Our text is in Romans chapter
1. Romans chapter 1. Now why do
we preach the gospel of Jesus Christ? Well Paul begins to answer
that question here in the beginning of Romans in his introduction
to Romans. And so I want to look with you
this morning why we preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, what
the Lord is teaching us and revealing us in his son and in the gospel
of his son. We know that Paul preached that
God is sovereign. He preached the sovereign God
of the scriptures. And that means that our Lord
does exactly as he pleases. He's not conforming himself to
the wishes and the whims of you and me, of man. He does exactly
as he pleases. Daniel 4.35 says that all the
inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing. And God doeth
according to his will in the army of heaven and among the
inhabitants of the earth. And none can stay his hand or
say unto him, what doest thou? God is sovereign. He does as
it pleases Him. We're told that He saves whom
He will. In Romans 9, 15, and verse 16,
He saith to Moses, I will have compassion, or I will have mercy
on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion upon whom
I will have compassion. So then it's not of him that
willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. It's not our works. It's not
what we do, our decision, what we say or don't say or do or
don't do. It's according to God's own will
and purpose to be merciful and compassionate to whom he will
be. If God is able then to save whomsoever
he will, Without the help of man, without the works of man,
if God can do that, and He can, why then do we preach the gospel? Why did the Lord give us the
gospel to preach this gospel? Well, knowing we're to avoid
foolish and unlearned questions, we know that God tells his church
to preach the gospel. He tells us to preach the gospel.
And he tells us in the scriptures why we are to preach the gospel. So we're just gonna look at a
few of those this morning, why we preach this gospel. First,
we're to preach the gospel because it pleases God to reveal Christ
to the people. It pleases the Father to reveal
Jesus Christ to the people, and he does it through the gospel.
We're told by Paul in 1 Corinthians 1, verse 21, after that, in the
wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God. He's saying, we
by nature, our intellect and our wisdom and our understanding,
do not know the true and living God. We don't know him. But it
pleased God in this. And it pleased God by the foolishness
of preaching to save them that believe. Those who this day believe,
it's because it pleased God through the foolishness of preaching
to save them, to reveal to them the truth of God. Christ said,
God is a spirit. They that worship him must worship
him in spirit and in truth. And he was speaking to the woman
at the well. And she responded with something
very truthful, something very helpful to us this morning. She
said, when he has come, speaking of the Messiah, when he has come,
he will teach us all things. She had heard that. She had heard
that, and she knew that when Christ comes, He's going to teach
us all things. Amen. Amen, that's exactly right. When Christ comes, he's the one
that teaches us all things we have need of knowing. Speaking
on this very topic, our Lord said something very profound,
and it was in a prayer that Matthew recorded in Matthew 11. At that
time, Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord
of heaven and earth, Because thou hast hid these things from
the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, father, for so it seemed
good in thy sight. And then having concluded that
prayer, he turned to the people and he said, all things are delivered
unto me of my father. And no man knoweth the son but
the father. Neither knoweth any man the father
save the son. And he to whomsoever the son
will reveal him. Now, two things jump out to me
from that prayer and what our Lord said. The first being that
all men, by nature, are ignorant of the true and living God. We
don't know who God is. We don't know how to worship
God. We don't know what pleases God. We don't know him. We don't know
him, except God is pleased to reveal himself to us. And that's
the second thing. How does God reveal himself to
us? Through his son, Jesus Christ. He sent Christ to make known
to us ignorant sinners in Adam, to make known to us who the true
and living God is. Otherwise, we wouldn't know him.
We wouldn't know who God is, except Christ reveal him. And
men are ignorant, a part of Christ, apart from the gospel. And without
Christ, we're ignorant of the Father. And so we preach the
gospel because that's how we're going to know who Jesus Christ
is. We're going to know of him. Our Lord told the disciples,
I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto
the Father but by me. by Jesus Christ. And then Philip
asked this question in verse 8. He said, Lord, show us the
Father, and it suffith us. Just show us the Father, and
that will content us. We'll be good to go on our way
and serve you all the days of our life. Just show us the Father,
and that'll be enough. Jesus saith unto him, have I
been so long with you? And yet hast thou not known me,
Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen
the Father. Because it's Christ who reveals
to us the Father. And the Father sent the Son for
this very purpose. And the Father reveals the Son
through the preaching of this gospel. That's why we preach
this. We preach the gospel because
that's how the people of God hear the voice of Christ. Just like we see in John 10,
verse 3, to him, the good shepherd, the porter openeth. The porter
being the Holy Spirit. To him, the porter openeth the
door. That is, the Holy Spirit turns
the heart of man, gives a new heart, takes that dead, hard,
stony heart out of us and gives us a new heart that is soft. And the Lord turns the heart
of man to Christ, to the truth. And when the Holy Spirit opens
the door, then the sheep hear the voice of the Son of God.
Now we hear, wait, I hear someone speaking. He's speaking to me. It's when the Holy Spirit turns
the heart, then we hear he's speaking and he's speaking to
me. And we hear him call our name
and we're turned to him. return to him. He calleth his
own sheep by name and leadeth them out, out of bondage under
the preaching of the gospel." The Holy Spirit makes the Savior
known to us effectually so that we know this is the Christ. This is the one whom the Father
promised. to save his people from before the foundation of
the world. This is the promise he spoke and declared in the
garden when we fell in Adam, in sin. This is Him whom He said
He would send. Peter speaks of this from 1 Peter
1, 22-25. And I'm going to summarize it
by just taking the beginning of verse 22 and the closing phrase
of verse 25. Seeing ye have purified your
souls and obeying the truth through the Spirit. Then he says, and
this is the word. This is the word of truth, which
by the gospel is preached unto you. The Lord reveals to us the
truth of God. And he reveals to us that truth
in the face of Jesus Christ, because he is the way, the truth,
and the life. He shows us Christ. He reveals
Christ. He makes us to hear the voice
of Christ, because he's the one that reveals the true and living
God to us. And so that's why we preach the
gospel, because that's how the Lord reveals Christ, our salvation,
to us. Second, we're to preach the gospel
because it declares how God saved us by his darling son, Jesus
Christ. We learn to understand how Christ
saved us, and we learn that we need this salvation. We need
this savior. This is not just a help, a little
ancillary thing to help us on our way. Without Christ, we cannot
be saved. And it's not Christ plus our
works, it's Christ and Christ alone. Christ is all and in all,
and he's everything to the believer, everything. Through the preaching
of the gospel, our God is publishing our salvation by Jesus Christ. He's declaring that Christ has
accomplished, past tense, all our salvation. He did exactly
what the Father said He would do, what He must do, and Christ
did it. And so the gospel is a publication,
it's a proclamation, it's the preaching of what Christ has
accomplished for his people. Because the gospel makes known
that Christ came and died, not for his own sins, but for the
sins of his people, and that he rose again from the dead.
We're not asking, we're not begging people to believe on Jesus, we're
declaring what he's done. And it's the Holy Spirit that
makes this word effectual in the hearts of his people. We
see this a number of times in Acts. Throughout Acts, the disciples
preached the gospel in many villages of the Samaritans. Philip preached
unto the Ethiopian eunuch, Jesus. He preached Jesus. Saul, before
he was Paul, preached Christ in the synagogues, that he is
the Son of God. And he said in another place,
through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins. There they preached the gospel. And the word of the Lord was
published throughout all the region. This is exactly what
Christ told his disciples to do. He told them to go and to
make this word known. to publish this word. Christ
said unto them, thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to
suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance
and remission, or forgiveness of sins, should be preached in
his name among all nations beginning at Jerusalem. They would go waiting
for to be endued with power from on high. And he said, and ye
are witnesses of these things. We preach this gospel because
our Savior has made us a witness that Christ came in the flesh,
laid down his life as the substitute of his people, bearing their
sins in his own body on the tree, and put to death death in us,
delivered us from death, delivered us from the hand of justice,
and gave us life by his resurrection from the dead. We live by him. He is our very righteousness. He's our righteousness. And this
was always the purpose of God to preach this, to make this
known through the preaching of the gospel. How beautiful, Isaiah
said, how beautiful are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings,
that publisheth peace. We're declaring that Christ Jesus
has satisfied the Father and established peace for us, that
His blood has reconciled us to holy God, and that in Him we
have fellowship with the true and living God. We publish that
peace that Christ has made between God and sinners, that bringeth
good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation, that saith unto Zion,
thy God reigneth. We're declaring what God promised
from the garden, in the garden there to us. And it shows that
God reigns. He was able to bring to pass
his very words spoken of in the garden. All that history didn't
knock it out of the way or knock it off course. God did it in
the fullness of time. He sent forth his son, born of
a woman, born under the law, of a virgin, born under the law.
And he came and accomplished all that the Father sent him
to do perfectly, perfectly, justly, righteously, without sin, without
fault, without blemish, without spot. He did it perfectly. Thy
watchman, that's the church, brethren. Thy watchman shall
lift up the voice. Who's the voice? Christ, the
Word of God. We exalt the Lord Jesus Christ
with the voice That is the attending power and glory of the Holy Spirit
sent of the Father and the Son to make this word effectual in
your heart, together they shall sing. It's the power of God that
makes this word beautiful unto sinners, needy sinners who have
no righteousness of their own, but hear what God has done and
rejoice in it, are made glad. and are satisfied in Christ,
even as the father is satisfied with his son, and receives you
for Christ's sake. We rejoice in that. We sing that
song, the song of redemption, for they shall see eye to eye
when the Lord shall bring again Zion. What a beautiful picture
that you're looking into the eyes of God. when He reveals
and manifests this life and faith in you, which He's obtained and
accomplished and given by the blessing of Christ, through Christ,
in Him fully, you can look God in the eye with no shame, no
fear, no doubt, nor worry, because that's how bold Christ makes
us. That's how clean, how spotless,
how sinless, how perfect we are in the Lamb of God. He's done
that whole work for us, brethren. And so we're declaring that Christ
has accomplished the redemption, the salvation that the Father
sent him to do for his people. Again, 1 John 3,8, and I know
I've been on this verse a lot lately, but John wrote, he that
sinneth, he that commiteth sin, he that
commiteth sin is of the devil. Period. For the devil sinneth
from the beginning. That's us. We're sinners. And we can't get ourselves out
of that. We can't fix ourselves. We can't
make that untrue. He that sinneth is of the devil.
He that committed sin is of the devil. For the devil sinneth
from the beginning. Back there in the garden when
we fell. How then are we going to be saved? What can be done? For this purpose,
the Son of God was manifested that he might destroy the works
of the devil, breaks it, cancels sin, breaks that bondage of death
through our trespasses and sins, breaks that, takes us out of
that body of sin and filth and death, and delivers us from that
and makes us members of his body. clean, righteous, spotless, in
Him, in Him. The Apostle Paul adds it this
way in 2 Timothy 1, 9 and 10, God hath saved us. and called us within holy calling,
not according to our works, but according to his own purpose
and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world
began. But it's now made manifest. by
the appearing of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who hath abolished
death. He did it by his death on the
cross. As Paul said in Romans 6.6, our
old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be
destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. That doesn't
mean serving sin isn't just talking about dealing drugs and selling
our bodies and doing all kinds of wicked things that men call
sin. What he's saying there, by not serving sin, he's saying
we have ceased in Christ, we have ceased laboring and spending
and striving, trying to make a righteousness for ourself with
wicked works. What the religious works. Aren't
they righteous? Isaiah said, all our righteousnesses
are as filthy rags in his sight. That's serving sin. God didn't give us the law, and
he didn't give us this word so that we would know how to save
ourselves by doing and practicing religion, dead letter religion.
He gave us this word to show us we're sinners. dead in trespasses
and sins. We need the salvation that God
alone gives, which he promised to us in the garden in his darling
son. That's what he makes us to see.
He makes us to see our need of him. that we would hear his prophets
and hear his word turning us from dead works that cannot save
to look to Christ because it's Christ who obtains the forgiveness
of sins for his people. He did it. He accomplished it.
The work's done. It is finished, he said. It's
done. Believe him. Look to him. You
that hear that word made effectual in your heart by the Holy Ghost,
you rejoice in that. You thank God for that. I thank
God for his grace and mercy in Christ, because I'm a filthy
sinner in need of that salvation, in need of His grace. And I tell
you, according to this word, you're just like me. We're all
filthy sinners who cannot save ourselves. And that's why Christ
came, to destroy the works of the devil, to put that sin away
forever and deliver us from that body of sin and death and establish
us as members of His body. by His grace. He does it, and
then He blesses us through the preaching of the gospel, and
shows us more and more and more, growing us in the grace and knowledge
of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, knowing what He has done,
and seeing here and there and everywhere that, wow, He really
has saved us by His grace. Everything is of His grace in
Christ. I really can't do anything apart
from Him. I'm not pleasing to him apart
from Christ. He's all my acceptance. And he
makes his child to be settled in Christ and to rejoice in Christ. And he makes us thankful in the
Lord Jesus Christ more and more. And by his grace, he leads us
and teaches us and corrects us and chastens us and keeps us
and holds us and loves us and blesses us in the Lord Jesus
Christ. And we rejoice more and more. Paul said, I'm crucified with
Christ. Nevertheless, I live. Yet not
I, but Christ liveth in me. In the life which I now live
in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me
and gave himself for me. And he went on to say, I don't
frustrate the grace of God. I'm not trying to blurry this
thing up and to cloud it up and to stink it up with my works
of righteousness and trying to do something for God. No, I keep
looking to the Lord Jesus Christ, he said. Keep looking to him. I don't frustrate the grace of
God, for if righteousness come by the law or any form of religion,
then Christ is dead and vain. Christ died in vain. Because
if all we needed was just a little help, then why did Christ die?
It's because we can't. We cannot save ourselves. That's
what he's revealing in his word. When Christ died, it wasn't to
make us or show us a better way to save ourselves. He died because
we cannot save ourselves. He's all our salvation from beginning
to end. He's the Alpha and the Omega,
the first and the last. He's everything, brethren, everything. And the preaching of the gospel
is what makes that known to us. The gospel declares. Christ came,
that means we cannot save ourselves, otherwise he would not have come
and laid down his life for the sins of his people and rose again
for them. Third, we are to preach the gospel
because God burdens his servants to do that. He puts it on our
hearts, and he puts it on your hearts as the church of God to
want to see this gospel published in order to, doing all things
for the sake of the elect, Paul said, to see them called out.
He burdens his people. And this brings us back to Romans
1, verse 13. Finally in Romans, Romans 1,
13. Now, Paul says, I would not have you ignorant, brethren,
that oftentimes I purposed to come unto you, but was let hitherto,
that I might have some fruit among you also, even as among
other Gentiles. And what Paul's saying there
is, I endeavored many times to come to Rome and to preach the
gospel to you, but I was let hitherto. And what that word
let means in that context is, I was prevented. God, God shut
the door. He said, don't go there right
now, Paul. You just keep laboring where I've put you here. I still
have people here. You stay here, and you preach
the gospel to these people. And when it's time, I'll send
you over to Rome also. I'll open the door." And so we
see there that his burden is easy, his yoke is light. We're
confident. And we preach the gospel to those
that the Lord gathers together. Where He sends us, we preach
this gospel knowing that God will make this word effectual
in the hearts of His people. He will bless His people. He
will call His sheep out of darkness and cause them to hear the voice
of Christ, to see Him, and to follow Him. to come out, it's
a rejoicing there. And that's our attitude, wait
upon the Lord, trust the Lord, right? We're a small group, but
I just, I know, I'm just to keep faithfully preaching this gospel,
as faithfully as I can, and keep begging him, Lord, help me to
preach Christ as clearly as possible, as honestly and truthfully according
to your word, and Lord, please bless it through the hearts of
your people. And if and when he brings others in, he'll do
it. He'll do it. But for me, I'm just going to
keep preaching the gospel. I'm not going to put on puppet
shows or skits or any other nonsense to try and attract people with
big bands and all kinds of things. No, I'm going to preach Christ,
because that's how God saves his people every single time
in the scriptures. Preach the gospel. Preach the
gospel. That's what he does. And he blesses
it. And I trust him to do it. I trust
him to do it. And then the willingness of Paul
to go wherever the Lord sends him confirms this truth that
God has one Savior for all men. And by all men, I don't mean
every individual. But what I mean is there is only
one Savior given among men or under heaven, there's only one
name, under heaven, given among men, whereby we must be saved,
Acts 4.12. And so we preach knowing that
Christ is the Savior for all, in this sense, of every kindred,
tribe, people, and nation. Just like we see in Revelation
5.9. Some from every kindred, tribe, people, and nation. one
Savior. That's why we preach Him because
we know He's the Savior. There's not some other way that
they could come that somebody else is going to tell them about.
No, it's Christ and Christ alone through the preaching of this
gospel. Paul said in 2nd Corinthians
5 14, For the love of Christ constraineth us, it binds us
in love. We're thankful for it because
we thus judge that if one died for all, then we're all dead. That's the thing. None of us
can boast that we got in some other way. No, we all come in
through the blood of Christ. We all come in through the baptism
into the blood of Christ. We're all sinners saved by the
grace of God. That's how we come. And that
he died for all, again, all kinds of men, from every kindred, tribe,
people, and nation, that they which live should not henceforth
live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them and rose
again. Wherefore, henceforth, know we
no man after the flesh. Meaning it's not, oh, you're
a Jew? Well, then you don't need to
hear this. You've already got this through the law. You're
a son of Abraham. No, not true. The Jew is saved
by Christ as well. And the Gentile, oh, you're not
cast out and put aside because you're a dog. No, Christ died
and gave his life for the Gentiles too. So whether you're Jew or
Gentile, we all need to hear this blessed gospel of how God
has saved his people through his darling son, the Lord Jesus
Christ, who died and rose again for our life and our acceptance
with the true and living God. Wherefore, henceforth, know we
no man after the flesh, yea, though we have known Christ after
the flesh, yet now, henceforth, know we him no more. To our shame,
there was a time when we labored in religion and played around
in the playground of religion, thinking that this was our life,
knowing Christ only after the flesh. But thanks be to God,
He delivered us from that fleshly knowledge and understanding of
the true and living God, and now know that, wait a minute,
He is my salvation. He's the salvation of God, not
just a knowledge of how to get myself saved. He is it. And so
he brings us to Christ to see our all in him. Therefore, if
any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed
away. Behold, all things are become
new. Just like Paul said to the Galatians, it's not whether you're
circumcised or uncircumcised, but whether you're a new creature.
And that's why our Lord makes us new creatures by His grace
and power in the Lord Jesus Christ and the giving of His Holy Spirit,
making this word effectual to our hearts to see the light and
glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. He does that. And fourth,
we're to preach the gospel because it's how God reveals them that
are His. We speak of the election of God,
but we don't know who the elect are. more likely than not, accused
the elect of God as being the tares, and the wicked ones, because
often they're broken, and they're weak, and they have no confidence
in the flesh, and they're troubled, and they're disappointed, and
they suffer, and they go through afflictions, and hardships, and
difficult times. because the Lord is stripping
them of having a vain confidence in the flesh. And he's stripping
us down by his grace and mercy, not because he hates us, but
because he loves his people in Christ. He's gonna make us to
know the grace of God revealed in the face of Christ. That's
why we come to him as beggars, but it's his grace that makes
us beggars. He could have done something
very different for us. We could have been born into
very wealthy families and had no need of anything, and not
known difficulties and hardships, or just had everything go right
for us. But instead, he blessed us in
that he showed us the weakness of this flesh, and the incompetence
of this flesh, and our need of his salvation, the Lord Jesus
Christ, and gave us faith to know that he's our inheritance. And like Paul, we're content
to commit it all to Christ and just wait on Him. I know whom
I believe in, he said to Timothy, and am persuaded that He is able
to keep that which I've committed unto Him against that day. We
don't need it. We've got the riches of Christ.
We're fine. We're fine because we know Him,
and we're thankful for that blessing. Thankful for that. And so Paul
said, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the
power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to the
Jew first and also to the Greek. Those made new creatures through
Christ's redemption glory manifest the life of Christ in them. And
I call it redemption glory because when Christ died and rose again,
that sealed our salvation. There's nothing stopping the
Lord from reaching out and grabbing us out of death when it pleases
Him. In the time, in the day of His
grace for the sinner of His choosing. Nothing's stopping that. Christ
is going to do it and He manifests the people whom Christ died for
by revealing faith in them and turning them from death to Christ.
That's because faith isn't a work of the flesh. It's a fruit of
the spirit. It's wrought by God in his people. And faith isn't given to us because
we did some good work. It's not by our merit. It's not
because we did something good to earn that. Then it wouldn't
be a gift. It would be a payment for works. but it's a gift of the Spirit,
according as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation
of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before
Him in love. And so Paul said in Romans 117,
for therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to
faith. As it's written, the just shall
live by faith. And so he manifests it when it
pleases him in his child. He sends the gospel, makes the
gospel to be heard by them, by the spirit opening that door,
turning the heart from death to Christ. And then we hear,
I hear his voice, and he's speaking to me. He's actually describing
me, and I need that salvation. Lord, help me. Save me, Lord. Keep me, Lord. Don't pass me
by, Lord. Save me. I need this salvation. He does that for us. And fifth
and final, we're to preach the gospel because God has revealed
His wrath against sin. Paul said, Romans 1 18, for the
wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness
and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness. And so we're publishing this
gospel because the wrath of God is revealed. This is how God
saves His people, so we declare this. Because God is delivering
them, as it pleases Him, out of that wrath, out from underneath
that body of sin, out from under that wrath of God. Peter said
it this way, 2 Peter 3, 9 and 10. The Lord is not slack concerning
His promise. He's not lazy. He hasn't forgotten. It's not that He doesn't care.
He's not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness,
but as long-suffering to us-ward. to those chosen in Christ before
the foundation of the world and put for safekeeping for salvation
in his hand. And now we gotta carry that us-word,
that us, throughout the rest of the verse. He's long-suffering
to us-word, not willing that any of us should perish, but
that all of us should come to repentance. He makes it known. He's not gonna fail. He's the
successful Savior. He's accomplished our salvation,
and God makes it known in our hearts. But the day of the Lord
will come as a thief in the night, in the which the heavens shall
pass away with great noise, and the elements shall melt with
fervent heat. The earth also and the works
that are therein shall be burned up. So we're to preach this gospel
till the last sheep is brought in when it pleases the Lord,
and when that last sheep comes in, Christ returns. And He'll
take us all up to be with Him. There's no purpose for us to
be here anymore. The works are finished in Christ. It's all
done. So what a joy it is now to publish, to preach, to proclaim,
to declare what the Lord Jesus Christ has accomplished for His
people. And we pray that the Lord bless
that word to the hearts of His people, making it effectual in
you and growing you in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and
Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.