To all those in Rome who are
loved by God and called to be the saints, First, I thank my God through
Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed
in all the world. For God is my witness, whom I
serve with my spirit in the gospel of His Son, that without ceasing
I mention you always in my prayers, asking that somehow by God's
will I may now at last succeed in coming to you. For I long
to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to
strengthen you, that is, that we may be mutually encouraged
by each other's faith, both yours and mine. I do not want you to
be unaware, brothers, but I have often intended to come to you,
but thus far have been prevented, in order that I may reap some
harvest among you as well as among the rest of the Gentiles.
I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both
to wise and to foolish. So I'm eager to preach the gospel
to you also who are in Rome. Let's just try to work through
that for a moment. It's a lot. We've seen that Paul,
a servant of Christ, an apostle by the grace of God, we know
that Paul and other places of scripture teaches that he has
been appointed as an apostle. And that was the plan and the
decree of God before the foundations of the world. We've gotten some
doctrinal things out of this introduction. The reminder that
Jesus Christ was given through the prophets of old, that the
Old Testament Scriptures speak of Him as Jesus would teach in
John chapter 4. We're reminded that it is God's
gospel. It is an eternal gospel. It is
something that is not a plan that God began because things
went awry in the garden, but rather it was the intention of
God from the very beginning. We see that it is all of the
Lord. It is God's doing, that the gospel of grace is God's.
God is the author of salvation. Man is not the author of salvation. Man is not the one who comes
to find salvation. God is the one who finds the
sinner and brings the sinner to life. We see that Paul and
the apostles were called by God before the foundations of the
world in order that God, through the apostolic teaching, may bring
about the obedience of faith, and we've learned that that means
to believe on the gospel of Jesus Christ. And the reason for it
is that God, through the salvation of His people, would be praised
for His glorious grace. In other words, that His name
would have fame amongst all the nations. And that the nations
are the ones who are called by Christ through the gospel, through
the apostles, to salvation. And those who are called certainly
do come. In verse 7 is where we left off last week. It says,
To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be
saints, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ. I want to remind us, church,
as I say often and numerous times, someone, usually to the point
where we just sort of ignore it, is that God's love has never
began for us. I saw a meme or something over
the last few days on Facebook that talked about how God began
to love us after Jesus redeemed us. That we are worthy of love
now because we've been made righteous through the work of Jesus Christ.
And that's wrong on many, many counts, but specifically we're
not made righteous in ourselves, we are granted the righteousness
of Christ. It accounts for our righteousness,
not our own righteousness. Now there will be a day and a
glorification where we will no longer sin, never shall we die,
nor shall we weep, nor shall we ever be tempted. But until
that time we trust and eternally we will always trust in the righteousness
of Jesus Christ unto eternal life. Secondly, is that God did
not begin to love us after Christ prepared us for the presence
of God to steal away from some New Testament language. God began
to love us before we existed. God loved us willfully and decreed
a love for us eternity past so that the gospel, the good news
of Jesus Christ, was effectual because God loved us. Paul would
say that to the people of Ephesus where he says, but you were once
dead in your trespasses and sins, but now you are alive. Because of what? Because of the
great love with which God has loved you. He calls you to be
born again. By grace you have been saved.
And so this is just a reminder here that we are in Rome, those
who are in Rome are loved by God. We who are not Jews are
loved by God. We who are the church of Jesus
Christ are loved by God. And He effectually draws us in
and calls us to Himself and effectually transforms us to become His children,
adopts us, regenerates us, And from these things that God does,
we respond, how? In faith. We believe because
we've been made alive and given the gift of eternal life. Those
who are in Rome are loved by God. This must be an odd thing
for them to hear because all of the millennia of Israel had
told most of the Gentile world what? God hates you. And it was not only told to them,
but it was in some sense proven to them because continually the
justice of God against unbelieving nations was constantly being
poured out. The irony, though, that God would
even use His own enemies to bring correction against His own elect
people, as He showed us through the prophets and the history
of Israel, that He would use these enemies to bring justice
against His own people. But yet just the same, they were
his enemies. But in the end, we see that the
new covenant is actually the old covenant, the covenant of
grace. And the covenant of grace is that that God had decreed
that he would save people from every nation, from every tongue
and from every tribe. Because God loves all the nations. Jeremiah 31.3, I mentioned this
verse last week. It says, The Lord appeared to
him from far away. I have loved you with an everlasting love.
Therefore, I have continued my faithfulness to you. The love
of God and the call of God is not of us. It's not because of
us. It is in spite of us. It is because God is faithful.
It is the gift of grace that brings the glory of peace. And
it is from God alone. See where he says, Grace to you
and peace from God our Father and peace from the Lord Jesus
Christ. See, we don't earn peace. Friends,
every time you read these letters and you see these introductions
and you hear the words, grace to you, peace to you, grace be
with you, peace be with you, through the Father, through God
the Father, through Lord Jesus Christ, through our Savior and
Redeemer. Don't dismiss it. Pause for a moment and embrace
the reality of God's grace toward us. Embrace the significance
of what God has done in redemption. For if it was not God's love
and affection toward us, none of us would have come to faith.
Even if we could have cognitively assented to the reality that
the Bible was true, as many people do, and said, yes, there is a
God in heaven and Jesus is His name, and He died and He paid
for the sins of sinners. Friends, unless we trust in Jesus
Christ for our own salvation, it doesn't matter what we know
is true. And we know that it is the work of God alone, in
Christ alone, that we have salvation. Let's continue now into this
next section. I just rubbed my finger on my Bible to move it
up. I have lost it. I have lost it. I have lost it. Oh my goodness. Anyway, it's
not moving. I'll do it over here. Verse 8. First, man, I thank
my God through Jesus Christ for all of you. And it stopped me.
My iPad's dying. I thank my God through Jesus
Christ for all of you. Because your faith is proclaimed
in all the world. Let's take this one verse at
a time. Think about this for a second. Here is something that's
not new for Paul to say. Paul says it about the Ephesians,
Paul says it about the Thessalonians, Paul says it about the Philippians,
that he prays continually for them, that he never ceases to
give thanks to God for them in his prayers. Now there's something
for us to learn here and we could remember now Church, we're reading
through Romans and we're going through it sort of rapidly, though
it may be five weeks, we're thinking we're going to be here for a
while, we are going through this rapidly. These seven verses here, I could
spend months on them, pulling out an exposition, several details,
specifically of prayer. We could talk about the apostolic
action of prayer. We could talk about how that
relates to us as the church. But if we do that, then we're
going to really not effectually move through this book for the
sake of what we're trying to do here midweek. So for tonight,
I just want to commentate for just a moment on each thought
as we go through. But there is much more to see
here. So I pray that in your personal time, in your personal
study, you would contemplate, you would journal, even if it
be in your own mind, you would think about the depths of the
riches of this letter and what each of these mean. And it's
not that it's not important, but it's not as important as
verse 16 and 17. It's not as important as the
wrath of God going through 18 through 24 and then moving on
into chapter 2 and 3. And so we will give a lot of
attention to several hard doctrines but some of these things we just
will give overview, and that is what we're going to do with
this text tonight. I thank my God. I'm going to think about
that for a second. See, I thank my God through Jesus
because your faith is proclaimed in the world. What does this
bring in your own life? What comparison do you have in
gratitude toward the Lord? If you think about Paul, and
you notice that I assumed he's talking about prayer. Because
how else do we thank God? Do we high five God? Do we sacrifice
some burnt animal on an altar to thank God? No, we pray to
Him. We speak to God directly. Through
Jesus Christ we have the authority to speak to the ears of God the
Father. We pray to Him. Jesus says, pray in this manner,
Our Father who is in heaven, We're not speaking to a conduit.
We're not speaking into a can with a string strapped up to
an angel who hears it and then goes and tells God. We're not
even praying to Jesus who carries it. But by the authority of what
Jesus has done and the grace given to us through His work,
we are fit in the eyes of the Father to be heard. Because Christ has redeemed us.
We need to think about prayer in that way. The scripture says
that the prayers of the righteous availeth much. I don't know what
the ESV would say there, but you learn these things as a kid.
The prayers of the righteous, it produces a lot of things.
It's effectual. Beloved, if we're not praying,
and let me go ahead and tell you, we're not praying enough.
None of us are praying enough. As a church, we don't pray enough.
Maybe some Wednesday nights, we just come in here for an hour
and just pray. But you know, how do we do that?
We take turns in tandem. That gets really unbiblical really
quick. So we've got to learn to pray
before we can just let people loose and just start praying
things into the air. Because what if we don't pray
effectually? What if we don't pray biblically? But fear of
that shouldn't keep us from praying. But I pray, church, seriously,
that we're praying. And that most of all, we thank
God in our prayers. That we are thanking God beyond
all things. More than we ask of Him. More
than we talk to Him about our problems. Or treat Him like a
therapist that we would just go on and on to share the depths
of our soul. I'm not saying that we shouldn't.
David did. And I have mentors who said that David was wrong
in his whining, in his bellowing, in all of these things. But it's
in the Bible, so sometimes I feel like David. In rejoicing, in
gratitude, and sometimes I feel like David in wallowing in self-pity
and sin. And just grumble before God.
Sometimes I feel like Moses, and I could just have him pray
to smite people, and then sometimes I feel like Moses and go, oh,
don't smite them. Especially when you're praying
for your children. But the attitude of Paul throughout all of his
letters is gratitude, thanksgiving. I remember being in the movie
theater about four years ago around Thanksgiving. I can't
remember what we watched, but I remember the introductory,
what do they call those things, the commercials. Because there
was a black-screened video, and it was a lot of celebrities saying,
be thankful. One after the other, be thankful,
be thankful, be thankful, be thankful. And I'm just, by the
end of it, I'm going, for what? To whom? Gratitude must have
an object. We cannot just be thankful. We can't just be thankful with
no object of something has to receive our gratitude. If I give
you something, you say, well, thank you, I've received your
gratitude. You can't have gratitude and ambiguity. Ambiguity. You
can't have ambiguous gratitude. Where does it go? What are you
thankful that you're thankful? It's almost insane. Now some
philosophers could argue with me there, but I'm not a philosopher
at heart. I'm a theologian. So we want
to look at it from a biblical point of view. Friends, we cannot
thank nothing. But when we pray, we must have
gratitude. And you notice that Paul's gratitude has never been,
listen to this, Paul's, Jesus, James, John's, none of their
prayers, y'all listening? You might want to write this
down on the tablet of your heart. Paul and the apostles, nor Jesus,
there is no New Testament. And as far as I can remember,
there is no Old Testament prayer of thanksgiving because God gave
a bunch of riches to anybody, ever. Paul thanked God for his suffering.
Paul thanked God for his poverty. Paul thanked God for the work
of the gospel and his spirit and the work of the people of
Thessalonica and Philippi. Paul thanked God for the hard-headed
Corinthians. And Paul thanks God for this
Rome church, for these Christians in Rome. But why is he thankful? Look what he says. He's not thankful
because they gave him something. He's not thankful because they
were this magnificent church that was so esteemed. He's thankful because your faith
is proclaimed in all the world. He's thankful because God had
done something through Jesus Christ by grace, giving peace
to these Romans who were pagans. And Paul is glad beyond his soul's
ability that God had saved the people of Rome. Now think about
that for a second. See how we could just preach
a whole sermon on this prayer. Is it our joy to see God save our
enemies? Is it our joy? They had already
whipped Paul. They had already arrested a lot
of these... Paul had a lot of Christians whipped and arrested
as a Roman citizen. And now he is glad that God is
saving them. The very ones, the very types
of people, the very essence of the sect of people who had put
Christ on the cross. And now Paul is thanking God
because his faith, their faith had been proclaimed in all the
world. Now what does that mean? I mean, imagine, imagine. And so you see it often, watch.
You see it often in our world today where there's a very famous
person who says the name of Jesus somewhere along the line publicly.
You know what I'm saying? I'm not saying they profess faith
in Christ. They just say His name. Or they
say, you know, I'm thankful for the Lord. Or at the Grammys or
something, they'll kiss the sky and point to the sky. Oh my gosh,
he's a Christian. Look, let's pass it around. Jay-Z's
a Christian. No, he's not. Thank you Jesus doesn't make
you a Christian. Because it's not a parting shot
to give God credit. I mean, Elvis had gospel albums,
beautiful hymns. Johnny Cash had gospel albums. And they busted hell wide open
when they died if they weren't born again before they died.
If they didn't believe in Christ, it doesn't matter how many hymns
we sing. It doesn't matter what we say with our mouth. If we're
not confessing belief and faith in Jesus Christ alone for salvation,
we are not saved. It is not about our works. It
is about the work of God alone through Jesus Christ. And Paul
was glad that God had saved Roman people. Paul would be glad if God would
save Jewish people. Paul would be glad if God would
save Syrians, or Babylonians, or homosexuals, or terrorists,
or drunkards, or thieves, or liars, or murderers, or rapists,
or child molesters. See, sometimes we're not glad,
are we? We want recompense on everybody who's wicked, and we've
forgotten to look in the mirror of righteousness and see that
we're wicked. Sometimes it's very easy for us to sit back
with our spiritual nose in the air and go, yeah, look at him.
I'm glad I'm not like him. The only person that said that
in the Scripture went to hell, y'all. Lesson learned there. Paul thanked God for His mercy
on the Romans. You know why? Because Paul never
forgot the mercy of God on himself. He knew he deserved death more
than the Romans did because he had the oracles of God and he
had them memorized. He had the entire Old Testament
to memory and didn't see Jesus Christ. As a matter of fact,
he tried to kill everybody who did. And God gave him great mercy. So when Paul says he was the
chief of sinners, he is not exaggerating. He was the worst sinner that
ever faced the earth. And we're no different. Paul never sat around in guilt
either. He didn't say, I wallowed before God in agony and misery
as a lowly sinner. He says, I thank God. You know,
that's the attitude that we should have in all things because it's
the command of actually Paul, isn't it? Rejoice. James says
the same thing. Rejoice. Do not consider the
fiery trial something to be puzzled with, but rejoice. The opposite
of rejoice is complaining. The opposite of rejoice is wallowing.
The opposite of rejoicing is feeling guilty and condemned.
There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
A couple of months from now, we might be in there, Romans
8.1. Paul prayed Thanksgiving because
the world had heard. Can you imagine that? You know,
something happens. Remember, we lost some friends
to a fire years ago when I was in California. And it was not
quite 10 o'clock there, 1 o'clock in the morning here. And I'd
gotten a text and a phone call from people, so-and-so has passed
away in a fire. And then another person called. And I knew some details about
the crime scene. Because it was a crime scene,
they didn't know what happened. Was it arson? Was it murder? So I texted my
dad. I said, I know you're probably
out on this thing. I said, but man, what is happening? Did you
know about it? He called me. He said, so how did you know that? I don't
even know that that's true. And he goes over to the fire
investigator. He said, oh, yeah, we're investigating that. And
he goes, how did my son in California find out? Because we can send
information like that. I can pick up my phone, and I
can text someone right now in a cave in Kabul, Afghanistan,
in a cave. I could text someone in Japan.
I can text someone in China. Probably a hundred different
countries. I could probably pick up the phone and just text someone in a hundred
different countries right now. I could text some friends in
some places and they'd be very upset because I'd wake them up.
It's the middle of the night. Or it's tomorrow in some places.
It's yesterday in other spots. We could send it right there.
Here, they had none of that. They didn't have data. They didn't
have internet. They didn't have this big UUnet
and all these other connected devices that I could just transmit
stuff. But yet there's this implication,
not only here, but also in Thessalonica, that everyone knew about the
faith of the people of Rome. Why? Because they did not hide it.
And it was so counter-cultural that it made an incredible impact.
It made an impact in their personal lives, in their business life,
in their corporate life, in their government. It made an impact
in their economy. Look at Ephesus. Friends, where
is the faith of the church of Jesus Christ in our culture? Beware when people speak well
of you, the scripture says, for they spoke well of the prophets.
and they killed them. I thank God that your faith is
being proclaimed in all the world. Now imagine that. Is our faith
in Jesus Christ so on our lips that when people see us, that's
what they think about? That would be our prayer. How
does we get to that level of maturity where Christ is so intricately
involved and the Word of God is so connected to everything
we do that there's never an opportunity where we won't speak about Him?
You know how it happens? We continue to assemble together,
we continue to learn, and we continue to live accountable
with each other. And we find safety in intimacy
as the church. when the world hates us. We shut
it off, don't we? We shut it off in the world.
Let's consider that for a moment and thank God. Thank God for
saving us. Verse 9, For God is my witness,
whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of His Son. I want
to spend an hour there. that without ceasing I mention
you always in my prayers, asking that somehow by God's will I
may now at last succeed in coming to you." Let's just take verses
9 and 10. So Paul has said something to
these Christians in Rome, and he's saying now, for God is my
witness. He's saying, don't just take
my word for it. And this may not be the right
way to express this, but it's almost like I swear by the Lord. He
knows my heart. You know, my children, all of
them, as you catch them in a lie when they're young, you can say,
I'm gonna ask God and they'll tell the truth. It's really a bad thing to do.
Don't do it. But it worked for my oldest three. They'd spill
the beans quick. No, no, no, no, don't ask God.
He'll tell you the truth. And they turn that around on
you one day, well, I'm going to ask God if you're a liar. And then what do you do? Paul
here now is saying, for God is my witness. He's saying, God
knows my heart. And the vow that I tell you right
now, as I'm not just giving you lip service, what does he mean
by that? Because he says that he mentions and remembers them
in his prayers and he's thankful to God for them. How often do
we say, I'm praying for you, and we haven't been? You know
what that's called? Lying. How often do we say, I
will pray for you and we never remember to? You know what that's
called? Senility. It's called the American dream.
Where am I going and what am I doing? I don't know, but I'm
free to forget. I mean, all jokes aside, Paul
is saying, please don't think that I'm just flattering you.
God knows my heart, and God knows, and I tell you now, that God
is my witness, that I pray for you every day, and I'm thankful
for the faith that God's given you. And I'm thankful for the
testimony of your faith around the world, in our world, if we
could. For God is my witness. This establishes
this vow that God agrees with the words of Paul, because God
knows the heart of Paul. You know what, beloved? God knows
our hearts. You can fake it with me and I
can fake it with you. But God knows our hearts. God
knows if we love our wickedness. God knows if we love Him. God
knows that we don't love Him with all of our heart, mind,
soul and strength. And no matter how good we are morally, God
knows still the depth of our depravity. We cannot hide from
Him. The pictures that we saw in the
apocalypse as we went through it months back, where there would
be people that would try to hide from the judgment of God, they
cannot hide. They cannot escape His gaze.
The anthropomorphisms, I can't talk tonight, what's wrong with
my voice? It's these nerves in my neck causing my tongue not
to work and my iPad not flipping up. It's describing these human
characteristics to God. God's not peeking to try to find.
He sees all things at all times. He knows all things at all times.
He's not learning and gazing. He doesn't watch us live and
go, OK, now I know James' real heart. He knows my heart. He
knew my heart before I was born. He knew what my heart would be. Beloved, He knows you. And He
knows you in the depths of everything wicked that could be found in
the soul. And yet He sent His Son to die for you, beloved,
so that you could be the righteousness of God. Therefore now there's
no condemnation. Oh, what wretched man am I! How
shall I escape this? It is Christ. It is Christ. It
is Christ. Christ alone. Paul is reminding then afterward,
for God is my witness whom I serve with my spirit and the gospel
of his son. In short, in short, he is reminding
his readers again that he is a slave to the Lord Jesus Christ
at the core of his being and that God has made him a slave
for the sake of the obedience of faith amongst the nations
of whom Rome now is evidence of the work of God in his life.
You know, we have a sad commentary in our culture that if something
grows numerically, oh, God's in it. The Bible says that the
devil's churches will be big. Somebody talks about Jesus in
a book. And I said, well, God must be in it. But yet the God
of this world has been given the rule to give luxury and life. Abundant life. In a worldly way. The devil has every material
action and possession at his command. And he gives riches
and he gives power and he gives glory. And he offered it to Jesus. Remember? He says, if you come
up here, he said, what was that? What was it? And he shows him,
he says, you see, as far as the eyes can see. It's mine. This is the devil speaking. It's
mine. It belongs to me. Bow down before
me and I'll give you the world. That's why John so emphatically
commands, not requests, commands, do not love the world or the
things of the world, for the things of the world, the lusts
of the eyes and the pride of life and the pride of possessions
are not from God, but are of the world and the world and everything
in it is passing away. Remember when I preached, I don't
know if that was here or at a small group one night, but I taught
that text a few years ago. And what it basically is meaning
that everything that the world has to offer, the devil gives
you. The devil has to give you. Has
in his possession in order that he could give you. And he will
bargain with the world. Friends, the book of Thessalonians,
the second Thessalonians says that the devil's churches will
have power to deceive the nations. to do signs and wonders and magical
things. That people will come in droves
and they will give their money to men in order to get something
back from Satan, thinking that it's God. He's called the prince
of the power of the air. And when we tell people that
the God of heaven is not the God of the earth, they get upset. And make no mistake, Satan is
in a temporary place. And eternal damnation is his
end. Jesus Christ is the Lord of the earth. He made it. He
made Satan. And with the word of his mouth,
he will put them all under his feet. Paul is reminding us that
he's a slave to the Lord Jesus with all of his spirit, with
his affections, with his mind. There he says it. that without
ceasing, I mention you in my prayers always. He's mentioning
them in his prayers. Not only is he thankful in his
prayers for the people of Rome becoming believers, listen to
this, but he prays continually that God would send him. Look
at that. Paul prays. What does he want to do? He's
just not saying, God, establish them and grow them. God, secure
them and make them blossom. He's saying, God, please, at
all costs, if it be Your will, take me to them that I may impart
to them, that I may grow them. See, Paul never prayed for himself,
except that the Word of God would not be chained as his hands were. Paul prays for the church at
Rome, that the Lord's will would be done, that he could come to
them. Verse 11, why would he do such a thing? Because, because
I long to see you, verse 11. Look at that. I long to see you
so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to give you strength.
That is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith,
your faith and my faith. Now this is the Apostle Paul
saying that he needs to go to Rome so that he can equip them
and strengthen them in their faith. To give them and teach
them how to use the Word of God and how to understand and expressly
work as a body intimately. to encourage each other with
their each individual giftedness. And he didn't come as this heady,
professional church planner. He says, I need to come to give
you what God's given me, and I need to come to you so that
I can get what God's given you for me. So that we can both be
blessed. Paul longs to see them. So that
he could give of his life for them. so that He could sacrifice
His time for them, for their benefit at the cost of His. For there is no greater love
than this, that a man would lay down his what? Life! What is our life? Everything
we are, have, and can do. Everything I have is part of
my life. Everything I am is part of my life. Everything I can
do is part of my life. Paul wanted to lay down his life
for their gain. No greater love than this, that
a man lay down his life for his brother. Jesus Christ showed the love
of the Father by laying down his life and his glory for the
wicked, for his people. Paul has that same heart. Remember
the very first sermon that I preached five weeks ago on this message,
I reminded us that we are not called to be the exact same type
of slave that Paul is. Don't forget that. As many of
us who get out here moping going, man, I'm not like Paul. Thank
God we're not apostles. Thank God we get to reap the
benefits of Paul's ministry. Thank God we get to receive the
harvest, as he's talking about in just a moment, of Paul's suffering. Thank the Lord that we're able
to see the filling up of what was lacking in the suffering
of Christ in the days of Paul, right now, through the Word of
God. Paul wants to give a gift to
them in order that they may be strengthened. The unity of the
faith. which enacts intimacy with the church, beloved. And
it provides mutual benefit. Paul doesn't just say this here.
He says it to the church of Ephesus. He says it to the church of Corinth.
That every spiritual gift is for the mutual building of the
body. The edification of the church
as a whole, not the individual person. Not the individual person. Paul says not only would they
benefit from him, but he would benefit from them. What is it
that they could give Paul? Well, church, have you ever had
a season in your house, not with the body of Christ, and you think
you got it together because you're watching a sermon or you're reading
the Bible and you're listening to a radio thing? Maybe you've
got a little prayer group that you get online with or you've
got a Facebook church. Let me tell you something, folks.
There's no gift there. There's no intimacy there. There's
no real life there. And no one's laying down their
lives for you. Yes, you can disciple people. Yes, you can teach the
truth of the gospel. Yes, you can love and pray for somebody.
But friends, until somebody can see your face and touch your
body, you are not with them. And Jesus Christ didn't call
the church to live as hermits. He called the church to live
in unity visibly. The visible church. And you're missing. And we're
missing when you're missing. Whether it's excused or not,
when we're not together, we all suffer. Think about Wednesday
nights. Why do they not feel, and I don't
want to focus on how we feel, but why do they not feel complete?
So, oh yeah, we did some study in Romans. Sunday mornings are
like, man, we worship God. because we're absent from our
unity. And we can enjoy what we have
here, but we miss some people, don't we? You know what's amazing? Is that's the way God intended
it to feel. That's the way God intended it to be. That we long
for each other. Not because of how cool we are,
not because of what we can do together, not because of our
affinity, not because of our fun times, but because of the real
life, supernatural, spontaneous affection that God gives His
people. And we don't have to put on a, what is that song by
that, I won't even say this, but they're not theologically
sound, but that song like they put on plastic, the plastic people
song, what's that? You know what I'm talking about?
Huh? Perfect people. We don't put on a mask when we
get together, Grace True Church. How's your day going? It's awful.
And if it weren't for the Lord Jesus Christ, I would die. I would explode into a flame
and just poof. You know, you ever felt like
that? You can be honest with people. And even if your mood
is lightened, even if your burden has been taken away, when we
walk into each other's presence and we confess what God is doing,
we can say, it was a horrible day, but the gospel of Jesus
Christ has given me life. Give me a hug, I'm so glad you're
here. Let me share my joy with you. There have been people gone for decades
trying to find the escape that they're looking for. And all
they've been needed is just somebody that loved them in the body. Paul reiterates again. He says,
I don't want you to be unaware. Look at verse 13. I don't want
you to be unaware. What's he saying there? I want
you to know this. I'm going to tell you, Paul. Paul's saying,
I want to tell you guys, I have wanted and have planned several
times to come to you. This is not just some fleeting
thought. Paul's going, my goodness, I need to start praying for these
Romans. I have really forsaken them. You know, I probably should
make a trip to see them. That's not Paul's point. Paul's
like, all I can think about, how many times that I've come
and tried to plan a trip. And you know what? You know what? God never let him go there the
way he thought he was going there. God never gave him the freedom
to go in and just openly and freely. God put Paul in prison
and sent him to Rome as a prisoner, and it took him two years, incarcerated,
to get to Rome. I don't want you to be on your
way, brothers. I've often intended to come to you, but thus far have
been prevented. But why did he want to come?
We've already seen it. He wanted to rejoice with them.
He wanted to mutually be beneficial. He wanted the mutual benefit
of being together with them. Of course, he probably wanted
to pray and worship and teach them and instruct them. But what is that called? In order that I may reap some
harvest among you. As well as among the rest of
the Gentiles. He said, I don't, I want you to know I desire to
see a harvest among you. Now, when we hear about the word
harvest, we automatically think what? Salvations. And we should. That's the imagery that we see
Paul use often, and Jesus himself use, that agrarian mindset of
planting and sowing and then growing. God grows and then we
reap the harvest. We bring the harvest in. The
harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few, Jesus would
say. But I want you to understand that the harvest is not just
the salvation of a people, but the maturity of a people. Because
salvation, by design, is to grow a people in maturity together. You see that? And that's where
the Evangelical Church of the United States, since the 19th
century, has lost their ever-loving mind. Let's just get more people
to believe on Jesus and leave them in the garbage bag and count
them. That's what it is. We had 300
decisions for Jesus. Let's go get some more. I hate to bring up an old Phil
Vischer production, but Madame Blueberry comes to mind. If you
don't know the story of that, she loved stuff. She'd go down
to the stuff mart and she would buy stuff and cram it in her
house. She'd go buy more stuff and cram it in. She was the world's
first cartoon hoarder in the late 90s. And eventually her house was
so full that it touched the ground and it slung back and threw all
of her stuff out and then it slung the house over there and
destroyed it. She lost everything. And I think sometimes that's
the picture in my head when I think about how so many Christians
and so many churches and so many ministries do evangelism. All
they want is a count so they can be praised for it. And they
think to the depths of their soul that somebody's becoming
a believer, but they're not. And then they leave them to rot
until it gets so full they get slung out into the wilderness
somewhere. I want to reap some harvest.
You know what he didn't do? He didn't come there and and
say I want to do an evangelistic thing, I want to come to you. Why? Because only through the
local church do people come to faith in Jesus. Because how dare we go out and
just go into unchurched territory, preach the gospel and leave them?
We have an obligation to teach them the apostles' teachings.
We have an obligation to bring them to the understanding of
the truth, to grow up. The body of Christ is when people
get saved. If there's no church there, get them all together
and start one. The problem is we've got to have
a place, a name, a website, a 501c3, chairs, songbooks, a song leader,
and somebody to hand out bulletins. Or we can't have a church. Friends,
if you've got two or three people who believe in the Lord Jesus,
you've got a church. And the church should be about
equipping each other to do the work of the ministry. The church
should be doing the work of evangelists. The church should be bringing
in the harvest. Paul went there that he may continue
to grow the church so that the harvest would continue. And it
did. More and more people came. And it took years for these churches
to get, I don't know what the word for it is, stable. And then
it didn't take long before they became stale. I pray that our generation would
be the day, would be the generation through which God brings revival
and salvation again. As a whole. And when's the last
time you ever heard of hundreds of people coming to faith in
Christ? Really. And don't talk about Franklin
Graham, because I worked on that crusade in 2005. And I know what the numbers are,
and it's garbage. I know what 300 people look like being baptized
in one year, because that's what our church in Brunswick did.
300 people, one year. Couldn't find a dozen. Salvation is not this plan that
we put out there for people to follow lockstep in some sort
of pathway. Salvation is a proclamation of
God of something He's done to affect the salvation of His people. And believing creates a people who want to
invest in growing. I want to see a harvest gathered
in among you. And he says, and I also want
to see a harvest gathered amongst all the Gentiles. Friends, their
faith was already known around the world and where they lived.
And if Paul could just see them equipped, but see, it wasn't
God's plan for him to equip that church. And that out of there, maybe
Paul would say there'll be a harvest in the world. But all of the
Gentiles, surely if Rome was strong in the faith, they would
go out to all the parts of the world because all roads led to
Rome. Look at the heart of Paul in
closing. See, this is just some passion of a calling that Paul
had that he decided on. Paul never chose to follow Christ. Christ caught Paul and Paul could
do nothing else. It wasn't just a good ministry
plan or a missionary obligation because he had promised. Look
at verse 14. I am under obligation to Greeks, to barbarians. What are those people? Greeks
are smart, stoic, put together people, cultured people. intelligent philosophers, barbarians. Why do they call them barbarians?
Because they were so crude in their speech. The joke was all
they'd go around and say, bar, bar, bar, bar, bar. So they call
them barbarians. That's where the word comes from. So to the Greeks and the barbarians,
to the wise and to the foolish. I'm under obligation to all these
people. So I want to come preach the gospel in Rome and I want
to see you flourish, church. I want to see people of all types
coming into your midst. It shows you how far we've come,
doesn't it? That we go to assemble as a people in the name of Christ
Predominantly based on the characteristics of the services that we want
to be a part of. The music that we like, the dress
that we like, the atmosphere or the types of people that may
be around. Not the truth, not the affection,
not the intimacy of the gospel. But as we'll see, the Lord has
shown us through the New Testament that every group of believers
are going to have weak believers, they're going to have strong
believers, they're going to have false believers and true believers.
And we're to endure patiently by giving ourselves. And sometimes
we give ourselves in our emotions. Sometimes we give ourselves in
our minds. We're going, I can't deal with
this person anymore. Or they grow up. And somebody
else is going over there saying, yeah, I believe that about you.
I mean, you know, so we're all somebody's thorn at times, but
we give ourselves away and we grow and we mature. And this
section of text here, though not theologically deep, it's
ecclesiologically necessary. That means for the church and
the way the church ought to operate and the way the church ought
to function, we need to see the heart of Paul. Paul could not
do anything but go to these people so that the harvest would continue
to be brought in. His heart was to continue to
preach the gospel to you. You see that? We miss that, don't
we? Of course Paul preached the gospel
openly. But Paul says, I want to preach
the gospel to you. You realize the gospel is not
written to the lost to begin with? Well, it is initially, isn't
it? But the New Testament is not written to the lost. There's
not one letter that Paul wrote, or that James wrote, or that
John wrote, Peter, Matthew, Mark, Luke, that ever says to the lost, Never did He say to the reprobate,
never did He write a letter to the pagans, nor did He ever say
to you godless, lost, blind, wicked people. Now, He might
have called them that later and threatened to come down there
and beat them if they didn't straighten up. But every letter in the New
Testament is written to the people of Christ. The gospel is the
power of God for salvation. as we'll see next week. That's why he says it there,
by the way. There's a four there in verse 16. Let's pray. Father, we're glad that you sent
Paul. We're glad that you sent Paul
the way you did. We're glad, Lord, that you called
these men out of their lives with great consequence. and You
empowered them to walk and to stand and to obey the call of
preaching the gospel. Lord, they could do nothing else.
It was a compulsion that they could not feed unless they preached
and shared the faith. Lord, put in us an obligation,
a compulsion in our spirit to be with each other and to recognize
that You have gifted each of us individually for the sake
of one another. And we love you. And we desperately
want to be a people that give you glory. First in our profession. Father, then in our intimacy. Help our faith be known around
the world in which we live. Not our programs, not even our
popularity or infamy. But Lord, let your name be glorified
amongst the nations once more. We pray this in Jesus' name,
Amen.