If you'd open your Bibles to
the book of Romans, we will have a word of prayer. We thank you, Father, for tonight,
for opening us the opportunity to come together as your sheep,
as your spiritual children, as the elect. Father, help us to
love one another. Help us to bear with one another.
Help us to grow in the understanding of grace and to approach each
other in grace. No matter what we may see or
what we may try to comprehend with our minds and the tangible
aspects of our lives. Father, let us know that there
is great hope and opportunity in what you can do in the spirit
of each of us. Father, as we finish out Romans
over these next few weeks, I pray that the teaching that we've
had over the few years would just resonate, would grow deep
inside of us and help us to see the gospel of free and sovereign
grace in a clear way. And Lord, Most of all, that we
would learn to live together in a way that reflects this gospel.
And I pray these things by the name and in the power of Christ.
Amen. Romans. We are almost done. I literally could close it out
tonight, but I don't want to because I want to emphasize a
couple of things. If you know anything about Chapter
16, you know that basically Paul just says, greet this person,
greet that person, greet this person, greet that person, greet
this person, greet that person. But yet it's important to know
that this greetings are commanded. It's important to see what Paul
is doing here. And not only am I going to show
you those examples this week and next week, but I'm also going
to show you the contrast of how we look at these things in our
culture. and how we are to recognize when we're not greeting one another.
Because as Paul already said in verse 7 of chapter 15, therefore
welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you for the glory
of God. So this welcoming, this greeting, It's like Paul tells
Philemon, whose slave has run from him to escape the ins and
outs of a Christian home and Christian master. Then out of
the blue, Philemon meets Paul, and Paul sees God convert him,
and now Philemon is a brother. And Paul tells Philemon to let
down what the justice system would say and forget about arresting
him and bringing him back against his will and having him put to
death, etc. But to greet him as if he was
Paul himself. To receive him in that way, to
feed him, to fellowship with him, to set him up in his home,
to make him a brother above all things. Because is that not the
way Christ has come to us? We have come, not because of
who we are to the face of God, but because of what Christ has
done for us, we are satisfactory to God. Earlier tonight, having
a conversation about the justice, the judicial aspect of justification. Christ has taken our guilt and
given us His righteousness. So in a judicial sense, God the
Father does not see us as sinners. As a matter of fact, He sees
us as having never sinned. having never sinned, but he's
not short-sighted, he's not slow, he's not ignorant, but in the
judicial sense of his righteousness, we have never sinned. And even
when we do sin, it is as if we've never sinned, for we will never,
ever face the condemnation of God. Beloved, this is a work
that only God the Spirit can really help our minds and hearts
grasp. This is the true doctrine and
the outcome and the fruit of the gospel, free and sovereign
grace. The false gospels of the world,
the false gospels of the addition of works, the false gospels of
the fruitfulness of obedience, the false gospels of decisionism,
the false gospels of just being secure or affirmed in one's,
what am I thinking of, sincerity? These don't save anyone. but
the true gospel of mercy. Mercy. You are a sinner. I am a sinner. We are sinners.
God is just in our condemnation, but before the world began, He
chose His people out of the world to save them in the life and
the death and the resurrection of Jesus. So we have an obligation to one
another. We are not islands upon ourselves. I have said this a
lot through the years of ministry, but I've not said it often enough,
and I haven't said it recently. We need to keep in mind that
our although our salvation in itself is personal, it is for
us individually. It is not private because we
are just one part of Our body and our body is just one of many
segments of the body of Christ. We will be together. Hebrews
12 says the assembly. Before the throne of God. when
we are all together in that last day. You realize it is not the
last days that we will be together. It is the last day. Time will
be no more. There will never be a tomorrow.
This is the last day and that last day will remain forever.
And we will be together in Christ. Having laid aside not only what
has come before, but we will never again look back on it.
Never again will we labor in our own flesh, in our own sin.
We will be made like Christ in all fullness, for we will be
glorified and temptation will be gone. Sin will be no more. And in that we rejoice, beloved.
Paul details his service to the Gentiles as a Jew. He's writing
to both of these audiences here in Romans 15. And let's look
at verse 14 and let's read and take it verse by verse or thought
by thought. I am myself satisfied about you, my brothers, that
you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and
able to instruct one another." We talked about this last week.
We dealt with this truth that we are here so that we may instruct
one another. Now let me ask you this. When
is grace never grace? When there is no sin. When is
teaching never necessary? When there is no ignorance. When
is correction never found? When there is nothing wrong.
So as long as we live in these bodies, there will always be
something wrong. There will always be something
to correct. And there will always be the need for grace because
there is always going to be the flesh. So we are, according to
Paul, by the gospel who is given to us by the God of hope, verse
13, the God of hope who fills us with all joy and peace and
believing. That's where I spent most of my time last Wednesday.
Week 70, I believe it was. By the power of the Holy Spirit
may abound in hope. What need is there of hope if
there's not also hopelessness? Does that make sense? Sometimes
we just sort of skirt right over there. We're looking for the
afterthoughts or the fruitfulness of these things. We're looking
for the positive ends of the Christian life, but we don't
remember. We don't remember that those
things come through the opposites. If there is joy in my life, there
is joy in my life because there is despair. And so in spite of
the despair that I feel now, God has granted me joy. If I
feel like there's no hope and then now I have hope is because
there was hopelessness. Now there is hope. If I have
love now for the saints or love now for my spouse or love now
for my enemies, it's because I was previously not loving or
tempted to not love. The Lord and his goodness is
given clarity on this to me. That it's just these simple things,
these simple little closes of a letter that can teach us great
details about these simple truths that aren't necessarily spelled
out. And so we are to instruct one another in the goodness of
Christ in the seasons when that instruction is necessary. And
God has definitely given us the spirit where we may abound in
hope. Paul then in verse 15, but on
some points I've written to you very boldly by way of reminder.
So Paul reminds us over and over and over and over again. He reminds
these Roman Christians, Jew and Gentile alike, of the grace of
God given to them, that it is the power of God, which is the
good news of Christ unto salvation. No matter if you're a Jew or
a Greek, if you are elect, you are saved only by the good news
of Jesus, only by the good news of God, that His grace is sufficient
for you. His supply, what He has done
to save you justly, righteously, is the only hope that we have.
And why has he done this? Why does he continue to remind
us? Because of the grace given me by God to be a minister of
Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in this priestly service of the
gospel of God. Why? Why was Paul, a Sanhedrin
member, called to be the apostle to the Gentiles? Why not just
go out into the highways and byways of Judah, Jerusalem, and
all the different towns therein. Why not just go there and let
Him be the catalyst through which God would bring the Jews to faith? Because just as we see the opposites
in where we find joy in the midst of despair, etc., we also see
that which he, Paul, would despise in his heart in a divine way
according to his own mind. In other words, he thought it
was godly to hate the Gentiles. Now he is the very one through
whom God will bring them home. As a Jew, it's very odd for everyone
looked at Jews as these pious people. They were not. They were
unbelievers, Paul being the foremost unbeliever, the greatest of sinners. But by the grace of God given
to him, now he gets to take this mysterious truth now clear as
a veil to the very ones that God's chosen people historically
hated the most. In this, the offering of the
Gentiles may be acceptable. Paul sees himself as a priest
who brings in the Gentiles and presents them to God through
the preaching of the gospel. And he uses that idea of the
sanctification by the Holy Spirit. In other words, the Jews who
are believers and the Gentiles who are believers are sanctified. That means they're set apart
for God by the work of the Spirit, by being granted faith to believe
in the finished sanctifying work of Jesus Christ. So then only in Christ, verse
17, I have a reason to be proud of my work for God. Paul is not
boasting. He said, look at all the sermons
I preached. Paul is not boasting. He said, look at the size of
my congregations. Paul was not an elder, never in his life. He was an apostle from the beginning
to the end of his Christian ministry. And before that he was a Jew
and a devout one. But God saved him out of Judaism,
out of the false religion of Judaism, and brought him to the
cross of Christ and granted him salvation on the road to Damascus. He was born again that day. It
was not later in time when he was baptized, as I've recently
been told. Paul was saved by the Spirit
on the road to Damascus. And because of the work that
God has done with him and through him, in Jesus Christ, he is able
to say he's proud. So what is Paul's boasting? The
gospel. Paul's boasting is God's mercy,
God's grace, God's loving kindness. Paul's boasting is not, look
at what all I've done, but look at what God has done. was it just a couple of weeks
ago, I made the comment, I think I might have shared this with
you Sunday, about me saying one of the hardest things for me
to swallow if I were able to see it after my death is people
exalting and exalting me to the status of the catalyst of their
joy and their faith and all of these things. And I established
it this way in my thoughts, I am a grunt. I'm a grunt with a loud
mouth and two eyes that can read the Word, and by the power of
God the Spirit, He lets me teach. And when I am gone, another loud
mouth grunt will take my place. But all glory is to God. And
I'm thankful that I can be a grunt for Christ. It wasn't my ambition. It's not my drive. It's not my
sincerity. It's just the fact, it's not
even my availability. It's this thing that God made
me and keeps me in. Why? Because I love you. And why do I love you? Because
Christ loves me. So I have reason to be proud
of my work for God. 4, verse 18, I will not venture
to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through
me to bring the Gentiles to obedience. I'm going to add there, because
we see it in other places, of faith. They believe in Christ.
They believe the command to seek Christ and trust in Him. They've
been granted that. So I'm not being creative when
I say what I said about Paul's boasting because he says it later.
I just remember what I read a few minutes ago. Paul is boasting what Christ
has accomplished. He's the grunt through which
God has worked. He's the hands through which
God has worked. In the same way, He is proud and thankful, and
here is His word, satisfied with the saints of Rome that they
too know the things that He's taught them. And now they too
can be used as grunts toward each other's joy, toward each
other's hope, inwardly and outwardly in their lives by teaching one
another the gospel and holding above all things the glory of
Christ. So just as Paul taught them,
they now are to be used by God to teach one another. Now this
is where we get a little convoluted in our culture because as I'm
going to speak about this coming Sunday, we live in a very patriarchal,
misogynistic culture to this very day. It's bad. But you're going to be surprised
at how I approach these things because I think that it's going
to blow people's minds and legalist and unconverted reprobates who
hate the gospel of free and sovereign grace are going to be angry with
how I exposit the clear teaching of Scripture in the context of
how we ought to treat our sisters and their significance in gospel
proclamation, their significance in the teaching of the Word of
God. I didn't say they could be elders. I didn't say they
could preach to the congregation, but they are to teach the word
of God. They are to teach one another. And I can prove it in
the context of chapter 15 and 16. I will not speak of anything
else, verse 18, except what Christ has accomplished through me,
to bring the Gentiles to obedience by word and deed, by the power of
signs and wonders, by the power of the spirit of God, so that
from Jerusalem and all the way around to Elycrium, I have fulfilled
the ministry of the gospel of Christ. I've fulfilled it. What God has established through
me, I have completed the work. I've done everything that God
has called me to do and I'm continuing to do it. But in this region,
I'm finished. I've done it. Now it is on you.
That's why I've never been big in the practice of traditionalists
who like to bring in guys who have four sermons that they have
down really well and they're very theatrical with. Maybe eight.
And their job is to bring revival. through that stale bread. And I know that that statement
stings some people. I was an itinerant speaker. No such thing as an itinerant
pastor. No such thing as an itinerant evangelist. I was an itinerant
speaker for a short season and did a lot of teaching across
the country. And it is there and through that that God honed
my heart to be a shepherd. Because what I was doing was
cooking steak on a runaway cart and just puffing the smoke of
the aroma of that great beef as I drove through town. And
as people began to feel hunger for that meat, I just went to
the next town. Hope you get the imagery. But by the power of the Holy
Spirit, I fulfill the ministry of the gospel of Christ. So still
Paul is not saying he's disciplined, he's diligent. We don't teach
people to be radical for Christ. We don't teach people to be diligent.
We don't teach people to throw stuff away and to change things
and to do something different. We don't teach people to become
the Apostle Paul. Yeah, I said this Sunday. It's
amazing how this heart of Paul as seen here in this context,
but the heart of the people, I want to be Paul. I want to
be Paul. I want to be like Peter. You're going to be like Paul, then put
your stripes on. You go into prison and you better get your
pencil sharpened because all you're going to do is write letters.
That is your ministry. That's what Paul did when he
was in prison. He wrote letters, which God had ordained to be
his holy scripture. So everything Paul did, he did
for the sake of Christ. He says in verse 20, and thus
I make it my ambition to do what? To get more converts? I make
it my ambition to become a better apostle? I make it my ambition
to be a better communicator? I'm sick and tired of hearing
people teach young pastors how to communicate. I'm tired of seeing all the different
tips and tricks and all these different things that will make
you a more effective preacher, a more effective teacher. There's
nothing really wrong with thinking, could I speak a little bit differently?
But does it matter? Does it really matter? I've had
people say to me before, I would love to hear what you have to
say, but you sound so hillbilly, I can't follow it. Really. And I used to speak a lot faster.
I used to talk very, very fast and, you know, like the micromachines
guy. Remember that guy from the 80s?
Okay. Half of you guys are going, I
wasn't even alive in the 80s. What are you talking about? Maybe two-thirds of you
might have said that. You speak really fast, so I've learned
just common sense, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm
talking about people who constantly say, well, if you really want the
Lord's Word to work, you've got to communicate it with enthusiasm,
you've got to communicate it with the right anecdotes and
the right stories, the right illustrations. I remember the
days when I was taught to use media. Let's use a little sermon
illustration out of a movie clip or an object lesson. Magic tricks,
that was my thing. I could shoot fire from anything.
I mean, you can imagine. Everybody that's not paying attention
would pay attention. He'd just shoot fire, and you're just gonna
stare at me and wait for me to shoot fire again. You're not
gonna hear what I have to say if the Holy Spirit isn't guiding
you to listen. So I just think all that stuff
is hogwash. I think making a pastor a professional is one of the
greatest deceits of Satan since the garden. The ambition should be to preach
the gospel for the apostle. For the pastor it should be to
preach the gospel to the church, to equip them to do the work
of the ministry, that they may know what it is that is true
concerning Christ, that they may understand the covenant of
God with himself and the Godhead, and the conditions of that covenant
being met perfectly in the life and death and resurrection of
Jesus, and that nothing else that any human being could ever
do could come to God and approach him in any way through which
he could be justified outside of believing that Christ alone
has justified him. Paul here is even saying, I will
not preach the gospel even though it is my ambition. Look what
he says there in verse 20. Not where he has already been
named. Why? Because he didn't want to build
on someone else's foundation. Let me talk about ambition in
the ministry for a minute. If I don't go there, they're
going to all go to hell. It's demonic. God's elect will
not stand in judgment. It is great and every believer
should have a heart to see people come to believe in the finished
work of Christ. And every believer, as they are
granted the grace and given the opportunity when it comes by
the Spirit of God, should be ready and able to give the proclamation
of God's free and sovereign grace. But this idea in our culture,
hundreds of thousands of these zealous young men and women,
gotta go, gotta go, gotta go, mama called, daddy sent, nambirthed. You don't know what I mean by
that? Good, you've survived. It's garbage. God will send the gospel. And
if I'm faithful to what I'm called to do, and I do the work of an
evangelist in the process of doing my pastoral duties, you
also will do the work of an evangelist in the process of doing your
ministerial duties to one another. Because God will use you to proclaim
the gospel in his time. Urgency is important. Heart and
ambition is important. But there's no man in this world,
had he not gone where he felt he needed to go, that God's gospel
would not go to his people. There's not a pastor in history
or an evangelist in history that had he never been born, that
billions of elect people would have suffered and died and gone
to hell. See, this is the rub when you start erasing the frustration
that people have with me sometimes when I erase their secular urgency
for evangelism. There's a divine urgency for
evangelism. It's not of the flesh. So much
so that the Apostle Paul, who was probably in the time of his
writing, the most influential preacher of the gospel of Jesus
Christ that had ever lived or ever will live. Yet he would not go into a place
that someone else was already preaching the gospel. Now let me ask you this question. Is the gospel being preached
everywhere? No. There's a church every block.
There's a ministry every mile. There's a pastor on every corner. The gospel is nowhere to be found.
It's nowhere to be found. It's not found in the pews of
traditionalism. It's not found in the pulpits
of denominationalism. It's not found on the mission
field. It's not found on the mission boards. It's not found
in all the organizations that are parachurch ministries. I
like to call them parasites. They suck the very nature of
the call of God to the body away from them. We can get on our
knees and pretend like we're praying on our seats and put
our hands on a man and send him out there to do the work and
send him with a check and think we're actually doing the work
of God. It's not like that. It doesn't work that way. Most
missionaries in our country today are fundraisers more than gospel
preachers. Where is the gospel preached?
You know how you know when the gospel is preached in an area?
Because we can find sheep who believe the free and sovereign
grace of Jesus Christ. But yet, when you begin to dig
through the very surface pages, the blank pages that are a part
of every book, in the very beginning, when you get to the title page
and you flip over to the first page, when you get there in a
culture, when you get there in a community, and you start saying,
okay, where's all the Christians? And you see all the Christians,
that's the Bible cover, that's all us, us, of every iteration,
of every denomination, of everything, and you open the cover, two-thirds
of them disappear. Because you've stood on the authority
of a Bible rather than the authority of tradition, or a man's so-called
revelation from a God that ain't the one from here. And then when you flip on over
to the next page, you begin to see that what these people are
saying and what they're doing doesn't even match. When you
ask them the questions, How is a man made righteous before God? And they say in Jesus. Sometimes
we stop there. Oh, yes. Amen. That's a brother
right there. And of course, the natural question that most of
my friends like to ask them, what, Jesus, are you talking
about? But I actually get the answer to that with the very
next question. Where is your assurance? Where is your assurance? that your righteousness before
God is yours. And when people don't explain
the Christ work and the cross work of Jesus, they're not born
again. They don't have the gospel, it's
not being preached. Everywhere I go, if it's a funeral,
people come up to me, I've never heard that before. Preach at
a school? Never heard that before. Preach
at a kindergarten class? I've never heard that before.
Teach a class? Guest lecturer, whatever? I've
never heard that before. Question on the book of James?
I've never heard that before. What about Romans 3? I've never heard
that before. I thought you were a pastor. Obviously you're not a pastor
of Jesus Christ. Those who have never been told
of Him will see, and those who have never heard will understand.
You see what's been quoted there in verse 21? Isaiah 52, 15. Paul would preach the gospel
where it was not. He preached it in Jerusalem where
it was not. What was in Jerusalem? The Word
of God. the chosen people of God, the
temple of God, the oracles of God, the artifacts of God, the
festivals of God. And in all of that, for thousands
of years, the gospel was never preached. So Paul preached it. So there
is a sense of urgency now, but it is a divine urgency that God
the Spirit gives us as true born again believers in the free and
sovereign grace of Jesus Christ so that we now can see it from
a mile away, can't you? Plug those two questions into
every so-called Christian conversation that ever comes your way. Next
time somebody says, God bless you. Hey, say, I've got a couple
of questions concerning God. Can you help me understand them?
How can I be righteous before Him? And how do I know, how can
I know that these that that righteousness is mine. Where's my assurance
in that? And I promise you what an unconverted man will do is
he will give you every example of what he has done to approach
the throne of God and thus take out of the hand of the king the
scepter of righteousness with his own will, with his own words,
with his own actions, with his own assurance, with his own hope,
with his own justification. with his own longevity, with
his own traditions, with his own prayers, with his own teaching,
with his own ministry. Guess what? That's exactly what
Judaism was. Verse 22, this is the reason
why I've so often been hindered from coming to you. I've been preaching places where
Christ has not been named. You have him, so I don't want
to come back there because I know you are there, beloved, and Christ
is being named. Christ is being preached because
that's what the church does. Evangelism is not a program or
a process that the churches are supposed to put on. Evangelism
is the outpouring of proclamation and life together. Verse 23, But now since I no
longer have any room for work in these regions, I've done it. I finished it up.
I've been there and I see that God has saved his elect in each
of these regions. Since I've longed for many years
to come to you, I hope to see you in passing as I go to Spain.
Now we know that never happened, right? Never happened. And he never made it to Spain. He wanted to. Why? There's a
place that Christ isn't preached. I'm going there. Beloved, the
congregations of the free and sovereign grace of Jesus Christ.
We need to be praying that God would send missionaries to become
pastors in those unreached people. And unreached people are not
the hidden tribes on the wilderness. The unreached people are sitting
in the pews of Baptist churches, preaching in pulpits of Methodist
churches, doing missions in the church of God. writing books
to the Reformed Baptists across America and so forth and so on. Just because people take labels
of Calvinism or labels of Reformed or labels of historical theology
that sound good, it's just like having an engineer that knows
all the ins and outs of an airplane but have never flown one. He
couldn't do it if he tried. I hope to see you passing as
I go to Spain and to be helped on my journey there by you once
I've enjoyed your company for a while. At present, however,
I am going to Jerusalem, bringing aid to the saints there. I'm
taking money to Jerusalem because the saints in Macedonia and Achaia
have given an offering. They've made contribution for
the poor among the saints of Jerusalem. They were taking care of each
other's needs. For they were pleased to do it, and indeed
they owe it to them. It's their obligation, it's their
responsibility. For if the Gentiles had come
to share in their spiritual blessings, they ought to be of service to
them in material blessing. That's why Paul tells the church
in Corinth that those who have chosen by the will of God and
by the Spirit's prompting to give for the sake of the ministry
and the saints, they should do so. That's why Paul says in the
pastoral epistles that the man who let the ox not be what? Muzzled,
let him plow and then let him eat. Talking about pastors being
supported for the sake of the ministry. When therefore I have completed
this and have delivered to them what has been collected, I will
leave for Spain on the way to you. And I know, or by way of
you, I'll come to you and then I'll leave for Spain. And I know
that when I come to you, I will come in the fullness of the blessing
of Christ. I cannot wait. People find it
odd that when people are passing through here from other places
like Florida, Kentucky, people going to New York, from Arizona
by way of South Georgia. Because they want to be in our
fellowship for just one Sunday. People think it's odd. I used
to think it was odd and then I realized there's many places
the gospel is not. And there's many places that
true intimate fellowship and forgiveness and grace and life
together is not. So, verse 30, he says, I appeal
to you, brothers, sisters, by the Lord Jesus Christ and by
the love of the Spirit, to strive together with me in your prayers
to God on my behalf, that I may be delivered from the unbelievers
in Judea, and that my service for Jerusalem may be accepted
with the saints. So, verse 32 is the operative issue here in
his prayer, in his request for prayer, that by God's will. Whose
will? God's will. What is Paul asking
for? Prayer. that by God's will I
may come to you with joy and be refreshed in your company.
May the God of peace be with you all. Amen. So there's a lot that I could,
I could sort of extrapolate and I could point to, but to read
this letter as we're reading it, let's continue because the
point there is that Paul is asking for prayer and you know what's
more important than the money that he needs? The prayer of
the saints. Because God can do in His will
what I cannot imagine can be done. God can do in His power
what I could not even ask Him for. You ever prayed like that? You ever prayed steps to God?
I've done it. Lord, in order for this to come
to pass, Father, I need you to do this here, and I need you
to do that here, and I need you to work in this person's life, and I
need you to do this. And if you get all these together, Father, I'll
see this. Why not just ask God for the outcome and let Him be
God? And I'm saying let Him be God in a joking way. We don't
have to let God do anything. Lord, this is what we need. If
it be your will, do this. He will do whatever the steps
are necessary for. The God of peace is with you. And in verse chapter 16, let's
go on in it. I've got about 10-12 minutes. I want to illustrate
what I meant earlier in way of the importance of every
saint in the church for the sake of the ministry. And it's not
just here. I can go to Corinth and I can
show you there. I can show you in the writings
of Paul to Timothy. I can show you in the writings
to the Galatians. I can show you everywhere that
the body is the body. Paul says, I commend to you our
sister Phoebe. I'm going to butcher these names, by the way. I might just call them by the
first letter. I commend to you our sister Phoebe. What do I
mean? I present to you our sister Phoebe by way of recommendation. She's awesome. She's a servant
of the church. At where? Centrale. That's how
I'm going to say that. That you may welcome her, receive
her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints. When was the last
time you ever saw a woman received worthy of the saints? In the
fellowship of the saints. in our culture. Think about that
for a second. Think about that for a second.
This is where I'm going to approach a couple of questions that I
have for Sunday night. And not only do we receive her, but help
her in whatever she may need from you. Now, there's nothing strange
about any of those. Okay, we're welcome and we love him. Awesome.
We love her company. It's awesome. We're going to
attend to her needs, give her what she needs, for she has been
a patron of many. What's that mean? She's been
supporting my needs. She's been paying my bills. She's
been funding my missionary work. Of many and myself as well. Then
greet Prisca and Aquila. My fellow workers in Jesus Christ.
These people. who work with me, who risk their
necks. Now, I haven't seen Paul say
anything like that before, but he says has risk their necks. He says something similar to
Epaphroditus, right? Epaphroditus nearly died, nearly
died for the gospel because he wanted to get to the churches
and give the report of God's work through the apostles and
give them support. But these people risk their necks
for my life. To whom not only I give thanks,
but all the churches of the Gentiles give thanks as well. These people
are known. They're not preachers. They're not pastors. They're
not. They're not apostles. These are servants of Christ.
Greet also the church in their house. That means greet those
who assemble in their house. There's a church there. Greet
them. Greet my beloved. Aponetus. who was the first convert to
Christ in Asia. Verse 6, greet Mary, who has
worked hard for you. Greet Andronicus and Junia, my
kinsmen, my fellow prisoners. They are well known to the apostles
and they were in Christ before me. Greet Ampliatus, my beloved
in the Lord. Greet Urbanus, our fellow worker
in Christ and my beloved Stachys. Greet Apellas, who is approved
in Christ. Greet those who belong to the
family of Aristobulus. Greet my kinsmen, Herodian. Greet
those in the Lord who belong to the family of Narcissus. Greet
those workers in the Lord, Traphena and Traphosa. Greet the beloved
Persis, who has worked hard in the Lord. Greet Rufus. See, I
know that name. I know a Rufus. Chosen in the Lord, also his
mother, who has been a mother to me as well. Greet Asencritus, Phlegon, Hermes,
Petrobus, Hermas, and the brothers who are with them. Greet Philologus,
Julia, there's another normal one, Nereus and his sister, and
Olympus, and all the saints who are with them. Greet one another
with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ greet
you. Now, what's the point? Here's the point. Paul is sending
people to continue in the work of the ministry. Paul is sending
brothers and sisters, women and men, husbands and wives and single
women and single men out to do the work of the ministry. And he says to greet them as
if they are Christ. Because Christ has greeted you. Now, there's a lot to say here.
When it comes to the end of this letter in the closing, what happens
is in my heart is I think there's a lot of people to think about.
I mean, do I need a list? Yes. That's why Paul wrote it
down. There's a list of approved workers here. List of people
that are affirmed by the apostles, just like there should be a list
of approved workers who preach the gospel. There's no such thing
as a maverick. There's no such thing as a man
sitting in his living room called of God one day to get up and
start proclaiming the gospel. He's not in the fellowship of
the saints. There's nobody under Christ to affirm him. And it's
not education that gives a man the credentials to preach. It
is the body of Christ that give him the credentials to preach. And to do what? Do mission work?
and to share the gospel out here in the streets. There are some of us who, when
we come to faith, need to be bridled. We need to be quiet
for a season so that we can learn and calm down. And I said Sunday
morning, you can't listen to this sermon because it was completely
destroyed by the computer. It was terrible. It was just
like that throughout the whole hour and one minute and twelve seconds. But I said what happens in the
Bible, the reason Paul says not to lay your hand on a man too
hastily is because when someone comes to faith, they're on fire.
They're on fire and they're full of zeal and they're full of exuberance
and they're full of all this emphasis of wanting to go out
there and share the faith. Even Paul and God bridled Paul
for a season of training and humility. Because when we're
on fire, though it may seem amazing, what happens when we get around
others without camaraderie and unity in the gospel is that we
set people on fire, not good fire. And from that illustration comes
most of the cults of our culture. From that illustration comes
most of the false gospels that have become normative by most
people who claim to believe the true gospel. So much so that
some of my friends would say, this heretic is a lover of Christ
and I'm glad to stand next to him. While they preach a different
gospel. I commend you these people and
here are the ones who I commend to you so that if others come
in and they're not on this list, be careful. And that's what verse
17 is about. I appeal to you, watch out for
those who cause division and create obstacles. What obstacles? There's no comma there. I just
pause so that we can get it in our minds. Watch out for those
who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine
you have been taught. Avoid them. You know what that
means? When people add to the gospel, avoid them. When people
usurp the authority of the scripture, avoid them. When people have
an idea of free will and all this other type of stuff as their
assurance, avoid them. Sounds like Paul was a cult leader,
doesn't it? No. He explains himself. Such persons
do not serve our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own appetites. Now
see, if I talk about appetites right now, we think about food,
we think about lusts, we think about drive, ambition, materialism, good, bad, all sorts
of things. Appetites can be good, appetites
can be bad. But they serve their own appetites, and you know what
their appetites are? They want people to follow them
for what they teach. That's their appetite. They want
to be known, even if they seem humble, as the guy who has it
right. I'm going to be the guy who has
the doctrine correct. And they come in with something
that appeals to the flesh or the appetites of the flesh, and
in doing so, then they get other people. How do I know this? Because
Paul is just reiterating the warning that he gave Timothy
in very detail. There will come a time when people
will not endure sound doctrine. So what do they do? How do they
do it? By smooth talk and flattery. And what do they do? They deceive
the hearts of the naive. for your obedience, your faith,
your belief is known to all, so that I rejoice over you, your
obedience to the faith. You hold fast to the teaching
I gave you. You hold fast to the doctrine
that I taught you. You hold fast to the gospel of
free and sovereign grace. So I rejoice over you, but I
want you to understand and to be wise as to what is good. I
want you to have wisdom, I want you to know what is good, and
I want you to be innocent as to what is evil. I don't want
you to be wise to evil. Don't sit around and learn all
their tricks, and don't sit around and learn all their false doctrines,
don't sit around and teach all that garbage, because that's
wicked! Be innocent to what's evil. Be
innocent to false teaching. Know the truth, and when the
false comes in, you go, eh, eh. Avoid. Avoid. Danger. Caution. Be innocent of what is evil.
The God of peace then will soon crush Satan under your feet.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. And then there's
a bunch of greetings and a doxology. And that's where we'll be next
week. What do you take away? There's
a lot. I went fast. I didn't speak as fast as I could,
but I went fast. Take away that God is sovereign
in his expansion of his gospel. And that it is rare. And that
there are few places that have it. Few people that know it.
in all of Christendom, and I use that term lightly. As John used the context when
he used the word cosmos as the fallenness of the world, so have
I began to use the idea of Christendom as the fallenness of false religion
in the name of Christ. And may the Lord give me wisdom
in how I expound that. Not everyone who confesses to
be a believer is a believer except those who confess the truth of
Christ. So we evangelize those who do
not know. We encourage those who do. We
correct our brothers and sisters who slip in and out of certain
doctrinal errors, the naive. See, the naive are being hoodwinked
in Paul's day, just like they are now. And we mark and avoid
the people who purvey the lie so that our brothers and sisters
will know. How many times do we do it? Once
and done. Once and done. And when should
we do it? When we see each other looking
at it. If I say to you a list of names
that should be marked and you've never heard of them, I have damaged
you. Because now you are tempted. Let's just see how much of a
heretic this man is. What's really going on? But as I see these
things invade my household and our spiritual home, mark them
one and done. And the list is longer than there
will ever be a list of saints. Remember that. Father, it is
of great use to be reminded of these things. Lord, I know my
dogma, Father, sometimes just is probably not even appropriate.
Would you give me wisdom to know how to temper it? Father, would
you give me wisdom to understand other people's positions? Would
you give them wisdom to not hit like, holler like a hit dog just
because they feel like I'm talking about them? And most importantly, Father,
would you grow us as a family closer, closer, closer, closer
to the cross of Christ, to the truth of the gospel and to each
other that we would not slide anywhere sideways or to any degree
forward or backward where we are not firmly planted in the
gospel. And will we be patient with those
who doubt? Can we be given the grace, Father, to endure much
hostility? Can we be given the grace to
forgive much sin? For when there is sin, grace
abounds. But let us never take for granted
Your grace, that we may cry before You to help us walk in a manner
worthy of Christ. In His name, Amen.