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Feb 09, 2020

What A Legacy!

Passage: Romans 5:12-21

Preacher: John Repsold

Series: Romans

Keywords: jesus, adam, grace, legacy, comparison

Summary:

Fact is, we all leave multiple legacies to others. The only question is, what kind will it be? This passage in Romans tells us about the two different legacies we've received from both Adam and Jesus Christ. If you want to exchange your old legacy in Adam for a completely new one in Christ, this is an important message for you.

Detail:

What a Legacy!

Romans 5:12-21

February 9, 2020

 

DEFINITION for “LEGACY”:

1: a gift by will especially of money or other personal property : BEQUEST—"She left us a legacy of a million dollars.”

2: something transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past: “The war left a legacy of pain and suffering.”

Get Acquainted:  tell someone about someone in your life who has left a good legacy to you.  What was that legacy?  

___________________________

Comparison—how many of us really enjoy being compared with other people?  I haven’t meant very many people in life who really liked it when…

  • their parents compared them to other siblings or young people.
  • their kids compared them with other parents.
  • their boss compared them to another employee.
  • (speaking as a pastor) their church compared them to previous pastors.

I don’t know about you, but one of the most defeating traps I fall into way too often is comparing myself with other pastors.  I did it again just this week at a meeting with about 30 other pastors in our community who gathered to get a little more training on how to be pastors that develop churches who “makes disciples who make disciples,” in obedience to the Great Commission in Matthew 28:18-20.  In other words, we were discussing how to be a church that reproduces other churches by developing reproducing disciples of everyone in our churches.

  • Most of the other pastors were younger than me…which made me feel old. ☹
  • Most of them are, in my opinion, farther ahead of me in terms of leading and training their people to become reproducing disciple-makers.
  • Many of them have, again in my opinion, accomplished far more than I have in far less time in ministry.

What was genuinely meant to be a time of encouragement and help to me and others became a time of discouragement simply because I was too busy playing the comparison game. 

            Which leads us right into today’s passage in Romans 5:12-21. Somewhat surprisingly, it is a comparison and, at the same time, a contrast passage between two very well known people in human history.  But the interesting thing about the comparison/contrast going on in this passage is that it isn’t meant to make any of us feel bad or be discouraged…including even the one in this passage who really messed up.  It’s meant to give every one of us who is longing…and struggling… to become more like Jesus great encouragement and hope.

            Bob unpacked some of the things Paul is telling us in this chapter 5 that God has done for us.  Let me just briefly review a couple of them mentioned at the beginning of the chapter. 

The theme of this chapter is really all the blessings that flow to anyone who has been “justified through faith” (the topic of chapters 1-4).  “Justified” simply means “to be made right with someone.”  AS most of us know, being “right” with other people is not always an easy thing to achieve.  It’s pretty easy to “be at odds” with others.  But it takes a lot of hard work to “be right with others” (not to be confused with “being right”