know, but just by ordinary Christians coming back from Pentecost who had been converted there. And then the other thing is he says that was prevented. It could have been Satan.

Satan, he throws roadblocks into our path. Now, only if God permits it. He has no authority unless God allows it, but God allows him to hinder us, to throw roadblocks, to serve his test for us. So yeah, like Paul had prayed, he said there was a messenger of Satan who was like a thorn in his flesh, and he prayed and prayed to God to remove it. And God said, "My grace is sufficient.

I'm going to let it be the way it is." And he doesn't explain beyond that, neither Paul nor God. Okay, so he says, "But I was prevented, so I might have some fruit among you." That's not why he was prevented, but he's wanting to come so that he can have fruit. In other words, that he can make converts there in Rome, which I think any church would welcome that. I mean, I would love to have somebody who had a gift of evangelism like Paul saying, "Hey, I'm going to visit Chambersburg. Spend some time there. I'd like to have some fruit in Chambersburg." And it's like, "Hey, hallelujah. Yeah, make as many converts as you can while you're here.

We'll welcome them into our fellowship or into one of the other fellowships here in Chambersburg." Now, then he says, "I want to have some fruit there. I want to make converts, even as among the other Gentiles." Now, all of my life, I've just read that and didn't mean anything significant to me. The early Christians sort of pick up on this that Paul is, and there's several places here they're seeing this that Paul is subtly getting across to the Romans, "Hey, you guys, as much as I love you and as much as I wanted to visit you, you're not anything special." In the world, yeah, Rome, the city of Rome is something really special. They call themselves the capital of the world.

But in God's sight, yes, you are in a city. You're an important city. He cares about the people there. But yeah, I want to have fruit among you just as among the other Gentiles. In other words, you're not the first. I've been having fruit in different places. So he's letting them know, "Okay, yeah, I've been working among all the Gentiles. You're one additional city among the Gentiles. You're not over the other Gentiles. You're not more important, but you are just as important as the rest of them."

All right, verse 14. Paul says, "I am debtor to both the Greeks and the barbarians, both to the wise and the foolish. Therefore, as much as it lies with me, I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome."

So this is what the third time at least that he said, "I am eager to get to Rome. I want to preach the gospel there in Rome." Now he says, "I am debtor to both the Greeks and the barbarians."

And Paul is using the sense of debtor in the sense of obligation. Okay, I'm obligated. Christ, when he appeared to me, he appointed me to be the apostle to the Gentiles. I've been especially called to that. So I'm a debtor. I'm obligated to the Greeks and the barbarians. Now, to the early Christians, when he uses those terms together, Greeks and barbarians, Greeks meant citizens of the Roman Empire, and barbarians meant Gentiles who lived outside the Roman Empire. Or maybe they came inside of it, but they weren't citizens of it or members, I should say, of the Roman Empire. So that's how they're understanding Paul to be using that term. Now, you'd think he'd be saying among the Romans and the barbarians.

He says the Greeks and the barbarians. But yeah, a lot of the Romans spoke Greek, and they got their culture largely from the Greeks. In fact, Roman culture is almost totally a copy of Greek culture. So yeah, he uses that term. So of course, all of us here today, I think just about would be barbarians. Maybe a few of us would be descended from the Roman Empire, but most of us, I think, have Germanic backgrounds, Anglo-Saxon or Swiss, whatever. So we would be classified as barbarians if we had lived back then.

Okay, and he says, "And to the wise and to the foolish." And we don't know exactly what Paul meant, but they were guessing, okay, he's talking about the worldly wise and the worldly foolish. Of course, the worldly wise, the philosophers were actually foolish. I mean, they had this earthly wisdom, but the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. So they were really foolish. And then the people the world looked down as foolish, the unlearned, they tended to be the ones who became Christians. So that's probably what Paul is talking about when he says to the wise and to the foolish. And then, like I say, he says again, "As much as it lies with me," but not everything lied with him.

I mean, it's up to God. It's up to a lot of circumstances. But as far as it is with me, I am eager to get to Rome and to preach the gospel to you. Okay, verse 16, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God to salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek."

So he's now just beginning. He kind of very gently gets into the subject of his letter where he's going to be talking about the Jews and the Gentiles or the Jews and the Greeks. But he's very subtle the way he starts this off. He just says it just in passing.

Now he begins, "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ." And Paul wasn't. Now, the world looked at it as foolishness. I mean, this is just silly. One of the earliest graffiti we have, I guess it is the earliest relating to Christianity.

I forget which city they founded in. It may be in Rome. I'll have to check that. It's just a crude graffiti, something somebody scratched on a wall. And it shows a man on a cross, a side view. He's got the head of a donkey, the body of a man, the head of a donkey. And he's on a cross, and there's somebody standing, a boy standing. He's raising his hand up. And the inscription is, "Publius," or I can't remember the name, "Publius worships his God." And it's ridiculing Christianity. I don't know who started this rumor that Christians worshiped a God whose head was that of a donkey.

It was just a way to ridicule Christianity. But like I say, I mean, that's just an inscription that they have found. I've seen the picture in a number of books. It's just been scratched onto a wall somewhere. So here in Rome, they thought they were so wise. I'm sure, I mean, they looked down on the Jews. How much more I'm sure they looked down on the Christians. I mean, at least the Jews didn't worship somebody who had been crucified by the Romans.

But here, Jesus had been found guilty as a criminal by Roman authorities, had been crucified by Roman soldiers. And it's like, you're saying this is the Son of God? You're saying this is the one who created the world? I mean, come on. I mean, this is pretty ignorant. So yeah, Paul says, "Hey, I'm not ashamed of the gospel." And he's saying that, I think, to give them confidence. They don't need to be ashamed of it either. And even though the Romans looked down on the Christians, that we can hold our heads high because what the world sees as foolishness is actually the wisdom of God.

It's the power of God of salvation to everyone who believes. And he says that to everyone who believes. Again, he's going to be developing that in the letter. He says, "To the Jew first and also to the Greek." And he says it that way. Now, in this verse, now when he said the Greeks and the barbarians, Greeks meant a Roman citizen and barbarians meant the people outside the Roman Empire. When he says the Jews and the Greeks, now he's using it in the sense of the Jews and the Gentiles. He changes the way he uses that term Greek.

But he says it's the power to the Jew first and also to the Greek. Not that in the church, the Jew had more honor than the Gentile that, okay, yeah, all right, the Jews sit up on the front rows, the Gentiles in the back. No, he doesn't mean that. He's saying it went out to the Jews first. The Jews received it first. Jesus came to the Jews. They heard the gospel first. And all 12 of the apostles were Jews. And Paul, a 13th apostle, he was a Jew. So for we don't know how long, several years, the gospel was limited to you had to be a Jew, a Samaritan, or a Jewish proselyte to become a Christian.

It wasn't until Cornelius that God then opened the door to the uncircumcised Gentiles, to the Gentiles who were not Jewish proselytes, that they could come in. So it went out to the Jews first. The Jews were privileged to get the gospel first and then to the Gentile. But he didn't mean that in the church, there's some kind of hierarchy between Jew and Gentile.

Okay.

Verse 17. We're still in his introduction. We're just about to get into the meat. He says, "For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith. As it is written, the righteous will live by faith." Okay, what does he mean? It's revealed from faith to faith.

Well, again, he's getting into his subject. The faith started with the Old Testament, of course, with people all the way back to Abel, but particularly with the giving of the law. What we know from the book of Genesis, that was part of the law. So the Old Testament, the Old Covenant, that was the original faith, okay? The faith of Abraham, the faith of Moses, the faith of the prophets. And that's not invalid. All of that was valid. That was from the true God. But now we're going from that faith, the faith of the Old Testament, now to the new, from the faith of the law to the faith of the gospel. That's why he says from faith to faith.

It's not a matter of, "Oh, there didn't used to be faith. Now we have it." No, there was a faith in God under the law, but now we're moving to another phase, to the gospel. And we have to make that transition. We can't stay with the law. It has to move from that faith to the faith of the gospel.

Now, Origen made a very astute observation. He says, "It also works the other way for the Gentiles." Now, for the Gentiles, they would have heard Christ preached, and they would have come into the church knowing about Christ and hearing the gospel.

Now, they had to go back and get acquainted with the faith of Abraham, the faith of Moses, because you don't have Christianity without the Old Testament. The Gnostics tried to have that. We'll just start with Jesus and all that's just that's some other God. No, the two are connected. So if you came in as a Gentile, and I think all of us here today are Gentiles, okay, we've had to get acquainted with the law of Moses.

We've had to get acquainted with Abraham. I mean, this is part of our faith, what came before Christ. So it works both ways, but Paul is mainly talking about moving from the law to the gospel. And he's very clever. I don't want to use the word clever. Very inspired, I think, is the word because he's writing under inspiration.

He quotes from the Old Testament to bring this out. He says, "As it is written, the righteous will live by faith." Well, that's in the law. Okay, it's actually from Habakkuk, one of the prophets. So he's saying, "Look, I'm not starting something new here. I'm taking you back." This was prophesied back under the law that the righteous will live by faith. He's going to be talking about it a lot in the book of Romans. But he's telling him upfront, very subtly, "I'm not fixing to tell you something that originates with me that you've never heard before, but this goes back to the law." So he quotes from that. So you see a lot of wisdom of Paul.

And like I say, I think inspired a lot. How are people doing in temperature-wise now? Everybody comfortable? I'm going to take my sweater off. Now, to me, if I had been the one, and I wasn't, making the chapter divisions, I would have started chapter 2 right there with verse 18 because now Paul really gets into his message. And to me, that would have been a logical place to start chapter 2. I think everyone in our congregation knows that the chapter divisions in the New Testament, in the Old Testament and New, in the Bible, that's all man-made.

For most of Christian history, people read the Bible without chapter divisions or verse divisions. I mean, you just read it. Romans was one letter. I mean, there weren't any divisions in it. And there's some advantages to that. There's advantages. We've all found it useful to have chapters and verses as well.

The man who divided the New Testament into chapters, his name was Stephen Langton. He was a professor at the University of Paris, if I've got that right. Don't think of a secular university. Back then, nearly all the universities were founded by the church or by different orders in the church. Or if they were founded by a king or something, it was definitely under the authority of the church. Today, universities are very secular, very anti-Christian, which is so unjust because it was Christians who originated universities. And so this professor, yeah, well, he went on to become an archbishop, okay? So he's not some secular person. And I think he did an admirable job of the chapter divisions.

But yeah, there'd be places I'd say, "No, I think I would have put the chapter division here." But of course, if I had been doing it, there'd be a lot of you saying, "I think David should have made the chapter division here." So it's a call. But when we get to verse 18, we're really starting now into some new material, into the meat of Paul's message.

So let's just read that 18 and 19. He says, "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness. For that which may be known about God is evident to them, for God has showed it to them."

Okay, so he starts off, and as we're going to be seeing, we won't finish it today. He's going to be talking about the sins of the Gentiles. I mean, it could apply to anybody, but he's going to be focusing particularly on the sins of the Gentiles. Now, do any of you, do you have any thought? Why would he start in a letter that he's mainly going to be talking about, "Hey, the Gentiles are equal to you Jews, and it doesn't matter if you're Jew or Gentile. There's no partiality"? Why would he start off by talking about the sins of the Gentiles? He does talk about the sins of the Jews later on. Why would he start with the Gentiles?

Any thought?

To try not to turn them off right at the beginning. Yeah, I think exactly right. And that's what the early Christians thought. Okay, again, we see heavenly wisdom here. Since most of this is going to be stepping on the toes of the Jews, he starts off by criticizing the Gentiles, the unbelieving Gentiles, to show, "Look, I am not picking on you. I mean, I'm a fellow Jew. I'm not picking on we Jews, us Jews."

Yeah, we're just talking about God's truth. So he begins by talking about the failings and sins of the Gentiles. Now, this would not have offended the Christian Gentiles because they would have said, "Amen." They came out of this. I mean, they know what it was like there when they were in the pagan world. So he wouldn't have stepped on their toes, but he would have been showing the Jewish Christians, "Look, I'm not picking on you. This letter is about Jews and Gentiles, and I'm being fair to both sides because we're all brothers and sisters in Christ."

Now, he starts off, "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven." When we hear that word, maybe the thought comes in our mind, if you read in school the sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," which I feel pretty certain it was in our textbook in public school. I'm pretty sure it's in there to belittle Christians. I mean, no one reading that sermon today would say, "Yay, I'm on the side of the Christians." I mean, it makes you kind of wince. And I think that's why it's in the textbooks.

It's not necessarily a typical sermon of Puritan preachers or of any preacher. Certainly, they could have picked, they would have had so many sermons that would have talked about God's grace or God's love and all of that. So they picked that on purpose just to belittle Christianity. But I mean, the Bible does talk about God's wrath or his anger. But the early Christians, now they understood that a little differently than sometimes how it's preached today, and certainly how it was preached by some of the Puritan preachers.

They said, "Okay, God is not human. The Bible helps us to understand God because we cannot relate to the spiritual realm." It talks about God's hands, his arm. It talks about walking in the Garden of Eden or this or that.

It talks about God at the Tower of Babel. "Let's go down there and see what they're doing," as if God doesn't know. This is written again to help humans to relate to God. And so they feel it's the same thing. When it talks about God's wrath, it's not like he loses his temper. And when we think of human wrath and he's just boiling over and all of that, it's his displeasure. It is his punishment that he is going to bring, punishment that is deserved. But it's not because he's lost his temper with us. We shouldn't think of his wrath in the way human wrath often plays out. Okay? But the punishment is nevertheless there.

We don't water that down at all. Okay, it's going to be revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. And this is going to come on Judgment Day because Christ, it says, is going to come with the angels. He will be coming down from heaven, and then will be the resurrection, and then followed by Judgment Day. So yeah, it's going to be revealed from heaven.

Now, he says, "For all those who hold the truth in unrighteousness." Now, you would expect him to be saying, "For all of those who reject the truth because of their unrighteousness," or something like that. But he says, "For all of those who hold the truth in unrighteousness." I hadn't really thought about, I've probably read that, I know, hundreds of times, never really thought about it. It's against those who hold the truth in unrighteousness. But that's what Paul is going to be showing, that these people know the truth. They don't know all of the truth by any means, but they know enough that what they have done, they have acted in unrighteousness against the truth that had been revealed to them.

The early Christians were strong believers in natural law that God has revealed, we might say, rudimentary elements of eternal truth to all mankind, to every culture that you can take any pagan, it doesn't matter what country they lived in or that they might live in today, they have had natural law revealed to them. They might be cannibals, but they've had to sear their conscience. Their conscience would tell them that is wrong. Most human cultures have viewed that, have recognized that as wrong.

I think almost every human culture has condemned adultery as wrong, murder is wrong, theft is wrong, assaulting someone is wrong. I mean, there's a long list that every culture, except maybe a few aberrations here and there, have viewed as wrong. God has given them that much enlightenment. And so God isn't punishing people who are innocent. God doesn't punish innocent people. These are people he holds accountable for the truth that has been revealed to them. He does not hold them accountable to truth that has not yet been revealed to them. But enough truth had been revealed to them that what they did, they did in unrighteousness, that they knew the truth, and they decided, "No, we're going to do something different."

I mean, we'll just take adultery as an illustration. I mean, it was actually forbidden in Roman law. I mean, it was written in the law. There were some severe penalties. It wasn't, I think, universally enforced by any means. But like Caesar Augustus, his niece, I believe it was his niece, I mean, she was just so flagrant in adultery. I mean, it was causing scandal and gossip everywhere. He finally had to banish her under the law to a remote island just because she wouldn't stop. I mean, after warning, warning, warning.

Okay. And yet he himself committed adultery, okay? And all throughout Rome, I mean, you see people doing it. So yeah, they knew it was wrong. It was, like I say, written in what's called the Lex Julia, the laws that started with Julius Caesar and then Caesar Augustus combined.

Yeah, it's against the law, but yeah, people did it. And if it didn't cause a big scandal or anything, yeah, you usually were not punished for doing it. So just as an example, you know it's wrong, but you do it anyway. People who steal, they know it's wrong, but they do it anyway. And on down the list. So next week, we're not going to get there today. We're going to stop with verse 19.

We'll start with verse 20 next time. And where Paul then makes his case, he stated, just as an assertion, okay, they've held the truth in unrighteousness. They knew the truth, and yet they haven't followed it. And of course, I think most of us would say, "Really? They knew the truth?" Well, then he goes on to show, yes, they did. And this is why in the next verses. So when we pick up, I assume in April, yeah, we're going to be looking at his argument of why they knew the truth, again, of natural law. They didn't know the greater truths revealed in the law of Moses. They didn't know the greater truths revealed by Jesus Christ and in the New Testament.

But they knew those basic truths, and they couldn't even live by them. And we will be looking at that. And when he describes the Gentile world of his day, well, it pretty well describes the world of our day as well. So it's not ancient history. It's, yeah, as recent as today's newspaper.

All right. Does anyone have any questions or comments on what we've talked about today? God uses a lot of wisdom. He knows what we're made of. And I think we can follow that example as Anabaptists.

It's fine to preach against the sins of other Christians, but we want to make sure we talk about our own sins and not neglect them in the process at all. But it is easier always talking about someone else's sins than our own. And Paul, yeah, like I say, he used heavenly wisdom there in that. Thank you.

It's really interesting what you said about verse 18, about holding the truth in unrighteousness. The New King James uses the word suppress. It says suppress. Suppress. I mean, kind of about the same idea that it's actually something you have and then you push it away or you actually hide it or. I see now. Yeah. Okay. But just the fact that we are all responsible with what we do with that little bit of truth that we start out with, whether or not we're going to hone in on it, listen to it, or we're going to actually make that choice to shove it away.

It's a choice that we make. Yes. Yes. Yeah. At first, I wasn't sure if I liked that translation. I understand what they're saying.

If you're suppressing it, the thought of, you know it, but yeah, you're putting it down, it might sound like they were blind to it. But yeah, I think that's fine how it renders it, that, yeah, they knew the truth and they blotted it out purposely, didn't want to hear it, didn't want to hold on to it.

And like I say, all of these insights, not a single one comes from me. It's from different early Christians, things I wouldn't have noticed. And one reason I'm using the King James, but I've just modernized the language. Some of the new translations, they're a lot more understandable. I remember we had a visiting speaker here several years ago.

And I don't know what translation he was using, but I remember he started reading from me. He said, "I'm reading from this because I understand this a lot better." And yeah, it was a whole lot more understandable. But wow, it changed a whole lot of what the Bible says. I mean, and sometimes that happens. The newer translations want to make it understandable. The translators think, "Well, this doesn't make sense." They hold the truth in unrighteousness.

How can you do that? Either you don't hold it or you do hold it. I mean, and so we sometimes, then the translator will say something that, "Oh, that makes sense." Yeah, it makes sense, but it's not what the Bible writer said. And so even though we have to work harder sometimes. Now, I don't like archaic language. Like I said, why I'm using a modernized King James, I don't like having to work through archaic language. But the King James does tend to be more literal to what the Greek is saying than many, not all necessarily, but many, probably most modern translations.

Thank you. If you like this message and want to hear more like it, go to Scroll Publishing's website and check out all the different books and audio messages available. Scroll is a place for people who are seeking the truth, who are looking for the historic faith, who don't want spins or complicated interpretations. And don't forget to like, subscribe, and share this video with others. Thanks. God bless.