In this sermon, the speaker focuses on the book of Romans, particularly Paul's message to the Romans. The sermon highlights the Good News of God for humanity, centered around the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The speaker emphasizes the relationship between God's grace and humanity, explaining that the law was a preparatory step leading to grace. The sermon also discusses the sinful condition of humanity and the need for redemption through faith in Jesus Christ.

All right, well, we all know that Paul's letter to the Romans was his most complete and comprehensive presentation of what he spoke of at the beginning of the Romans here as the good news of God for the human race, which centers around, it says here in chapter 1-3, it centers around his son, who was demonstrated to be his son, it says, by the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection of the dead, and the relationship of his grace to humanity, the human family which came out of that. Now, I can't hear properly, it's a problem. In other words, it's a letter, so it had to be tightly presented, it couldn't expand too much, so it's a letter which has all the great facts of this good news of God, but it's somewhat in shortened forms. He often doesn't expand on great basic facts which are mentioned, probably couldn't be one letter. They expanded upon it in other letters, and in the whole Bible, and in the other writings of the letters. So, I'm going along with Romans, but where I feel it would be good to expand, quite often, on some of the great main issues, which are just kind of introduced, maybe by one word, the issue of sin, law, grace, redemption. The walk in the spirit, which as is mentioned, my plan would be to stop, and sometimes quite at length, go back and look a little further into what is meant by those great words. In what sense are they real to us? So, I shall deviate to some extent from the letters we go on, and then come back to it, so we do cover it chapter by chapter, not by any means in total detail, but in somewhat of a survey fashion, linking it to, as I say, the more thorough explanations of some of these great facts presented to us in the Bible. So, it is from that angle that we are approaching it. After he had made his preliminary words of welcome and introduction to the Roman Church from his writings, he moved straight into his presentation in the 16th verse of the first chapter, that he is ready to preach the gospel to Rome also, and not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, which is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes it, the Jew first, and also to the Greek. Then he starts off by presenting the fundamental fact that there is a living God, who in other places of Scripture is the Holy Spirit. And he presents us to him here as in a relationship to us in which we can know of him, because it says that the truth of God, in verse 19, may be known to us as it manifested in us, not to us. So, straight away he presents the fact that he is Spirit, and in other Scriptures we find that our true selves are in a person's spirit, spirit connected to spirit. Therefore, there is in all humans this basic means by which we can be in a relationship to him. His goodness is our foundation here. And the way by which he manifests himself is Spirit manifests through form. And so it says in this 20th verse that he is the invisible person, which is known by his visible form, which we call it creation. And all the visible forms around us are the evidence to our inner selves that there is an invisible person manifested by these forms. So we are able to see something of the wonder of him, perfection, power, beauty, what God calls his power and his very deity, it says here, manifested to us, the visible manifests the invisible. Therefore, in that sense we are able to know that all that we see, feel, touch around us are the outer forms of the one person universe, which Spirit manifested in created forms. He then goes on to say that instead of being in harmony with him, we are in disharmony. He being harmony, everything is basically in perfect harmony. But we are in a discordant relationship with him, disturbed relationship, which he speaks of as being in the rough element of God, not the grace element. So it says straight away that the rough of God is where things have gone wrong. Where things have gone wrong in us produces disharmony. So we have a distorted relationship, not a harmonious relationship. And he goes on to state there the fact about the human race, which needs further explanation. That is that something so happens to us that instead of our thankfully, worshipfully relating all things to ourselves and that is with which we are joining to him, and therefore worshiping God and following him, we are relating to ourselves. Something so happens that our attitude to creation, we bring it into reality by our own opinions, what he calls our vain imaginations, where we profess ourselves to be wise. So there is an element taken over in the human race of self-appreciation, self-explanation of our universe. And so far as we find in our universe that which we feel we must worship, self-forms, human forms about which we worship, which can relate to the kind of being we are in our selfish condition. Therefore the gods that this human race has made are gods which are themselves expressions of humanity in its fallen desires. And so they are gods or images which have expressions of self-reaction or in perverted spirit action of hate and jealousy and revenge and so on. They are the gods which we worship which are really self-images because that therefore permits us to do those kind of things ourselves. So it has a consequence because we have made gods, gods of flesh, gods of lust, gods of hate, gods of murder, gods of fear, we ourselves fulfill those same things in our natures. And so he goes on then to describe in the first chapter in the most drastic form how we run into perverted sex. Because all is love, God being love, everything else is a form of love. If our love has come apart from God who is self-giving love, has become in us a force of loving love, we express it then in forms of self-gratification. And therefore the strongest physical form of love being sex, we express it in perverted sex. So it gives the strongest description in the bible of the men and women in their perverted sex forms in the early verses of chapter 1. When God gave them over to unkindness through lust of their hearts. And then having described some of the excesses of perverted sex, running right into what so commonly is talked about as homosexual forms. He then moves on to our spirit discourse. And then in verse 28 he says God gave them to pervert their minds as well as a perverted body. And to pervert their mind he gives a whole list of what comes, hates, murders, rebellions, unthankfulness, marriage, cruelty, a whole list of them. And he says the kind of condition in which we have gone into is we delight in doing these things. Though there is a death path, it says in the end of that chapter, not only do we say we have pleasure in doing these things. We find out how to destroy delight in self-pleasing self. Instead of being in a relationship with God, with self-giving God. Yet, Paul also says, we throw man his, he gives us over. He gives us over to those things, he is still his, he has given us over to be torn to pieces by these expressions of God's wrath. By these misuses of the human self. And the best description we get of the consequence, which is the operation of the love of God, is in that segment at the end of the 27th verse. He says those who do these things receive in themselves that recompense of their error which is meat. It comes out in front of the wrath operated in ourselves. Our discordant spirits or our corrupted bodies produce a corrupted effect for the spirit or flesh in ourselves. We receive in ourselves this recompense of this error which is meat, that is the wrath of God. It operates in us because we are beings of God, we are made in his image. We are misusing his image, we are seen in his image. Therefore being in his image, we are misusing the image, the wrath is in us. It is in this image form of God that the discourse is taking place. Not in his only harmonious self. He follows on in chapter 2 by turning his attention to those who, by the operations of God's mercy and grace through the centuries, have come into some light. Because we know God apart from the Bible. The light of God has dawned, has been shining among the human race right from the very beginning. Right from the time of the fall itself. And right through Abel and Abraham and on through the nations to which God began to reveal himself in both grace and truth, grace and law. So there are, therefore, there is a whole area of people who, knowing through these revelations something of God's ways and God's truth, still in selfhood have conformed themselves to those as a better way of being a self. Not knowing him, still forms a better way of being a moral self. So there is the hedonistic self, the pleasure loving self of Romans 1. And there is the ethical self of Romans 2. But they are both self. They are both self affirming, self pleasing, self gratifying self. Now you see, the proof of that is, when you are like that, you think yourself superior to those who bring rotten things and you judge them. What you are really doing is you judge yourself. For this reason, that we are all doing these kind of things in different ways. We may become or not. The only people who can be capable of judging, I also mention in chapter 2, are those who have found repentance. They found, as it says in verse 4, if you despise the goodness and forbearance of God, the only goodness of God leads you to repentance. And then to a new purpose in life. Therefore, he says there are those who being a fallen self have no wish to be a fallen self. Whether in ethical pride or physical corruption. And repented of being such and sought a way of mercy. Where they are such, they never judge. Because they say, I am just like that myself. So judging too, you should not be that. But if you have been yourself, a repented person, a judged person, simply because you have judged yourself, seeking to find a way out of that. Whether they find a way to mercy or just seeking it. So he speaks of those who have sought the right way of life. In verses 10 and 12, who by patient and tedious work they seek. And they have no other way to find. They seek the glory, honor and immortality that they have in the pursuit of eternal life. So if you are a judge, you copy one of those. The judge shows you, because you only judge because you do those things yourself, but you type it and you don't. And so you hide it, you put your finger down the person doing it. And the person doing that is very judging themselves. Because if you are a person who has moved out from this false way of self, you don't judge it. Because you have been that yourself. And if they have helped you, it is only in mercy and repentance. And so you look upon those who do those things just as yourself. Perhaps they haven't yet found the way of repentance and mercy you have. Indeed, he goes on to say in the middle of the section, there are those who have never known the ways of the law of God. Who we call Gentiles. Who have that law somewhat in their hearts. And they too have been the such. Who have sought a better way of life, knowing they shouldn't be, this wrong kind of person. And he does say, he sticks in a way, a word of mercy for them. Because he says, it is only God who knows the secrets of men. And he says that they will become a God whose secrets are known by Jesus Christ, according to the gospel. And so leave their destiny with him. So, the second chapter is a turnaround on the ethical people. And so you hide your fallen nature, your self-gratifying, self-seeking nature. Under this pretense of being a higher kind of person, you are still a self-person. It is true that you are running to your ends in your way, being proud of what you are. But you do the same things yourselves. And he actually turns then on the Jewish people and says, are you obeyed in name? Believe in God. He says, are you obeyed in name? God is blasphemed by you. Because people just see you, you are not consistent in what you claim to be, because you can't be. Because self-clarity follows in its own way. And finally, he ends with a little touch of that second chapter by saying, because only an inward change is truth. And so it changes you as truth. Not that it changes your conduct. If you are a fallen person, it is still self-conduct, whatever for. It is moral conduct or immoral conduct. It is still self-conduct. Therefore, outer religion, outer law, is no more helpful to you than false forms of religion. And so he ends by saying, you are in true circumcision. It is circumcision of the heart. It doesn't change your outer law. It changes you. So it says, he is not a Jew, verse 38, who is one outwardly. Neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh. He is a Jew who is one inwardly. Circumcision is done in the heart, in the spirit, not in the letter. Which places you not in men, but in God. Instead, the way he strikes it, he says, truth is inner. Because truth is spirit. The heart and the spirit. The heart is the express purpose of spirit. God is spirit and we are spirit. Only in a relationship can there be the truth. Finally, he gathers it all up together. In the presentation of all men are in the grip of what he now begins to call sin. He hadn't called it sin. He called it ungodliness at first. It now comes under the name sin. And he begins to use that word in chapter 2. He heads it up in the first part of chapter 3. Various quotations in the Old Testament. The final declaration of the total depravity of this fallen human you embrace. Because depravity is self-loving self whatever form it takes. Because of this it comes out in all expressions. It says, full of cursing bitterness, Pete's swift-to-shed blood, destruction, misery in our ways, a world of peace we don't know, no fear of God before our eyes, so to an open circle. Those are quotations in chapter 3, verses 12 to 18. He says, all the good out of the way. All that come off of it. And he names that under the title of sin. When we become into contact with the law. Until there has been no law, we've been doing those things. We haven't known it until the time of sin. But when law comes in, then he says in verse 19, every mountain is stopped, and the world is guilty before God. And we recognize that all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God. Now that takes us back. As I said, sometimes I'm moving off from the actual written descriptions given in the Roman letter. Seeking to put these conditions at the human race, and God's relation to the human race, in the more complete form, which he couldn't give in the shortened range of one letter. He had told us where sin began, by a brief reference in his fifth chapter, when he says that by one man, sin entered the world, and death by sin. So death possible on all men, but all have sinned. That's verse 12. That takes us back, for a moment, into the original purposes of God, and where we as a human race, particularly purposes, where we've gone wrong, and later on, how we can come right. And we find from other scriptures, that it always was the purpose of God, to have a vast family of sons, that we find, for instance, in the first chapter of Ephesians, where he says, we were chosen in him, to the adoption of sons, chosen before the foundation of the world, for the adoption of sons. So when we go back to the origins of things, as given in other scriptures, right back to their first historical presentation in the early chapters of Genesis, we find that this one living person in the universe, who is in the beginning, who we're told of by Jesus' spirit, we're told by John, his total character is love, which means he's a person, who is just for others, has true love, is the nature in us, in which we exist to perfect everything and everybody within our reach. It's the outgoing drive of our being, into service for others, rather than the pleasing of ourselves. And it always was, from eternity, it always had been, the means by which he could manifest himself in eternity, by his manifested form, which is his son. So, the universal, unknowable, invisible, unapproachable father, can be known by the unknowable, invisible, unapproachable form of himself, which is his son. The only begotten son of God. What we speak of as the manifested form of the deity. And it always was his purpose, through his son, to bring into being, a vast family of sons. Because the God in reproduction, in manifestation, is God the Spirit. Through the father, from the father through the son, God the Spirit comes into being. So, the creation of the Spirit moved upon the face of the waters. And all the creation came into being through the creation of the Spirit. And the final form of creation in the in the process of creation, was the bringing into being of the son family in its own image. We then follow that through, from other scriptures, and we find that his ultimate purpose, which has been a fixed fact from eternity, is that his son should both bring into being the universe, and then, as it were, hand the universe over to his son, as his inheritance. Therefore, the son is the one who will be the agent by which the father will fulfill whatever his eternal purposes are, through eternity, in the whole universe. That's told us, when we tell, when we in other scriptures, particularly one in Hebrews, one speaking of this son, it says whom he has appointed heir of all things, Hebrews 1, 2. We are then told in the scriptures which later on relate us up to him, through grace, as co-sons and brothers, we are also co-heirs. Therefore, what he inherits, we inherit. Therefore, if his eternal purpose always had been that the invisible ones should manifest themselves into a visible form, expression of self, as love, in visible form, that one, and then the ones joined to him, should be the eternal love expressions of the father, in fulfilling whatever his ultimate purposes are in the universe. Being love, all his purposes are perfection and completion, that all should be what is meant to be, in harmony, the give and take of love, love relationships, and that this is to be fulfilled through eternity by his son family. We are then moved on to the historical description of the creation of the son family, the human family, and the first means by which as persons made in his image, we begin in persons by which we become established as persons. By that I mean, the Bible means that there can be no manifestation in the nature of things except by a relationship between opposites. That is the very statement made in the Bible at the very beginning, it is dark and light, because everything can only be known by its opposites. So the very first word is Genesis. We read, darkness was upon the face of the deep, then the spirit of God said, let there be light, and there was light. The reason being, which we can recognize, of course, by our own normal faculties, a thing can only be known by its opposites. Light can only be known because it isn't dark. Truth can only be known because it isn't a lie. Love can only be known because it isn't hate. Sweet can only be known because it isn't bitter. Yes can only be known because it isn't known, and so on. And the relationship between the two is that the positive swallows up the negative. And finally, it's basically true, it swallows up its negative. Love is love because it's not hate. It swallows up the possibility of being hate, and all that possibility, it moves into the potential of love. And so through all the pairs of negatives. Thus the Bible says in 2 Corinthians 5, light swallows up death. Light should only know because it swallows up death. Its strength is that it replaces the possibility of death by light. Therefore, a person can only be a conscious person when he's confronted with all the opposites of life and gets him into that relationship where the positive is swallowing up the negative and making it safe by swallowing it up. The supremest, the farthest revelation of that character as a person is in our own personhood. Starting with God's personhood. If a conscious person, if we're conscious persons, made of love, for God is love, love is desire. Now, if I'm a conscious person with desire, I'm affected by myself. I'm not a completely conscious person. Now, I'm confronted with the two alternatives. Shall I desire, love, satisfy myself by getting everything from myself, being a self-getter, self-seeker, self-accumulator, or shall I satisfy my self-desire by being a self-giver, by being the means by which other people can have their needs met? Will my self find its answer in being a person who always meets my own needs, my own needs, no matter what happens to others? Will my self be satisfied in being one who can meet the needs of other people who have their needs met? And that's why it's such a profound revelation in the Bible that this eternal person is stated to have something in his own eternal nature which he couldn't do. It's a very fascinating fact to make of him who is the source of all things. If he's all things, he can do all things, can't he? If he's omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, can he be so? And here the Bible comes out twice over, in Titus, chapter one, and in Hebrews, chapter six, and it says that one thing that he himself can't do, he can't lie. In Hebrews, it's impossible for him to lie. Verse eight, Hebrews six, verse eighteen of Hebrews six. Now here is a confrontation of the two opposites in God. A liar, being a forward person, who's going to get his own ends at any price. No matter what happens to his neighbor, he's going to get his own ends. When therefore it says God cannot lie, it's saying that there is in the very being of God a settlement between the opposites. In which, as a being of God, being a self-affirming, being self-affirming, being of the universe, the I am of the universe, he could have been a person who'd get everything for himself. Everything would be for his own ends. A self-pleasing self. Because that's what a liar is. Or he can be the alternative, which is a self-giving self. But all his self is pleasure and self-giving rather than being self-pleasure and self-getting. That's why one of the men who had the greatest insight maybe, being a God, who ever lived, the great German mystic Jacob Boehmer, always wrote a diagram of the, not of Jesus Christ, but of the eternal God with a cross in his hand. For he has an eternal death in the eternal dream. But he could have been a God with self for self. It says that he's eternally a God with self for others. He's died being what we'd say the negative self to be the positive. Because if we say God is perfect, what he is is positive. Therefore, if he's perfect in love, only love is positive. Self-loving, self-giving love is positive. Self-loving love is negative. Self-giving love is life. Self-loving love is death. Self-living love is total fulfillment. Self-giving love is total fulfillment. Self-loving love is total corruption. So we have our basis of our revealed universe in the revealed person of whom the universe is of infinite forms of manifestation. Therefore, we now see that if this person always had been by his own begotten son and through his own begotten son to have him to have him being a vast family who'd be leveled up on the level of his son as co-sons and co-brothers by whom he'd fulfill his eternal manifestations eternal expressions of himself in whatever power, love operations that there are still to be those persons themselves must be settled in the same reality of being in which he's settled. They also must be as fixed in their love which is the self-giving love and in their love must be the same course as a death to be possibly a people of self-loving love. If therefore that had to come into being whatever we if we use such terms as the eternal fact in the eternal deity it certainly has to come into being in us who are temporary forms, sons. That is therefore why we have in the first historical presentation of the birth of the creation of the human race we call it the birth of the human race the father putting his son his first first member of that family into a garden in which everything expressed his unending givingness all that he could all was theirs to benefit by but he had also to put in that garden an alternative that they must discover that life is only known by its alternatives and then relating a relation of the two alternatives. Therefore it had to have in it the symbol of the two trees that one tree symbolized the reception of eternal life the other one to do the things you surely die eternal death and that is why I have also given this remarkable revelation that before there ever was a human race there were other beings they were made as sons some spoke of seraphim angels we don't know much other than spirit beings spirits in heavenly places at least some of whom who had the same quality of choice that we have and there was one who has given us the bible he has often spoken of the bible in different terms he is called the spirit of error he is called the prince of the power of the air that is in Ephesians 2 he is called the god of this world that is in 2 Corinthians 4 and other his pre-existence is revealed to us in those 2 famous passages by prophecy in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 usually prophets had the future unveiled and they would see forward in the future occasionally a prophet would have the past unveiled and see back into the past and these are 2 occasions on which the prophet Isaiah had the background unveiled opened and they went back and saw the origin of evil as a person created in relation to the father and the agent by which the father was manifested he was the bearer of the father and the agent was the father and the agent was father and the agent was the father and the agent was the father and and the was the father and the agent was the father and the was the father and the agent was the father and the agent was the father and the agent was the father and agent agent was father and the agent was the father and the was the father and the agent the father was the father and the agent was the father and the agent was the father and the agent the necessary two alternatives, a self for self or a self for others. They came to find themselves by being tempted to have something which the father said they were not to have. This was a subtlety of Satan, to tempt themselves, the father not being as good to you as he should be. There is value in the fruit of this tree which he said you shouldn't take. That had the consequence of arising conscious desire. Only by conscious desire could we come to know who we are. And by that conscious desire Adam and Eve came to know they had appetites, that food was good to eat. They had all that can give to sight, pleasant to look upon. All that we develop from the use of life and sight. And that they had minds which could be stored with new holds of knowledge. By no other means could they find they had body, human potential. They were also then confronted with the two alternatives. The way in which a self could be a self for itself or could be a self for others, in that case for the will of God. Because we see that the whole universe is fixed in the fact that he who is the author of the universe is fixed in the self giving self. The opposite can only be evil. Only what he is, is good. That's why love is good. Self giving love is good. Self loving love is evil. And so here they moved into partly by deceit, in the only use of sight, as Paul said, evil deceit. Partly by deliberate choice, as Paul said, Adam freely chose to go the evil, Satan's way of self for self. The true significance of the two alternatives being presented in the form of fruit to the tree, is that what you eat takes you over, becomes you. Therefore by the invitation to eat of the fruit, what you eat goes within you and becomes you. Therefore, if they had done, which we by another process, not usually on the symbol of the fruit of the tree, we by the process later on of Jesus Christ have received Jesus Christ, if they had taken of the true fruit, the Genesis scripture says they would have received eternal life. That's how we know the fruit of the symbol, because we know eternal life was the living person. God in his son form, he is the life. Therefore we know the fruit symbolized, we see the eternal life, we see him who is eternal life. Therefore if you receive the right fruit and see him who is the symbol of eternal life, to see the wrong fruit and see him who is the symbol of the opposite, the evil life, which is really the death life, because all that isn't God in love is death, although we call it life. The only true life is forms of self-giving love, which is God. All other forms in self-loving form is death, although we call it life. There is present corruption and ultimate destiny. So we see this fundamental fact, referring back to the self now, that Paul spoke of in Romans 1, it's possibly a selfless self, but basically it's not its own self. It's a human self expressing its divine self, because the false one is calling himself a deity. He's called the God of this world, because he's only a creature, God in the sense of the original, the important being, a quality of person, unknown in God, a person, a self for self. Therefore he's called the God of this world. Therefore humanity became a container of the deity of self-centeredness. That's an important fact. The deity you contain, you express, because the whole universe is an expression of deity. Only inanimate things can only just automatically express deity. A tree is just a tree. We may say God in the beautiful tree form is going to be a tree, a person. Like God himself can have illimitable forms of expression, because they're free selves. But we are always expressing the deity whom we contain. And that's why all the words as we move on about the relationship of man to God, whichever God it is, are the relationships of a container to one whom he contains. That's why as we see later on in Romans 9, all humans are called vessels. A vessel is a container of the living, of the water we live in. So a vessel is called then, Romans 9, a vessel of wrath, a vessel of mercy. Wrath comes from the discordant life, a saddening life. That means a vessel that contains the God to whom the discordant life comes, which ends in a lost eternity. A vessel of mercy is the same vessel that contains him to whom harmonious God comes, a vessel of mercy, that's Jesus Christ. So where we see the human is always a vessel, or later on Jesus speaks of the human as a branch, and therefore speaks itself in relation to the human as the true vine. The branch expressing the life of the true vine, the personhood of the true vine. But that implies that it's a false vine. If he said I'm a true vine, the implication was that Satan was like a false vine, of which we as humans were expressions of that satanic nature. As we're still remaining on that subject and its importance, it might be good to complete it in the sense that the most dangerous effect of a human race invoked by what we call the satanic spirit, the spirit of self-sentence, the spirit of error, is that he moves the human race by deceit into the false concept that we're just independent selves. He himself claimed to be independent. Of course he's really only a creature of God, he claimed to be independent. He infected the human race with that spirit of independence. So the human race doesn't know in their false traditions that they contain the spirit of error. They just think they're people living their own lives their own way. And that leads on an error which is dealt with later on in later chapters in Romans. It's also important to note, understand by the history of the happenings of the gods of Eden that there's a fundamental difference between the deity person, the false deity, who is a symbol of fruit, enters into humanity. We became his vessels or his branches. And the human, us humans ourselves. Because the Bible has shown us in Isaiah 14 that this original person, this original center, he fixed himself to be his own God. He became fixed in the self-loving self, just as God fixed himself in himself, who cannot lie. So Satan fixed himself in the self-loving self who cannot be true. He said he's a liar from the beginning. His nature is self-loving self. Now the human race did not cast God out from their inner center. That's why it's important that he was deceived. She didn't know. She didn't know what we could do by hindsight. She didn't know. She knew about her father's love. But she didn't realize it. She didn't realize the implications of what happened if she followed the invitation of this serpent. Nor did Adam, because Adam really only followed Eve, which may have been bigger to do ever since. As Eve went that way, he was not supposed to find God as to remain with his mate. The importance of that being, therefore, the fall of man was in the flesh, but the fall of Satan was in the spirit. Now that affected the spirit of Adam, and that affected the whole man. So he got captive. We hadn't given our spirits over to Satan. We followed the flesh, and of course the flesh belongs to the spirit, and in that sense, he's the spirit of error. He took hold of our spirits, but he wasn't able to unite our spirits to himself. So the Bible never talks of Satan in union with humanity. It talks about a spirit that works in the two, a spirit of evil working in the two, to be working in, not totally united to. And that is why the human race basically remains, or it always was, in the image of God. Lost sons. The Bible speaks of Adam as the son of God. Lost sheep. Jesus will speak of the unsaved Jews as the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and phrases of that kind. And that is why, named at man's inner center, what John 1 talks about, the light that comes into the world. That inner knowing that we really belong to God, and having our being in him, and being able to respond to him. That is why also, when the meeting place took place, in that garden, after Adam and Eve had fallen, God didn't hide himself from man. He sought man out. He had spoken about his walking about in the cool of the day. Adam hid from God. If Adam projected on God, the wrath he was feeling, the wrath away with himself, he knew it was wrong, the wrath was in himself. He projected on God, that God was the angry one. That is what we have done ever since. And there is a sense in which God has permitted himself to be, regarded as the angry one, because we couldn't see the righteous, and therefore it was good for us to understand, in the sense that he was angry, because we were wrong. But the anger was really in ourselves. The wrath took place in ourselves, only in God's mercy. And therefore, God called to Adam, and said, come out, you've been hiding. And when he got them together, he learned in Iraq, it was all Satan. Because, as we see later on, God has to hate something, which is fixedly evil. Love does hate. Love must hate its opposite. The opposite, which is fixedly opposite, must hate it. And therefore, he had to say, you'll curse it. It symbolizes you, like a serpent, eating dust, calling on the God, you'll curse it. He never said it to man. All he said to Adam and Eve, is you have sorrow. You're my people, you've gone along, so you have sorrow, to find your own. And so straight away, he knew, that the ultimate failure, he would find it now. Because, he said to Satan, I put emetry, between thy seed, and her seed. What is Satan's seed? Satan infected us, he impregnated us, with his false nature. So we become expressions of Satan's nature. Beneath that expression of Satan's nature, we'll see the woman. And you'll see the woman, is Jesus Christ, from eternity, the land, sea, and the foundation of the world. So I was also being conceived of the woman. I also was hidden there, when we were prepared to receive him. In addition to receiving him, the one who destroyed Satan. Destroyed the works of Satan. That's why, the very, of the first two sons of Adam, one was redeemed. And the first known redeemed person, is Abel, who, knowing his false condition, knowing his need of forgiveness, presented the sacrifice of a lamb, and this was taken up by God, as a symbol, of the fact that, he was presenting himself to God's mercy, through Jesus Christ. And so Adam, it says, that Abel, he pronounced righteous. God testifying in his gift. So the first child of Adam, was God, found the way of grace into the fruits. So now we'll see, God makes it, that was his purpose. What, Paul means, which was called ungodliness, and then called it sin. So ungodliness is anti-godness. He's described that, with its appalling consequences, in the, physical misuse of love, and the mental spiritual misuse of love, turning it into self-interest, self-gratification, self-upbringing, and so we get the, the early modern description, of all humanity. Yet given over by God, that we may find no wrong. It doesn't say God turns back on us. He just gave us over temporarily. God's not watching. He's there with us. He's just given us over, I shall find out. There's a difference between God gave us over, not that he said, I'll throw you out. We're his lost sons. We're his prodigal sons. Lost sheep. So this gives a little more, fundamental understanding, of what it means, why are humans ungodly? Why are we self-loving selves? Why would we build our own gods, like ourselves, so that we can be like their flesh, like the old Greek gods, that are full of flesh, and adulterous, and hates and murders, so that we follow our gods, we can be full of flesh, and adulterous, and hates, and murders. We built our gods, to suit ourselves. As a reflection of ourselves, that we did the same things they do. So the male worship, or the filthy worship of the heathen, or the worship of the golden calf, because it's itself. Or the worship of self-glory, in the temple, my temple. All it follows is projecting myself, my temple, my god. The final subject of the human self, can make it a god, as a projection of the self-loving self. So it gives us a totality, of the fall, and I'm saying it really is, as we'll see later on, again, it's the expression of the false deity, expressed through his humanity. And thus that is the nature of humanity. The only nature humanity can have, is the deity whom it expresses. Because humanity is the vessel, or the branch, or the body, compared to the head, or the temple in which the god worships. It's always the means of expression of the deity. And the only nature humanity ever has, is the expression of the deity, whom humanity is a manifestation. And we're manifestations of Satan. As we see it a little later on, we'll see it more clearly. Now we get to coming in here, back in Romans, again I'm going to move off though, of the law. Coming to the special race, who could be prepared to know, the difference between sin and righteousness, god and devil, among whom the savior could come, and fulfill the atonement. The race was started from Abraham. And could be known in a certain sense, as we read, by those aware to the truth of Abraham, by some as positive as in the law, because they all remain in the being of God. Although we're lost, we have our living moon, our being in God. And thus you have people of Hipposocrates, which chiefly felt there was a right and a wrong, and thought to align themselves with the right as best he knew how. So all through the ages of man, there have been this type, which are referred to in the Bible, as those who by patience, continuity, and well-doing, seek for glory, honor, and recharge. And we presume if that was the set of their being, even in the following tradition, God meets the set of their being, in the day he meets them. When God shows the secrets of men, when they had the set of their being, like Socrates, was for the like of you, you knew how to find it. He didn't know, but he sought. It says, that day, God showed the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, called him by gospel, applying as a way, a means of grace for them. Now we come in, having had established, in these early chapters up to, up to, verse 19, chapter 3 of Romans, the, the lost, the sinfulness of sins, the lost condition of man, captives of the devil, expressions of the devil, and therefore going to the devil's destiny, if they remain as captives. Slaves, incidentally, another of the illustrations used in the Bible, of man's condition. When we move on to Romans 6, we find, men are the slaves to sin, or slaves to righteousness, slaves to Satan, to the being to whom, we express the right of sin, or slaves to the being to whom, we express the righteousness of God. Therefore again, humans are the slaves, under the dominion of our boss, fulfilling the purposes of our, in chapter 3, we've had the introduction here, of the law, in Romans 3, 19, we know what things under the law says, it says that everything is under the law, that every man, every mouth shall be stopped, and all the world, they will come to it before God. Therefore by these, the law shall no flesh be justified, by any sight, for by the law, is the knowledge of sin. So here, we have another great principle, inserted, in a few statements like this, by Paul, in this Romans letter, that also takes a little, backtracking, and understanding by us, in what form, of what purpose, this law came in. We find, that is the, the first stage, by which God, can prepare, a human race, for the reception of grace. It's the first preparatory step, that leads to grace. Paul doesn't go into this, in detail, in this letter, at this level. We have to go back, to fit that in, by seeing, how, the God of all grace, perfect self-giving love, who only exists for the perfection and betterment of everybody, first, approached the, the human race in its blindness, by one man, there had been, he had, he had, there had been, he had had, there had been creations of light before, but, in one specific, one specific man, and that was Abraham, Abraham being conditioned, Abraham had forefathers, Seth, and so on, right on the label, and Adam and Eve, but, with the rest of his family, falling into idolatry. So, we read, in the book of Joshua, that Abraham was among, among his family, the Chaldees, who had given way to idolatry, self-adultery, being some form of self-magnifier, self-magnified self, but, there was an, area of response in Abraham, I think that there was an area of response in all men, because we hadn't totally fallen, I mean, remained this, area in which God could have viewed us, in which God did, reveal himself to Abraham, and, said that through Abraham, he would, restore to the world, his blessing, in which he told him, that, if you, identify yourself with me now, it appears to have God's glory, Abraham saw the glory of it, I'll bless you, and make you a blessing, and in you all, families in the earth, will be blessed, so here, you have the out, moving out, the universal grace of God, from the first man, to whom, who, who, he could get within hearing distance, of his purposes, so through the falsity, of any idea, that God was a kind of, perishing, wrathful God, but see, later on, I had to appear like him, as purposes, but he appeared to Abraham, who was the one who revealed himself, the God of all grace, he said, as you identify with me, whatever I bless you, in you shall all, families in the earth, be blessed, through you, the complete restoration, the harmony, from which human race, has been created, harmony which is found, in the expression, of God's love nature, by us, can come into being, so through Abraham, he began a family, to whom, and by whom, he began to express, his grace, his faithfulness, whom, in their response, to faith, he comes as righteous, as it says in Abraham, who believed God, and he was righteous, which means, therefore, that the eternal Christ, was imputed to Abraham, before there was a historic Christ, because the only way in which, a fallen sinner could be righteous, is in the righteousness of Christ, through the atonement, therefore, the Lamb slain, was slain to the foundation of the earth, in spirit, before he came to history, and here and there, there are many who could move in, and find the efficacy, of an atonement, in the eternal Christ, which hadn't yet taken place, in its historic reality, of course, so Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, began to come into being, this family, this nation, to whom, who could receive, shall we say, partial light, to a few full light, in preparation for the fullness, of light to come, when Jesus came, this was the, Israelite's nation, that's why we hold him, in special veneration, that day is going to come, and all Israel is going to be saved, and why Paul always put, his first objective, which has been the gospel, to God's, privileged people, to take the ticket, but here came, if we may call it, the problem that God had, or the problem we had, which was to be the preparation for grace, and that was our blindness, to be removed, so that we may understand, that we are, in need of grace, grace being the, the free gift, by which God could accept us, back in Jesus Christ, so, this, privileged people, of whom Jesus Christ, is a member in the flesh, and all the early apostles, to whom therefore we owe everything, in what we now know of grace, he had to come to them, by, means of radical self-exposure, which would indeed mean, centuries of self-exposure, negative self-exposure, and that was, when he got his people to himself, by saving the people of Mount Horeb, Sinai, after the miraculous, deliverance, probably a couple of millions of them, from slavery out of Egypt, and there he is going to speak to them, through his, anointed servant, Moses, who had gone, who had been through an individual experience, which he had come into the grace of God, at the burning bush, he himself had to learn, the difference between, a self-affirmance, Moses, and a God containing, and Moses who contained God, and there we see, around Mount Sinai, the next stage, of the necessary, exposure, of the blindness of self, we said Satan deceives, they just think they are right when they are wrong, deceives, deceives, worse than blindness, blindness you just don't know, deceives because you think you do know, when you don't, and this made him think, that there was an, an, an, an, an, a creditable self, self-affirming, self-reliable self, therefore had to meet them, at Mount Sinai, through Moses, and he had to say to them, a word of great grace, I brought you out here, he says, in that Exodus chapter, like an eagle, like an eagle, like an eagle carries its young as wings, I brought you out here, safety. I favoured people in all the earth and not only am I favouring people but you ought to be those for whom the world knows that they can be favoured. You ought to be a kingdom of priests, priests are the ones who ought to reveal the grace of God to all the world as he said to Abraham, you shall all have as theirs the blessing. First of all it had to be the exposure to us humans of our deception concerning ourselves. Therefore in this interview of God with the people of Israel through Moses which is in Exodus chapter 19 he then went on quite quietly to say you are a blessed gift to me, you ought to be a blessing so long as you obey my voice, fulfil my covenant. I made a covenant with you, fulfil it. Now of course that immediately brings up the response of self-reliant self, that is exactly what he wanted. Blind self-reliant self, oh I can do it. Self, not knowing itself a self. And so he said that's it, we'll make this covenant now. And it was here that the children of Israel in Exodus chapter 19 gave him the way. When they came back and they said all that the Lord has spoken of we will do. So here was the exposure of the blinded self that thinks it self-sufficient and can fulfil the laws of God and be worthy of promises of God. God had to put it in the form of self-reliant worthiness because he had to expose self-reliance. Of course we know now our worthiness is not the reliance on ourselves but that couldn't come then. Because he had to expose this false, satanic, self-reliance, self-affirming, self-sufficient self. So they answered, gaily if you like to say, all you said we will do. It was after that that God gave the law to Moses. After that time he had only met Moses and the children of Israel on the basis of this free grace. Your special treasure that I have brought you out are eagles and wings. You are to be the life and blessing to the world. But you must keep the covenant. He had to insert that to expose self-reliant self. Here came the answer, self-reliant self. The end of take one. Please proceed to take two.