Road Trip: A Series on the Book of Romans

Everybody loves a Road Trip! Right? Road Trips are a great opportunity to get away from the normal humdrum of life and spend time with friends of family, and see stuff. For some, Road Trips are a rite of passage from being a child who can only go on trips with parents, to be entrusted by parents to be responsible with friends.

Road trips are relatively easy for us today, with the road systems that we have in place. It’s a luxury we rarely consider because of the modern context that we live in. If we have a bike or a car and our smartphone, we can drive all over our country. It’s phenomenal!

What was the world like before having paved roads everywhere you go? Think of how it would limit travel opportunities and slow down any trips. We actually owe a great debt to the ancient Roman engineers who began laying Roman Roads across Europe. It was because they built straight roads to connect cities across their empire that people began to migrate across the continent.

This was the system of roads that they Apostle Paul traversed to take the message of the Gospel to the world. His road trips to many months and presented many hardships, but he felt it was worth it to spread the Good News. It was this road system that he sent a letter to the Christians living in Rome, in which he laid out a clear and full presentation of the Gospel and what it accomplishes.

Romans is 16 chapters and has some of the most profoundly theological truths we find in Scripture. Although it may only take 45 minutes to read the book in it’s entirety, you could study it for years and never exhaust its truths. With that said, how can we summarize this book in 4 weeks?

When I was nineteen, I had to the opportunity to go on a missions trip to Trinidad. It was actually my mom’s idea. She got me to agree to go on one more missions trip before I enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. Although I was convinced I was going to be a Marine, I did enjoy traveling and doing missions trips that were work oriented. So, I signed up with Teen Missions International to do a demolition and construction project in Trinidad.

On this trip, we encountered an unexpected amount of rain, which slowed down our work. Our leader, Dan Ralph, decided that we were not going to waste our time waiting for the rain to stop, so he initiated a door to door evangelism campaign. Yep, that’s right, he told 33 teenagers we had to walk through the neighborhoods and talk to people about the Gospel

Now I believe the Gospel and I knew it was a good idea for people to hear the Gospel, but I didn’t like talking to people, especially those I don’t know. That is why I signed up on a work trip, not an evangelism trip. God had different plans.

As a 19 year old who was raised in church, Good News Clubs, Christian Camps, and Christian School, I knew a lot about the Bible and the Gospel, but I was afraid to talk. I was one of the oldest team members, so they assigned me as a leader of my group and partnered me up with two 15-year-old girls and a lady from the local church, to be a witnessing team. To my shame, I decided to play the “spiritual prayer partner” and let the girls do all the talking. I was being very cowardly, but they boldly talked to several people.

As we were walking to another house, one of the girls said, “alright, whose talking at the next house?”

That’s when I heard someone say, “I will.”

Both of the girls were so excited and said, “Oh good for you Brad, you will do great!”

In my head, I was freaking out and I didn’t think I actually said anything. But apparently, the Holy Spirit prompted me to speak, and so I did.

Have you ever been so nervous to say something that you were shaking? It felt like my knees were knocking and my hands were trembling, but I stepped way outside of my comfort zone and hailed the home owner.

That’s when my mind went blank. I couldn’t remember how to get started or what to say. All I remembered was that in our training, our leaders had us go through something called the Romans Road to Salvation. It was a device used to share the Gospel just using verses from the book of Romans. We had to underline each verse in the series in red, and then write the next reference in the column. In the front of my Bible I had written a note on where it started, Romans 3:23. The rest went something like this:

The lady who answered us was an 83-year-old Hindu woman. She was born and raised a Hindu. I asked if she would be interested in hearing about the God of the Bible, and she said “Yes.”

I opened to Romans 3:23 and turned my Bible around and said, “would you like to read this verse?” I pointed to the underline portion in my Bible. She read, “for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” And I asked, “what do you think that means?” And she responded.

I then followed the prompting to the next verse, and asked her to read followed by “what do you think that means?” As she completed the Romans 10:9 portion that said, “if you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, you will be saved,” I asked her if she would like to do that.

And she said, “YES!” and in shock, I said, “are you sure?”

She again affirmed her desire. She prayed a sweet and simple prayer. Upon saying amen, she looked up with a tear in her eye and said, “you need to come back and share this with my son, he needs to hear about Jesus!”

It was a beautiful and powerful moment. I was so humbled that God would use a sinner like me to share His glorious truth and see a human soul transformed from the power of darkness to the Kingdom of Light. In that moment, I knew that God was calling me to something different than the Marines. I knew I wanted to spend my life telling people about Jesus. And that is why I am a youth pastor today!

And so, these four weeks are going to be a summary of that same Romans Road to Salvation. It’s a great resource, and later, memorizing those same verses have been a huge blessing in my life and ministry. Today, I don’t like jumping straight to Romans 3:23 as a starting point, and I have learned a lot more about the Gospel since those early days. However, the enduring truth of the Gospel never changes, and Good News of Jesus is “the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16).

Key Verses: Romans 1:16-17

¹⁶For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. ¹⁷For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

The Gospel (Good News) reveals the Righteousness of God and the need for faith. The revealed knowledge of who God is and what He has done is apprehended by faith is the power of God to transform us from enemies of God to children of God.

In this series, we will look at our need, God’s provision, receiving this gift and the results we should expect.

Lesson 1: Why Do We Need To Be Saved?

What is salvation?

God’s Righteousness in His Wrath Against Sinners – Romans 1-3

I thought I would start with Romans 1:16-17 as a reminder that the Gospel is powerful and it changes lives. Sometimes we may forget how powerful the Gospel is, or become too familiar with the biblical story, but we must never allow ourselves to grow weary from hearing this beautiful truth. We also need to remember that the Gospel is not about us, but about our Righteous God who demonstrates His love in redeeming us. Those who believe that God is who He says He is, and that He has done what He said He did, and that He will do what He promises to do, understand that we are the beneficiaries of a gracious God for His glory and our greatest good.

Before getting to Romans 3:23, I think it is good to look back on Romans 1:18-32, and specifically highlight a few truths. God is the Creator and He is revealed in creation, so that no person in the world is without excuse (Romans 1:20-21, 24-25). God created all things good, to reveal who He is. “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1). God is not trying to hide from us, but has placed His finger prints all around us in this world, if we will just look for Him we will see Him.

Yet we find out quickly that we are sinners, because we rejected what we knew to be true about Him and chose the creation over the Creator. Romans 3:10 tells us, “None is righteous, no not one” and Romans 3:23, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

We all have a big problem, it’s called sin. Sin can be defined as the big “I” problem: “I want what I want and I don’t care about what God wants” problem. Selfish, prideful rebellion against God is at the very core of who we are.

Wait a second, you may be saying, “I’m not that bad, I’m not a sinner.” God’s Word disagrees, and here is the evidence for us to consider.

Romans 5:12 “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.”

Here, Paul is reminding us about our first father, Adam, in the garden. You see, Adam was a representative of all of us. That even in the perfect environment, with all the blessings we can imagine, we would still choose our selves over God. It’s what we do. All humans are in the same boat, we are sinners who suppress the truth of who God is in our lives so that we can do what we want.

Just as Adam sinned and brought death into this world, so we will die because we are sinners too. Romans 6:23 says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Part A is for this week, part B is what we will cover next week. Our paycheck for sinning is death, it is separation from God in this life and the next.

Romans 1 talks about the wrath of God being poured out on sinners. We have rebelled against God and in His justice and righteousness He has to judge sin. Romans 1:28-32 lists a whole bunch of sins that cover just about everything. Nobody is innocent. All have transgressed the Law of God. We are in desperate need.

What do you think about that? What if the story ended here? God created us, gave us one shot and we blew it, so we are utterly hopeless. What meaning would we have in life? Why would we even care?

But the story doesn’t end there. If you’d like to read ahead, we will continue the Romans Road in the upcoming weeks in Romans 6:23, 5:8, 19; 10:9-10, 13, 17; 5:1; 8:1, 37-39.

 Here's a good intro to Chapters 1-4 of Romans.