Before we get started in Romans,
I want us to go to the book of Acts, and I want us to go to
Acts chapter 26. Acts chapter 26. Here in Acts chapter 26, starting
in verse 12, Paul is talking to King Agrippa, and he is sharing, if we will,
he is sharing his conversion experience. Follow with me. In this connection,
I journeyed to Damascus with the authority and commission
of the chief priests. At midday, O King, I saw on the way a light
from heaven brighter than the sun that shone around me and
those who journeyed with me. And when we had all fallen to
the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language,
Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick
against the goads. And I said, who are you, Lord?
And the Lord said, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. but
rise and stand upon your feet, for I have appeared to you for
this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and witness to the
things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will
appear to you, delivering you from your people and from the
Gentiles to whom I am sending you in order to open their eyes,
so that they may turn from darkness to light, and from the power
of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and
a place among those who are sanctified by faith in Me." Therefore, O
King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, but declared
first to those in Damascus, then in Jerusalem, and throughout
all the region of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they
should repent and turn to God, performing deeds and keeping
with their repentance. For this reason, the Jews seized
me in the temple and tried to kill me. To this day, I have
had the help that comes from God, and so I stand here testifying
both to small and great, saying nothing but what the prophets
and Moses said would come to pass, that the Christ must suffer,
and that by being the first to rise from the dead, he would
proclaim light both to our people and to the Gentiles. Now, why
am I starting here? because as we're getting into
the thick of the Roman prologue, we're coming into some areas
that will be important for us to remember about Paul's missionary
journeys, just like Paul's conversion and other places. So now flip
over to Romans chapter one, and ask yourself this question, what is required of the Christian
in the way of obedience? I mean, you think about it. There
is, if one person has an opinion, there are 30 opinions in one.
When we ask the question of our fellow believers, what is required
of a Christian in regards to obedience? As a matter of fact,
I would say that if we even ask the question, what is or how
would one define obedience? I mean, we would say one of many
things that sounds something like this. Well, obedience is
doing exactly what God said for us to do. Obedience is following
the commands of Christ. Obedience is walking in a manner
worthy of the gospel. Obedience is living a life of
glorifying Christ. Obedience is this, obedience
is that. If we ask, give some examples
of obedience, we could say, well, love your neighbor. Love the
Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. Thou
shalt not steal. Do not lie. Do not bear false
witness. And we would be right and we
would be wrong. We would be right in that we
are called and commanded to walk in a manner that is right and
obedient. But we would be wrong in that
in the context of the question, if we understand the fullness
of what's being asked, what is required of the Christian? Well,
it depends on what we're asking, doesn't it? What is required
for the Christian in regards to obedience for their salvation? Nothing. Nothing at all. What
is required for the Christian in obedience in relationship
to their security? Nothing. What about assurance
that you know you have eternal life? Nothing. Now, the problem
comes, and maybe some of you have not heard of it or dealt
with it, is that we've got, just with any type of doctrine in
Scripture, we have people who will come and put their brains
to work and begin to infer and implicate this teaching or that
teaching in relationship to other things to the point that we come
up with things that are not necessarily biblical and we begin to ascribe
them as though they are. For example, there are some people
in our world today that believe that you know that you have eternal
life because of the good works you do. And I would say to that,
hogwash, because there are a lot of unbelievers who do a lot of
good works. There are some people who say
that unless you do all good works that you will lose your salvation.
some strange, somewhat fundamentalist types of people who believe that
sinless perfection is not only required but also obtainable. I would say that heaven is going
to be a very shy place. There will definitely be a place
to park because nobody will be there. There are also people,
when it comes to obedience as a Christian, that we call antinomians. And these are the people, the
word nomian, meaning law, anti, against, would say that there
is no reason to even talk about what we should and should not
do as individuals in this life once we're saved, because we're
saved by grace through faith, and this is true. However, there
is still the mandate that's given to us through Scripture that
says what? Love your brother. that says what? Live in a manner
worthy of the gospel. And if we don't, what happens
in the fellowship? We get brought publicly before the church and
say, hey, we need to work on this. And we see restoration
or excommunication. So how can we exercise discipline
if there's not a standard by which we ought to live? And I
think what's really happening is that as the current church,
just like with every generation, we have terms that we use that
need redefining. And some of you I've spoken to
about this individually for the last few months. However, I'm
not necessarily thinking that they need redefining, but they
need clarifying. Because if I say you must obey
the Lord Jesus, and I don't give anything before or after that,
okay, that's fine. It is never wrong to say what
the Scripture says, is it? Is it wrong to say? what Paul
said to the Corinthian church in his first letter that we have
here. Throw the brother out of the church for the destruction
of his flesh, that he may have his flesh destroyed by Satan
for the salvation of his soul. Why? Because he was having incestuous
relationship with his stepmother. Had to get the relationship correct.
And Paul didn't even say, work it out. He didn't say, talk to
the guy. He said, throw him out. Don't even deal with that. Throw
him out. And if he comes back, great.
If not, treat him as an unbeliever. He's no longer welcome to fellowship
with the saints. So, are we not supposed to read
that portion of scripture? The antinomians would say, well,
that's just a story for us to glean and remember. It has no
bearing on our life. But yet, he gives instructions
in the church not to what? Not to sue each other. Don't
go to court. He gives instructions about worship. He tells Timothy,
do the work of an evangelist. He tells all throughout scripture,
it's command. Command to what? Rejoice. So
that not rejoicing is sinful because it's disobedient to the
Lord. However, when we start mixing obedience and works in
with the gospel of grace, we have a really huge cloud of garbage
that can easily be misunderstood. And we have people that think,
well, say, well, if you're a Christian, then you will do this. No, that's
not necessarily true. Name a Christian that is sinless.
Name a Christian that is perfect even in their obedience. Because
what is obedience? Obedience by definition, if you
would just beg to work with me here as we redefine Webster,
obedience is to do what you're told to do instantly. So that
if we hesitate, we've actually disobeyed even if we do what
we actually were told to do. So if we say, children, clean
up your room. Okay, daddy. And then 20 minutes
later, who's cleaning? No one. Guess what? If they all
run in there like mad hens and begin to clean, they've done
so in disobedience. So hesitation is disobedience.
How about serving or obeying with a bad heart? It's disobedience! You know? The Lord told me to
go, but I'm gonna go, Jonah. Disobeyed, disobeyed, even when
he went, disobeyed. He disobeyed in his going. He
disobeyed in his preaching. He disobeyed in his proclamation.
He disobeyed in his praying. So the point I'm making is, where
is there perfection of obedience? Any example given in scripture?
Jesus Christ. That's it. That's the only one
I've seen. Well, Abraham believed and by faith he went. See, Abraham's
going was credited to him as righteous. No, his believing
in God. And let's don't twist Scripture to say what Scripture
doesn't explicitly teach. Yes, we are transformed. Yes,
we have a new person, we have a new mind, we have new affections.
But friends, those things are at war with what? The flesh!
And the enemy of God is at war with us! So there's always, there's
a reason Ephesians 6 is in the Bible. There's a reason Romans
7 is in the Bible. Now why all this fuss about obedience?
Because that's where I am today. I'm in the text here in Romans
chapter 1. Let's read starting in verse
1 and go down to the text. We'll finish through verse 7
tonight. It says, Paul, a servant, slave of Jesus Christ, called
to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised
beforehand through the prophets and the holy scriptures, concerning
his son, who was descended from David, according to the flesh,
and was declared to be the son of God in power, according to
the spirit of holiness, by his resurrection from the dead. Jesus
Christ, our Lord. through whom we have received
grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith
for the sake of His name among all the nations, including you
who are called to belong to Jesus Christ. 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. So we
are going to dig into this phrase, the obedience of faith. Oh boy. Well, we've learned that
Paul was called to be a servant of Jesus. We heard just a moment
ago out of Acts chapter 6 the testimony that Paul gave to King
Agrippa about his conversion. And Paul was on the raid to Damascus
under the order of the chief priest with the authority of
Rome to arrest these men and bring them back under the charges
of blasphemy and under the charges of insurgence against the Roman
government. And on His way there, and the posse that He had with
Him, and the swords that He had with Him, the bright light of
Jesus Christ shone and struck them down and struck them blind.
And He heard the voice of the living God, Jesus the Christ,
say, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? Why do you kick
against the goats? And Jesus told Saul, that he
would go and open the eyes of unbelievers, and open the eyes
of the Gentiles, that their scales might be removed from their eyes,
that they may believe and obey the gospel." This is what he
said. This is the call. And this is what's happening
here as Paul writes this text. It's what's happening here as
this letter is being penned, is that he's given these Roman
Christians a clear picture of what's truly happened to him.
a clear picture of what He's called to do. And He says there,
look, and I'll pick up from where we were last week and lead into
what we're doing. He says, Jesus Christ, who has
been raised from the dead, proven to be the Son of God, proven
to be holy by the power of the Spirit, through whom we have
eternal life, who is also descended from David in the flesh, that
God promised beforehand through the prophets and the Word of
God that He would send us. I am a servant of Jesus Christ
for that purpose. And I'm a servant of Jesus Christ
by God. I'm sent by Jesus Christ. Because
of this, he wants now to say, we have received grace and apostleship. We have received the grace of
God, which is the mercy of God, the gift of God. Those words
are interchangeable. The gift of God and apostleship. And I believe Paul is phrasing
those as one thing, that his apostleship is part of the grace
of God toward him. That God didn't just call him
to eternal life, he called him to apostleship. God called him
to be a servant, as an apostle, in order that through the apostles
that the Gentiles would come, all the nations of the world
would be saved, you see. So when we get to putting all
this together, it can really start to run around like an infinite
pretzel. We can run here and back here
and back here, and that is going to be what we're going to see
in the doctrinal treatise of this letter as we get into the
meat and the potatoes of some of the theology. that the grace
of God is the apostleship to Paul and that he is the apostle
that is sent by Jesus Christ who is the author of it all.
Jesus is the one who sins. Remember when I talked the very
first week, is this week three? This is week three. The very
first week I preached basically on what an apostle is. and how
the apostolic authority works, notice I didn't say worked, works,
and what is and is not an apostle today. And one of the things
that I closed that message with, I think there were six or seven
things that I talked about, one of them was is that the apostles
were guaranteed conversions. God sent Paul and the apostles
to preach into places, and everywhere they went, people came to faith.
That's not the case in evangelism today, is it? And remember I
talked about how we're not called to be in the same manner a slave
as Paul was? He had a different responsibility
and a different role. We as the Church of Jesus Christ
have a different role than the apostolic authority, the different
role than the apostles. Jesus calls Paul and Paul would
say many places throughout the New Testament, he is not his
own. He has been purchased. He does not belong to himself.
He says in Acts chapter 20, the only purpose of his life is to
finish the race that he's been given. He writes to Timothy and
says that I've been poured out like a drink offering. I've fought
the good fight. I've finished the race. I'm through. Bring
the parchment. Bring the papers. Bring the writing.
Bring my cloak. I'm cold. I'm sick. Luke is here
with me. Personal letters. In Galatia,
and to the Galatian church, he said that he might preach among
the Gentiles is the reason that Jesus called him. This grace,
though salvific, is really a gift of service that Paul's talking
about here. He's not talking about his salvation. He's talking
about the grace of God to call him as an apostle. So that is
the context. Now let's keep going. Why did
God call Paul to be an apostle? See, that's what this is saying.
Verse five, through whom we have received grace and apostleship
in order to bring about the obedience of faith. Now let's just take
that for a second. What does it mean? Some people like to say, well,
the obedience of faith is that, in some translations of the Bible, the obedience of the faith. Nix
it, underline it, black it out, whatever. It should say obedience
of faith. That's what it should say, not
obedience of the faith. Obedience of the faith is what
people do with the English out of the context of the very purpose
in which Paul is speaking right now about his apostleship and
the reason that he was an apostle and the way that he was an apostle.
And they like to say, see that means that we're to do the things
that Christ has called us to do. That's what Paul is preached
for. Now let me tell you, it's not
a bad thing to consider, but that's not the point here. God
did not save Paul and make him an apostle so that the world
would have a moral revolution. God did not save people so there
would be an ethical revival. As a matter of fact, it is the
ethical moral high ground who were condemned and unable to
be saved in the days of Jesus and the apostles. Remember that. Very carefully, friends, Consider
the fact that we all have some self-righteous thread in our
bodies. We believe, well, I don't this and I don't that and I don't
wah, boo, hoo. You know what? God's not even
going to bring out a violin. If He did, He'd smash it and
burn it in front of you. He says, now you want to reconsider
your position. There is no such thing as a person who is more
worthy for righteousness than another. There is no Christian
who walks more honorably before God in his own flesh ever than
his neighbor. The work of the gospel of Jesus
Christ is that God alone sets us righteous before Him through
the obedience of Jesus the man and the sacrifice of Jesus the
man on the cross that satisfies His judgment against all of me
and you, all of us. Not just us in general, but all
of us individually. Jesus obeyed in our place and
Jesus paid in our place. The gospel is not just about
the death of Jesus. The gospel is about the righteousness
of God, which is the obedience of Jesus Christ as a human on
the earth, which we are still commanded to uphold, but we will
not do it and we cannot do it. The difference is, And I've said
this recently, either on Sunday, it might have been Sunday morning.
Be holy for I am holy is the standard through which God will
judge every man. Are you holy? As I am holy, God
would say. Death. Are you holy? As I am
holy. Death. Are you holy? You don't
have a time to say, but God, I've done so much good. Oh, but
Lord, I've loved, I've healed, I've preached. No. As a matter
of fact, right in this very letter, it says all mouths will be shut.
You know, God's not going to listen to us. God's not going
to listen to unbelievers given a reason. He's not going to listen. And there's no excuse for us
either. The only answer is, you are holy, you are righteous. James, you're righteous. How
can he call us righteous? Because really what Romans three
teaches, which we're not there yet, so we'll just hold tight.
He calls us righteous because Jesus Christ substitutes for
us. You see, when God looks at the
believer, We haven't been made to have the nature of Jesus.
We have been credited His honor and glory and righteousness.
Substitutionary atonement. Do you know people hate that?
Do you know there are five people, five men in my life, what I would
call my warm market associates. Yeah, you MLM guys know what
I'm talking about. My warm mark is these people
who I know in real life, not just some guy that I met on Facebook,
who fight with me often that it is mean and nasty to teach
people that Jesus substituted in our place. To which I say,
you are hell bound to all five of them. if you do not believe
in the substitutionary penal atonement of Jesus Christ for
you. So I'm saying all this to get
started, to say that Jesus called Paul to be an apostle, to bring
about the obedience of faith, of which this text is not saying
anything about following a set of precepts or rules. That's not the point. The point
is, is that faith is obedience. Let me say that again. Faith
is obedience. Let me show you how it works
in Paul's life, and then I'll show us how it works in our lives. Blameless. She used Paul's words,
not mine. Paul was blameless according
to the law. Paul was zealous about the things of God. Paul
passionately and vehemently stood in the courts of Israel and judged
people for blasphemy. He judged Stephen for blasphemy
and he was righteous in his judgments according to the law and reconciling
what was happening in the people of that day and what was happening
with Jesus Christ according to their understanding. of Scripture,
Paul was justified in his judgments. He was righteous in his judgments.
Paul loved the Lord of heaven. He loved God with every fiber
of his being, insomuch that he was circumcised on the eighth
day. He was named Saul, for crying
out loud. He was of the tribe of Benjamin.
He did everything correct. His moral life was so impeccable
that Jesus even said of Paul, unless you are more perfect than
Paul, you'll go to hell. Did you know that Jesus said
that? When he's speaking, he says, unless your righteousness
is greater than that of the Pharisees. you will not enter the kingdom
of heaven. So we can say that Jesus said, if your life isn't
more honorable and perfect than Paul, then you're going to hell.
Well, who in the world could outlive the honor and the obedience
of Paul? Nobody, nobody. You see why it's
never about obedience to begin with? Because even in our obedience,
we're still guilty. Even in our following after God,
we still are doing it wrongly sometimes. I won't say all the
time, and I won't even say most of the time, but sometimes. We
make major things into little nothings, and we take little
nothings and make them into major things. I mean, look at the number
of people who will argue that the King James Bible is the only
authorized English Bible that is actually spiritually enabled. He brought his replica with him.
That is only spiritually enabled to bring eternal life. That if
I quote to you out of, let's say, the New Living Translation,
that you cannot be saved. Now, I'm not going to say that
every person that holds those types of views are lost, but
I'm going to tell you that there's a lot of people who are lost
who make that their hill to die on and think they're righteous
for it. There's a lot of people who think
because of the way they dress, or the way they talk, or the
way they pray, or the amount of Bible study that they do,
or the fact that they don't do this, or they don't eat Taco
Bell. I mean, you know, my wife and I, I can share what we've
done. We used to feel a little more
godly because of the way we ate. because we did healthier foods
or we ground our own wheat. The whisper meal, what a lie.
I mean, you know, it's like the neighbors come running. What's
on fire in here? It's not quiet. Sometimes people, we have this
idea that, you know, well, we haven't, we've been freed from
a certain sin. We don't curse anymore. Good.
But I also know unbelievers who don't curse. I know cult members who don't
curse. I know Mormons, right now, by name, have them in my
phone, I can call one, who live a morally upright life that locks,
it's in lockstep with Jesus. And they're going to be judged,
not by their works. No, they will be judged by their
works, because they're guilty. They cannot have salvation in those
works. But they feel righteous. There
are a lot of people who feel righteous because of the way
they vote or not vote. I mean, you ever been there?
I remember when I decided one time, I'm just not voting anymore.
And I felt pretty good about myself. And I thought, man, the
Lord is really humbling me and making me focus on what is truly
eternal. And I'm going to tell everybody. To each his own in that. Sometimes in my life I've chosen
to not drink caffeine, and then a few hours later, that's senseless. But we can feel righteous because
of the way we live, when we must feel righteous because of who
Christ is. The obedience of faith is really
believing in Jesus Christ. That's the crux of it, that's
the heart of it. And what Paul is teaching here is that he lived
a life of moral perfection, of biblical exemplification. And when Christ saved him, he
realized just what a big sinner he was. And that's his testimony,
isn't it? That's his testimony. For when
the law came, I died. I died. When the light came and shined
on me, I no longer saw myself as this righteous person. As
a matter of fact, the very nature of my heart condemned me before
the Lord." Paul would say that his covetousness was awful. What
did he covet? Does it matter? Does it matter? You know why Paul didn't say
what he coveted? Because we would think, okay,
we're not that way. Do you covet your neighbor's yard? It's a
sin. You covet youth because we're
older. It's a sin. You covet the energy
of a toddler. It's covetousness. You see what
I'm saying? You covet sleep. Somebody comes,
man, I slept 12 hours. I'm like, I hate you. You know? You're under discipline. Quit
bragging. It's just, it's tough. But we live in a culture that
religion, and I'm not saying religion is bad, we have our
religion, we follow certain things, we do certain practices, we have
our religion as Baptists, that we sing certain things and preach
certain ways and do the Lord's Table and we wet people in a
certain manner. But I'm talking about religion
in the context that if we do these things, then we're right
with God. And then we come around and we say, but I'm not right
with God because of that. But because I'm right with God,
then I do these things. Well good, are you doing them
with absolute perfection? Are you following after Christ
in obedience? Or are you just following after
Christ the best you can? Or better yet, is it Christ who
has you completely? See, Paul would say, it's not
I who live. Paul would say, what I want to do is to go and be
with Christ, which is far better. Is that bad? Is that sinful to
want to be with Christ? No, not at all. But at the same
time, your will be done, Lord. It's just like Jesus prayed in
the Garden of Gethsemane as a human being. He prayed and he said,
Lord, I want you to take this cup from me, but not my will,
but yours to be done. It was better for Jesus to suffer
in the flesh that the nations might be saved. It is better
for Jesus to die instead of the whole world to perish. It is
better for Paul to remain in the flesh and suffer in the flesh
than he may, what he told the church of Colossae, fill up what
is lacking in the suffering of Christ. I love that text. I love
going into a traditional church who don't hear exposition and
read that. Because they go, what's that
mean? It's better that Paul remain.
What did he say? For your sake. Neither was sin. His desire to go and be with
Christ was not sinful, for that should be the desire of us all,
to see our Lord face to face. But at the same time, we are
not selfish. We are not myopically interested in our own lives,
because we live for the sake of Christ, because it is not
us who live, but Christ who lives within us. Why? Because of the
obedience of faith that came through the apostles. You and
I sit here today saved because of the obedience of faith that
came through the apostles. First, that Paul was able to
walk away, the day one, walk away from being part of the Sanhedrin
and then go into the very synagogue that sent him and preach Jesus
as God. Now imagine that. And Paul never said, man, I was
courageous. Matter of fact, He tells us this,
I could not stand and speak. That's what He says, 1 Corinthians.
I could barely speak. I didn't come with eloquence.
I didn't come with strength. I couldn't even talk about it.
All I could do was preach Christ crucified. That's all He says.
All I could do is preach Christ crucified. And that's all I did,
lest the cross lose its power, you see. It's about what God
did in Paul to bring about the obedience of faith for Paul.
And it's about what God does in us to bring about the obedience
of faith in us through Christ, through Paul. Why do you keep
saying that? Go back and listen to the last
two weeks. We are saved, beloved, because God sent the apostles
to us. There they are. The apostle Paul,
right here. The Apostle John, through whom
I came to faith. The authority and the word and
the power of God through the apostolics is still alive today. It's right here. Sola Scriptura. And the obedience of faith. We could argue about it. But
in context here, Paul wants us to see that believing on Jesus Christ
is indeed obedience. Why? Because, and I'll quit with
this, and then we'll move on and close this out, and I might
pick up and talk a little more next week. Because the gospel is not an
offer, beloved. Listen, Jesus never asked anyone
to follow him. Jesus never asked anyone to believe
on him. Jesus never asks anybody to do
anything. He commands everybody to do it. So when the gospel goes out, it's not a plea. It's a command. Believe on Christ. Believe on
Christ. Why is repentance put before
believing? in the narrative of the New Testament.
Repent and what? Believe the gospel. Do you know
what repentance means? Change your mind. That's what it means. Not change
your life. Because if it means change your life, it means straighten
out all your sin and trust in Jesus. Is that the case? What sin other than unbelief
did Paul have? Well, there's a murder thing. But what sin? What lifestyle? Yes, Christ gives us victory
over our flesh and allows us to put it to death. The Bible
says that we have been given the power to overcome temptation
and to walk away from it. But it's not all the time, every
time. And friends, we're not always
believing either, are we? What about worry? What about
anxiety? What about stress? Well, how
are we supposed to change that? Find out and tell me, I'd love
to know. The Bible says that we are to change that by not
thinking about those things that cause us stress, but to put our
minds on Christ. What does that mean? Not, oh
Jesus, help me, but who cares that I'm going down the toilet?
Who cares that there's a storm brewing? Who cares that I'm on
fire? Jesus Christ is King! He's my Lord! He's my Savior! He is everything! Look at Him!
Look at Him! Look at Him! And everything else
goes away. I've been saved by the grace
of God through Jesus Christ. How do I care about this right
now? Does that change? No. Does it
go away? No. Is there anything we can
do about it? No. What am I talking about? The
things that are causing us to fret. Belief on Jesus Christ
is a gift of God. It is the working out of God
in our lives to gift us faith, even in the hard times when belief
is absolutely impossible. And beloved, we are not apostles. We are not carried along. In
the same manner with a spiritual intimacy like they did, that
we can just reveal God's thoughts out of our minds. But if we are intimate with the
apostles, then the Holy Spirit is with us the same as He was
with them. So we often live the Christian
faith by acts of works, manageable things, things that we can do
and point to and touch, tangible realities that go, oh, look at
my faith. When really what the Scripture
is teaching here is that the name of Jesus Christ is at stake. And the name of Jesus Christ
is at stake when we consider our faith, our work, when we
consider the obedience of our faith, the things that we can
accomplish in our flesh, when we consider the fact that we
made good decisions We make good choices to believe on Jesus and
to follow after Him. Friends, nothing we do in our
flesh, listen to me, nothing we do in our flesh pleases God. And I say, well now, when I love
my neighbor, that's pleasing to God. Well, Jesus would answer
us this way, whoop-dee-doo. You want a sticker? Where's my supper, slave? That's
not the Jesus I know. Read the Gospel of Mark. He says
when the servants are out there in the field and they work all
day as they're supposed to do and they do everything they're
commanded to do, and he's worked real hard and he's really, really
tired, do I come in and say, hey, slave, sit with me and recline
your feet? He goes, no, slave, where's my
supper? And people say, well, that's
a really tough Jesus. No, we don't get rewarded for
doing what we're supposed to do. And friends, if we do it
impeccably, we still cannot get rewarded for it. Because the
righteousness of men is sinful. But the righteousness of God
is Jesus Christ, who is our righteousness, who is our hope, who is our life,
who seals us and guards us and keeps us. And that's what I think
Paul is trying to point to. It's that God established the
apostolic authority to bring to the nations the gospel and
that the obedience of faith is believing on Jesus all the time
and only all the time. The epistles that we see, the
pastoral epistles, it'll give us some boundaries. It'll give
us some examples. It'll give us some things that
we can incorporate and we can follow and we can obey if we
use the word correctly and we can seek after. And these things
are honorable and these things are fruitful and these things
are beneficial, but they're not righteous in the context of God's
holiness. And if you think about this for
a second, say, well, the Bible uses those words interchangeably
that way. Friends, what do you want? Do
you want to be responsible for your righteousness? Or do you
want to trust in Christ for your righteousness? I'll take the
latter. And that everything that I see
coming out of me that is not of me is his. And I can seriously say that
I've been crucified with Christ. And it's not I who live, but
Christ who lives within me and that we live by faith in the
son of God who loved us and gave himself for us. That is the mantra
of Paul. The Bible teaches that not all
have obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, Lord, who has
believed that he has heard from us. And faith comes from hearing,
and hearing through the word of Christ. But I ask, have they
not heard? Indeed they have heard, for their
voice has gone out to all the earth, and their word to the
end of the world. But I ask, did Israel not understand? First
Moses says, I will make you jealous of those who are not a nation,
a foolish nation. I will make you angry. And Isaiah is so bold
as to say, I have been found by those who do not seek me.
I have shown myself to those who do not ask for me." But Israel,
he says, all day long, I've held out my hands to a disobedient
and contrary people. Do you know what the disobedience
was? Unbelief. So that's the crux
of where we're going. And he says that I've come by
the grace of the Lord Jesus as a servant and a slave to Him
in His authority and for the sake of His name, to bring faith
and the obedience of faith, to bring eternal life amongst all
the nations. And then He says, of which you
are, look at verse 6, including you, Romans, who are called to
belong to Jesus Christ. And we'll stop there and pick
up next week. Let's pray. We thank You, Father, for this
glorious truth. Lord, that You would just help us to understand
it. to grab hold of it. Father, there's
proof text after proof text, and you know it. I'm not telling
you anything you don't know, Lord. It's just, when I pray,
Father, I feel overwhelmed sometimes. Well, maybe I could go and pull
out 20 or 30 verses and show the argument. But, Lord, You
have purposed Your Word to show us clearly. Lord, would these
small phrases in this first part of this letter give us the sense
and the essence of what You've called us to know? And Lord, cause us to walk in
your ways. Cause us to follow after you.
Cause us to have a zeal. Cause us to lay down our lives.
Cause us to love our neighbors and our enemies and to pray and
to gather together and to be in the practice of encouraging
one another. And Lord, let you be glorified
in it all. For we believe that Christ alone
is our hope, that He alone is our righteousness, and nothing
in me can save me. In Jesus' name.