Romans chapter one and we're
going to read from verse one and it is my plan on on the next
number of Wednesday evenings that we have our service here
for us to spend a little bit of time in the Book of Romans.
So if you want to think about that as the beginning of our
study in the Book of Romans, I think that's probably what
we will be doing. We might not go from beginning
to end, but we'll certainly spend the next few weeks thinking about
Paul's epistle to the Romans. So Romans chapter one and verse
one, and the word of God declares, Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ,
called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, which
he had promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures
concerning his son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, which was made of the
seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the
Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness by
the resurrection from the dead, by whom we have received grace
and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations
for his name, among whom are ye also the called of Jesus Christ. To all that be in Rome, beloved
of God, called to be saints, grace to you and peace from God
our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. First, I thank my God
through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken
of throughout the whole world. For God is my witness, whom I
serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing
I make mention of you always in my prayers. making request,
if by any means now at length I might have a prosperous journey
by the will of God to come unto you. For I long to see you, that
I may impart unto you some spiritual gift to the end ye may be established. That is, that I may be comforted
together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me. Now I would not have you ignorant,
brethren, that oftentimes I purposed to come unto you, but was let
hitherto, that I might have some fruit among you also, even as
among other Gentiles. I am debtor both to the Greeks
and to the barbarians, both to the wise and to the unwise. So as much as in me is, I am
ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also. For I am not ashamed of the gospel
of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone
that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For therein
is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith, as it is
written, the just shall live by faith. Amen. May God bless
to us this reading from his word. When the Lord Jesus Christ was
preparing his disciples for his, for the Lord's return, into heaven
following his resurrection from the dead. That resurrection which
Paul here speaks about in verse 4 as testifying and emphasizing
and validating and proving that he was declared the Son of God. So that resurrection to the Apostle
Paul spoke of the validation and verification of the Lord
Jesus Christ's divinity. And when the Lord was preparing
for his return to heaven and descending of the Holy Spirit,
the Lord pledged that he would send that Spirit and that the
coming of the Spirit would be to this end, to teach you, the
apostles, all things and bring all things to your remembrance
whatsoever I have said unto you. So the Lord Jesus Christ told
his disciples that when he went back to heaven, the Holy Spirit
would come with this express purpose, to teach you all things
and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have
said unto you. The Lord Jesus Christ spent three
years with these men. The doctrine of the Lord Jesus
Christ, the message of the Lord Jesus Christ, the heavenly things
that the Lord Jesus Christ spoke to these men. It says to us several
times in the gospel that nothing was hid from the disciples. These men who would very soon
take up the responsibility, take up the mantle if you like, of
carrying the gospel of Christ to the ends of the earth. His
commission was, go ye into all the world and preach the gospel. And his promise to them was that
he would send the Holy Spirit so that everything that he had
taught them, everything that he had said, all things, it's
mentioned twice, that little phrase, all things, twice in
that one promise, that all things would be brought to their remembrance
that he ever told them. And the apostles, thus equipped
with the Holy Spirit that came at Pentecost, they took the words
and the doctrine of the Lord Jesus Christ and they fulfilled
his commission and carried it into all the world. Do you realise,
do you remember, I'm sure you do, that we really know very
little about the Apostles. Call them the 12 Apostles or
call them the 12 Apostles plus Paul. We really know very little
about any of them, many of them, beyond a few that are mentioned
in the New Testament after the Book of Acts. Because they went
to the ends of the earth. They left. They travelled the
roads, they went to the end of the empire, and they moved beyond
even the end of the empire. They were obedient to the calling
of Christ. And while we know a little bit
about James, and we know a little bit about John, and we know a
little bit about Peter, and we know a little bit about Paul,
Many of the others, Thomas, Bartholomew, Judas, the other disciples, they
just disappear off the pages of our history because they went
to do the will of God, carrying the message, the fullness of
the message. to the ends of the earth, each
one of them equipped with the all things that the Holy Spirit
taught them and reminded them, which had come from the lips
of Christ to them. And these men, these apostles,
these men who became the foundation of this establishment of the
church in the New Testament, these men, they went into the
world preaching But they also wrote. They declared with their
mouths and they wrote with their pens and they put down in writing
these great truths of the Gospel. This well is called the Gospel
of the Lord Jesus Christ because it came from Him. It emanated
from Him. It's His teaching. And they carried
that gospel, and they declared that gospel, and they wrote that
gospel down. And they delivered that gospel
in turn to faithful men. They gave that, as Paul did to
Titus and Timothy, they brought that gospel to faithful men,
who then, in turn, picked up the responsibility of declaring
that. And as we are told that the Lord
gave resurrection gifts to his church, which were pastors and
teachers, so we see that apostolic message, that apostolic truth,
that apostolic foundation, that apostolic succession being continued
generation after generation after generation. and it came and it
emanated from the very lips of the Lord Jesus Christ himself. In this way, we, you and I, we
together as we meet here in 2019 in Montana in North America,
so long ago these words were spoken, so many miles away. We
can be confident, we can be sure that these truths that we have
are the very same truths that came from the lips of the Lord.
This is the same message. It has been preserved. It has
been brought to us. It has been given to us and we
can have every confidence because these men were faithful to the
calling of Christ and the Holy Spirit preserved the all things
and he brought that message to these successive generations. The truth has been preserved
for us. It has been communicated to us. It has been disseminated by faithful
men throughout the ages and throughout the earth for the express purpose
of the gathering in of the church, the gathering in of the elect
of God and the building up of that people, the building up
of that church in the divine truth of the gospel of the Lord
Jesus Christ. So you can have confidence. in
this message. You can have confidence in this
word. You can be confident and sure and assured that these things
are true. because they come from God Himself,
from the Lord Jesus Christ. And the Gospel revelation which
we have and which we share is a complete revelation. The all
things confirm that. These are the all things. There
was nothing necessary that wasn't given. There was nothing missing
in the message that was given. It was the all things. Hebrews
tells us that the Lord Jesus Christ is the fullness of the
revelation of God. Yes, there were prophets who
spoke partially and through a glass darkly, if you like, in previous
generations. But the Lord Jesus Christ has,
in these last days, revealed all things. and the disciples
and the apostles missed nothing. Because even if they weren't
being very attentive on the day in which the Lord spoke to them,
or if they were distracted for some reason, the Holy Spirit,
powerfully, spiritually, brought all things to their remembrance
whatsoever I have taught you. That message is complete. What
we have received is complete and what we declare is complete
and what we have been taught is the very power of God unto
salvation and we wait the accomplishment of these things in our experience
and in our day until the Lord is pleased to gather in His elect
and gather in His Church through the conversion of individual
members who hear these words and to receive this truth. We
may, for this reason, be confident of success in this activity upon
which we are engaged. Now one of the main planks that
we have in the testimony that was bequeathed to us, yes we've
been told that these things were committed to faithful men and
passed down through the generations, but one of the main planks that
we have been given is the scriptures and is the apostolic writings,
the epistles of the apostles. And this letter that is before
us this evening, the epistle of Paul to the Romans, is a letter
that is full of gospel truth. And we do well to give it our
attention and to think about it. It will reward us greatly
to think on these things. Now an epistle is a letter. That's
all that word means. It's just a letter. So when we
talk about the epistles, we're talking about the letters that
were written. The epistles of Paul, the epistles of John, the
epistles of Peter. They're just letters. Letters
that were written to various churches. And Paul wrote to the
church which met at Rome. Just as someone might Just as someone might write to
a church that was to be found in any city, in any place. This was a letter that went to
particular individuals and it was the church that was at Rome.
But it's no ordinary letter. It's no ordinary piece of writing. He is inspired in what he writes. He is inspired by the Holy Ghost. These things are written by pen
men, as it were. They perform the task of a scribe,
but it's by inspiration that they wrote. So again, we can
see the direct, divine, godly hand behind these things which
we read and which we receive. And in this, the Holy Spirit,
through Paul, is setting forth before us the gospel of the Lord
Jesus Christ, the gospel of salvation. And we are a blessed people,
and we are a privileged people, to have it preserved for us today,
that we may read it, that we may meditate upon it, that we
may consider it together, and we may be blessed and equipped
and comforted thereby. We have access. Access today,
2,000 years after these words fell from the lips of the Lord
Jesus Christ and were given to the apostles and were then subsequently
brought back to the remembrance of those apostles as they wrote
down the things that Christ had revealed to them. We have access
to those very truths. and we can meditate and dwell
upon them. I want to think about a couple
of headings for us by way of introduction. I want to think
about the author of this letter and the audience. I want to think
about the message of the letter and its meaning. and I want to
think about the purpose of the letter and its power. So we're going to be very, very
quick. We're going to be very Simple and straightforward, I
hope, as we just look at these three headings for the purposes
of our thoughts this evening. First of all then, the author
and the audience. The author was the Apostle Paul
and the audience was the church at Rome. Saul of Tarsus and Paul
the Apostle were the same people. Here is one man with two names
and in many respects we might imagine that these two names
present to us almost two different lives. We hear about Saul of
Tarsus, and it may well be that he continued to have both names
throughout his whole life, one being a Jewish name or a Hebrew
name, and the other a Greek name. That was often the case in those
times, that people would have two different names, one their,
for example, their family name or their religious name, their
national name, and then another name by which they were known.
in a different place. Or we might think of it as being
the earlier part of Paul's life and the later part of his life.
But here it speaks to us in a sense of the two lives that he had.
Because he was a man who was dedicated to Judaism in his younger
life. And now we discover in verse
one, he is a servant of Jesus Christ. It used to be that he
hated anything that contradicted or subverted his own religious
understanding. And now he calls himself an apostle
or a messenger or an angel of the gospel of Jesus Christ. A transformation had taken place. A conversion had occurred and
of course we know something of the conversion of Paul from the
book of Acts and from other letters where he gives us his testimony.
I think three times at least he explains clearly to us his
own conversion. He is now a servant of Jesus
Christ. He is called to be an apostle
and he tells us he is separated unto the gospel of God. So who is the author of this
book? Saul cum Paul, a servant of Christ, called by God himself
to the task of preaching the gospel and separated to that
task by God the Holy Spirit. And he writes to an audience,
the church at Rome. One of the interesting things
about the church at Rome is that we don't know who founded it.
We don't know which of the apostles it was that founded this church,
if indeed any of the apostles did at all. What we do know is
that Paul was writing to them and already they were a well-established
congregation. So Paul didn't form this church. He didn't found this church. It was already a well-established
congregation because we're told in verse 8 that their faith is
spoken of throughout the whole world. So when Paul writes this
letter, their faith is already well known throughout the whole
of the Roman world at that time. The epistle to the Romans was
not the first epistle that was written. It was quite a late
epistle, actually. And its primacy in the epistles
in the scriptures coming immediately after the Acts of the Apostles
is probably for two reasons. One, it is so full of gospel
that the compilers of our Bible just knew they had to give it
a primacy. in the Scriptures. And secondly,
Rome was such an important place in the history of this age, this
time, that here was a letter, as it were, that went to the
very heart of the civilisation at that time. So the letter goes
to Rome. Who established it? Who knows? We are told that when Peter stood
on the day of Pentecost and preached his sermon in Acts chapter 2,
in verse 10 we're told of Acts 2, there were a number of men
present in Jerusalem at that time for the Passover ceremony,
the feast in Jerusalem that were strangers of Rome and it would
suggest that there were Romans there in the audience in the
congregation that day who heard the gospel declared from the
lips of Peter there in Jerusalem and I see no reason to think
that those men were not transformed and part of that large group
of thousands that were converted in the day of Pentecost and carried
that message back to their home and to their families in Rome. And that already, even before
the apostles had begun to go out, the gospel was making its
way ahead of them along the highways and the byways of the Roman Empire.
That tells us that this work is the Lord's. This work is God's
work. I like it that there's no named
apostolic founder to the church at Rome because this is God's
work and he raises up his church, he raises up his people, whether
or wheresoever he chooses and he brings the gospel to the hearing
of men. It's important to remember also,
when we're thinking about the audience, that this letter was
directed to a particular congregation. It went to the church at Rome. I mention that because we always
need to remember that the Scriptures are personal. They're particular. They are directed to the addressee. I've said this to you before,
but you don't go opening other people's mail. I hope. You don't
go reading other people's letters. I hope. We don't do that. Why? Because
these are private. These are personal. These are
for us. These are for me. These are for you. And that's
the same when we come to the scriptures. These truths are
directed to the people to whom they are addressed. And here
we discover that there is a specific group in mind. They are the beloved
of God, the church at Rome beloved of God, called by the Lord Jesus
Christ, called to be saints. And here we can see the triune
God at work in these names that are given. The point is this,
that we cannot take the blessings and the benefits and the promises
of scripture and apply them universally to everyone because they don't
belong to everyone. They belong to the beloved of
God. They belong to the elect of God. They belong to the church
of God. They belong to those who have
been called by the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. They are
the possession, they are the right, they are the inheritance
of the people who have been set apart by God the Holy Spirit
through the preaching of the gospel. And preachers must never
take the children's bread and feed it to dogs. That's not their
job. These things are not for the
dogs. They're for the children. And
the Lord gives these gospel graces, these promises, these comforts,
these blessings to his elect. They're for believers. And that
is why this pulpit, for as long as I'm responsible
for it, will not preach universal redemption, will not preach that
God loves everyone. We'll not preach that Jesus Christ
died for everyone. We'll not preach that there is
a common grace for everyone. We'll not preach that there is
a free offer of the gospel that is extended to everyone. Because
this pulpit, this congregation, this people believe in the distinctiveness
and the particularity of the gospel message. And we will uphold
that and we will declare that because that is the message which
fell from the lips of Christ, that fell into the hands of the
apostles, that were committed to faithful men and have been
carried down through the history of the church as the way and
the means for the conversion of sinners and the gathering
in of the Lord's people. The apostle Paul, writing to
the Corinthians, Again, by the inspiration of God the Holy Spirit
says, the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness. but unto us which are saved,
it is the power of God. Unto them which are called Christ,
the power of God and the wisdom of God. So much for the author
and the audience. Let's think briefly about the
message and its meaning. Without doubt, the message of
the epistle to the Romans is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ crucified. He, Christ, is the theme of this
letter. He is the key to understanding
this letter. He is the central character of
this letter. And in the opening verses of
this letter, which we have read together, the Apostle Paul speaks
frequently, repeatedly of the Lord Jesus Christ. Just take
some time a little bit later to run your eye back down through
these opening verses and see the frequency with which the
Apostle Paul refers to Christ. Christ in his humanity, Christ
in his divinity, Christ for his sacrifice, Christ in his sovereignty,
Christ as the way to God. The opening verses, the very
introduction to this letter drip with the fullness, the saturation
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that was what Paul wanted
to convey. He wanted these saints at Rome
to know about Christ. Because Christ is the gospel.
Because Christ is the fullness of God's revelation to us and
the purposes and the will of God in the saving of a people. And Paul by the Holy Spirit means
for us to grasp the uniqueness of the Lord Jesus Christ. So
Christ is the message of the book and the meaning of that
message is this, that as far as salvation is concerned, Christ
is sufficient. Christ is enough. Christ is all
in all. Christ is all we need. And that's the message. That's
the message and its meaning. That Christ is the power of the
gospel. that here we can see the sovereign
grace of God being accomplished in the works of Christ, in the
sacrifice of Christ. And we can see the benefits of
that work as it goes forth in the effectual call to gather
men and women to God through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. The gospel that we have here
Isn't an offer to be made indiscriminately and universally to all men? These
things are the possession of those for whom they were designed,
for whom they were purposed. And the gospel is a proposition. Sorry, it's not a proposition,
it's a declaration. not something that is to be accepted
or rejected, but something that is declared as the very truth
of God, as the triumph of God in accomplishing his purpose,
bringing many sons to glory, in bringing forgiveness of sin
to those who were lost and alone and under condemnation. And it
is believed by those who are elect of God and called by the
Holy Spirit through the preaching of the word. Okay, that's the
message and its meaning. Finally, the purpose and the
power. Paul's purpose in writing this
letter was to convey his desire to preach the gospel personally
in Rome. And until he was able to do that
personally, face to face, eyeball to eyeball, until he was able
to do that, he wrote a letter, he wrote an epistle to set forth
the gospel of Christ by this written form. So the letter is
saying, basically, here is the gospel. This is what I want to
come to Rome to preach to you. I long to be in Rome to preach.
I've tried many times to come, and I want to come and preach
it to you. And this is the message that
I will declare when I get there. Now, once this man had been an
advocate of the Jewish religion. He had been a staunch follower
and an advocate and defender of Moses' law as the way of obtaining
righteousness and the way of appeasing God's wrath and finding
his favour and blessing. But now he preaches the good
news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now he preaches, not salvation
by the works of the law, but salvation by grace. Now he preaches
the forgiveness of sin by the shedding of Jesus' blood, the
precious blood as Peter calls it. Now he preaches righteousness
by faith. not by the works of the law. Because Paul had personally learned
mercy. He had found Jesus Christ for
himself. He had had Christ revealed to
him. There on the road to Damascus
he was called by God, by God the Holy Spirit, by the Lord
Jesus Christ. to acknowledge the divinity of
he whom he persecuted. And he found mercy, and he found
peace with God. And he knew the liberty that
comes from the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he knew
that it had power to transform the life and the soul of a sinful,
rebellious man and woman, because it was personal to him. He had
worked all his life. He had bound himself in the garb
of the Jewish religion. He had carried the burdens. He
had lived the life. He had walked the walk. He had
talked the talk. He had been, as far as man was
concerned, perfect. The audacity to make such a statement,
and yet he believed it to be the case. Perfect before God. in the ways of the Jewish religion. And he had found himself to be
the chief of sinners when truly he had had those blinkers, that
blindness taken from him to see himself as he truly was. The
biggest self-righteous hypocrite and murderer of innocent men
and women and children. He had blood on his hands. He
had the blood of Stephen the Martyr on his hands. And he waded
through the sadness and the sorrow and the brutality of that embryonic
church as he tried to extinguish the flame of Christ there in
the lives of these individuals. He knew what it was to be a sinner. He knew what a sinner really
was. because the Lord had revealed to him the nature of his own
life. And Paul knew what it was to
be transformed from that state. Where did the power come from?
It came from God. And that is why he tells these
Romans that he is not ashamed of the gospel, because he knows
what it can do. He knows that it's the power
of God unto salvation. He knew that it had power to
transform lives. Yes, out in the sticks. Yes,
out in the country. Yes, out in the back of beyond.
Out in the villages of the deserts of the world at that time, but
also in the metropolis of Rome. also in the cultural centres
of this world, the same message. And he wasn't ashamed of it because
he had proved its worth. He had proved the reality of
its power. He knew that it would transform
the lives of sinful men and women just as surely as it had transformed
his own life. I am not ashamed of the gospel
of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone
that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For therein
is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith. As it is
written, the just shall live by faith. And that's the message
of the gospel. That's the message which comes
as we first come to faith and then as we grow in grace and
in a knowledge of the truth, we see the power of the gospel. We see the power of the hand
of God at work in the lives of men and women, making them what
they never could be, making them fit for the presence of God through
the blood of Jesus Christ. Well, that's my three headings,
but I wanted just to have a little postscript, a little PS at the
bottom of this. And I've got a couple of things
that I want to mention to you as a PS. And really what it is,
is just a little phrase that grabbed my attention and I want
to share it with you. Look at verse five. By whom, speaking of Christ,
by whom we have received grace and apostleship. Now look at
the next few words. For obedience to the faith. For obedience to the faith. I just, I don't know, what can
I say? My spirit had a little jump when
I read that. I love the way when you read
scripture, something can just jump out at you for the first
time that you've probably read a hundred times before and you've
just never seen it. What do we talk about? What do
people talk about? People talk about, all the time
they talk about obedience to the law. Obedience to the law. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah. We know that it's the blood of
Christ that saves us. We know that the righteousness
of Christ is our possession. We know that this righteousness
is imputed to us. But you've still got to be obedient
to the law. Paul says, you be obedient to
the faith. You be obedient to the faith.
Forget about law. Forget about the rules. Forget
about the regulations. Forget about the ways of men.
Forget about having these things laid upon your shoulders. I was
called to be obedient to the faith. to be obedient to the
faith. So the next time you find yourself
in the crosshairs of some legalist who wants to take a strip or
two off you because you're not advocating obedience to the law,
you just point them to Paul's letter. And in the very introduction,
man, he can't even get beyond the fifth verse before he's talking
about obedience to the faith. That's what we're called to.
Obedience to the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ. Here is a
man who once sought righteousness through obedience to the law,
and now by enabling grace, his obedience is to the faith, the
faith of the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith to follow. Obedience to proclaim, to exalt,
to defend, to believe. and God makes us willing to be
obedient to that faith of the Lord Jesus Christ, the day that
he shines that gospel into our heart and into our life. Well,
if that was my PS, this is my PPS. The apostle writes, oftentimes
I purposed to come unto you, but was let hitherto. He says, Verse 15. So much is in me I am ready to
preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also. Verse 13. Now I would not have you ignorant
brethren that oftentimes thy purpose to come unto you but
was let hither to. But was let hither to. Another one of these little phrases.
Thank God Thank God, men and women of Great Falls, thank God
that the Apostle Paul was let hitherto. Because had he not
been let hitherto, we would not have had the Epistle to the Romans.
we would not have had this. It was the fact that God thwarted
the desire of the apostle to go to Rome and preach that he
felt compelled to write this letter. You don't use the phrase
let hitherto. Often these days, I don't imagine
in your everyday conversation, I can't imagine that you said
today, Conrad, that you were let hitherto. And I'm thinking to myself, you
know, maybe this is one of these archaic phrases that we don't
use very often. And then I realized that I have
been using it dozens of times in the past few months. And I'll
have to use it again tomorrow. Because in my passport, it says, that Her
Majesty the Queen requests and requires that every border guard
lets me, as the owner and possessor of a passport of Her Majesty's
government, pass through their realm without let or hindrance. Without let or hindrance. And
so every time I show my passport to somebody, it comes with the
request of Her Majesty the Queen of England that they let me do
the things that I want to do as a citizen and possessor of
that passport without let or hindrance. Don't obstruct him. Don't get in his way, don't stop
him. Now I'm not saying that the border control always give
that allowance the proper weight that it is due. But there's the
phrase, it's an old English word, yes, but it is used even today,
recognised even today in official documents. And the Holy Spirit
had obstructed Paul. The Holy Spirit had stopped him. had let him, we use the word
let now as to permit, but another meaning of that word is to obstruct
and to stop. It's interesting, the same word
has opposite meanings. But the epistle to the Romans
is written because the Holy Spirit obstructed Paul in doing what
he wanted to do and go and preach the gospel to the church at Rome. Is there a lesson in that for
me? I think so. Does the Lord obstruct your plans? He obstructs mine. He obstructs
my plans. God the Holy Spirit obstructs
my plans all the time. He delays my good ideas. He thwarts
my best intentions. He prevents us from accomplishing
what we perceive to be to his glory. And we say, well, whose business
is this anyway? I love the little phrase of the
Lord Jesus when his mum and dad Mary and Joseph came chasing
after him at the age of 12 in Jerusalem. They're giving him
a hard time. A 12-year-old boy says, Wait a minute. Don't you realise
that I've got to be about my father's business? Mary stored
those things in her heart. She ruminated on those things
for years to come. Don't you know that I've got
to be about my father's business? Whose business is this? Is this Peter Mennie's business?
Is this Sovereign Grace Church Great Falls' business? Was this
the Apostle Paul's business? Or is this God's business? And
we can have our plans and you can have your plans and you can
have your plans. And we get annoyed when they
get thwarted. But God will have his way and
he will accomplish his purpose, his glorious end in his time
and in his way. Do you think Paul was frustrated
that he couldn't get to Rome? I think he was. I think he was. Do you think he got angry? I
think he probably did. I think he probably did because
he wanted to be doing it. He says, don't you know? He said,
I am ready. He said, I've been trying to
get to Rome for so long, but I have been let hitherto, I've
been obstructed. But the providence of God saw
fit to obstruct the apostle so that we would benefit from having
this letter delivered to us Thousands of years later, with the very
words that had come from the lips of the Lord Jesus Christ
and been inspired by God the Holy Spirit, that we might know
the all things that are right and good and proper for our salvation
and for our building up in the faith of Jesus Christ. Thank
the Lord that from time to time he obstructs us in our purposes
and our desires in order to accomplish his will in his time. Thank you
for your attention. Amen.