Hey everybody, this is Pastor John Ewart from Inglewood
Baptist Church in Rocky Mountain, North Carolina.
Thank you so much for tuning in to our podcast.
You're going to hear from God today as we share from his word
about important issues facing your life that can guide you
according to the Bible. Well, good morning, Inglewood.
Take your Bibles and turn to Romans Chapter 1 if you would.
Good to see you here this morning.
Thank you for being here. If you're a guest.
Thank you so much for being here.
Let me just continue the missions report for just a
second. Yesterday, we also were up in
Roanoke Rapids conducting a soccer camp clinic for our
Hispanic church plant up there. We appreciate so much the effort
of Pastor, Pastor Oscar and his wife Catalina for Cassidy Green
in the missions office, for Coach Mark Bowman bringing his
team from Wesleyan up there. And they had a good time playing
some soccer. We had some great food and and
the gospel was shared to several folks who'd never heard it
before. So pray for them up there that
that'll continue to bless that church and they'll be new folks
joining them very soon. This afternoon there's a reach
meeting. Well, actually, if you'll look
in your worship guide, there's a reach leadership meeting.
Meeting is intended for connect group leaders, attendance
takers, prayer leaders, outreach leaders for all the different
age groups. I'm going to be speaking to you
today, so I need you all to be there.
I will take attendance, so hopefully I'll see you there.
Some of that's a joke, some of that's not.
So there you go. Thanks for being here.
Listen, I appreciate so much you coming.
We're going to be kicking off our series here in just a moment
in Romans and appreciate that at midweek on Wednesday nights,
having a great time, we're going to be, we're talking about
heaven, hell, and the hereafter. And this week we're going to
talk a little about some of those false paths to eternity.
We talked about the eternality of God last week and had a good
time. So I hope that you'll be here
having a good crowd on Wednesdays.
Appreciate that very much. Listen, I need to start before
we get to Romans with some confession.
So Teresa and I have some kids and some grandkids that live on
the other side of Bunn and we go over there quite often.
As you can imagine. And I don't know if you travel
through Bun much, but it's 25 miles an hour through Bun.
So the other day I perhaps, possibly maybe was not doing 25
miles an hour through Bun and, and as the policeman pulled me
over, I realized that I didn't have my seat belt on.
Now I was alone and, and so I knew I had this moment.
I'm just confessing, all right? I'm just confessing.
I realized I had this moment when the police officer looked
down to open his car door, that maybe I just had a moment.
And I'm, I'm just telling you. I did it as I was looking in
that rearview mirror, watching real closely.
And when he opened that door, I reached up and grabbed that seat
belt, put it on. He came up and was talking to
me. You know how fast you were
going? I said something like 25 1/2.
But anyway, he didn't agree with that.
And, and I said, listen, I said I'm, I'm just a pastor, you
know, from Englewood Baptist Church and Rocky Mount, just
trying to spread the gospel to people, just trying to share the
love of Jesus. And the officer looked at me and
says, well, I appreciate that preacher.
So I got one question for you. Do you always run that seat belt
through the steering wheel like that?
Now let me make another confession.
None of that really happened, but I was thinking about how
amazing and how hard sometimes we try to justify ourselves.
Yeah, none of that happened. I always go 24 1/2 miles an hour
through bun. Yeah, I'll confess that one
later. But anyway, it's amazing how we
try to justify ourselves and justify things.
Fortunately for us, we we have a much greater source of real
justification through Jesus Christ.
And and that's the name of our new series in the book of
Romans. In fact, our series is going to
be justified study of Romans because we're going to talk
about that justification. We're going to feed, well, we're
going to feed deeply from this book over the next several
weeks. Romans is the first systematic
theology that you could find in the Christian faith, but it's so
much more. And this is really, really
important because sometimes that's all people might think
Romans is. It's just a doctrinal study and
that's not true at all. Romans also provides a guide for
living the Christian life. And this is going to be just as
important, especially for living the Christian life today in a
culture that does not share our biblical worldview, because
that's exactly where the Romans were.
And so this is a very relevant and timely study.
Chuck Swindoll and his commentary on Romans wrote it
may be considered the believers constitution the the the
Christian Magna Carta. This is a really important book
and and many Christians throughout church history that
you'll become the next one. But many Christians throughout
church history have been impacted mightily that in fact,
they can trace their conversion back to the book of Romans.
Augustine or Augustine of Hippo can actually trace his encounter
with Christ or Romans chapter 13.
It's a well known fact about Martin Luther and the the
reformer who wrestled with his own guilt before God until he
actually grasped the meaning of Romans chapter one, verse 17
that we're going to see today. The passage he says in quote
Luther, he said it opened the gateway to paradise for him.
It's a powerful book. John Wesley was completely
changed after the preface to Luther's commentary on Romans
was read to him. Just the preface of the book of
Romans in that study being read absolutely transformed John
Wesley. Romans ignited the mind of
Jonathan Edwards, the great reformer.
It fueled the revival fire of George Whitfield, which led to
historical spiritual awakenings in our country.
This is a powerful, powerful book.
So we're also going to celebrate, obviously, the
personal spiritual awakening of the author as we, as we listen
to Paul share about what what he's learned over his years of
ministry through the book of Romans.
So we see Paul's encounter with the risen Christ absolutely
transforming him. And instead of seeking to
destroy Christianity, he becomes this, this tireless apostle
travels over 20,000 miles before he's done at proclaiming the
gospel. But he recognized his future was
not back in Jerusalem as a Pharisee.
He recognized his future is not in the works of the law, but
that that it would be among the Gentiles preaching the gospel,
preaching grace, and preaching living by faith, which is both a
part of this book as well. So after years in mission
service, Paul is actually at this point trying to wanting to
go to Spain. He wants to go West, which
that's about as far West as he could probably dream of in his
Mediterranean world. And so he wants to go to Spain.
But before he goes there, he intends to go to Jerusalem and
deliver the love offering. If you read the letters of Paul,
you'll know that he takes up a love offering for the believers
back in Jerusalem who are suffering.
They're suffering persecution, famine, all kinds of problems at
the home church. And he's going to take the love
offering back to them first in Jerusalem and then he's going to
go to Rome on his his way to Spain.
That was kind of the idea that he had in his mind.
Now at this point, he's been preaching for about 25 years.
And so this is this is moving along in his ministry.
He's planted churches in much of the northeastern part of the
Mediterranean world as part of the Roman Empire.
So this book is probably written somewhere around the year 8057
while Paul is on his third missionary journey in Corinth.
Now, for those of you who are deep into Bible study, you cared
about that. For those who aren't so much
into it, he just wrote it later in his ministry.
Now at this point, the Roman Empire that is zenith this is
this is at the height of the Roman Empire.
The the city of Rome is a melting pot of culture and
religions, which is a backdrop to this letter that you cannot
ignore. You cannot forget that.
Don't take this book out of context.
Paul had never visited Rome. Obviously he did not plant the
church at Rome and that's an important part.
He's still loving and writing to churches that he did not plant.
He respected the body of Christ and wanted to help the body of
Christ wherever it was. We don't know exactly how the
church was founded. We do know that there were
people from Rome at the day of Pentecost, and so it might have
been that they went home after the day of Pentecost with the
gospel and started the church. It might be that people who were
encountered on some of Paul's other missionary journeys went
back to Rome and started the church.
There were also Christian merchants and this.
This may be a new thought. As the As Christianity spread in
the Roman Empire, both Christian merchants and Christian soldiers
in the Roman army itself who were converted would share the
gospel. So it could be that these
merchants, who would have probably been Jewish background
believers, took the gospel there or somebody else.
But we know that in the beginning they were Jewish
Christians. Eventually they start impacting
the gentile population of Rome around them.
So this church becomes a very diverse group of people.
And that is vital to remember, to understand the book of
Romans. You've got to understand that
this is a, that this is part of the backdrop, part of the issue,
that people are coming from all kinds of backgrounds, all kinds
of ethnicities, all kinds of previous religious experiences,
all gathering together. So the city had had its large
population of Jews for centuries.
Frankly, Jews had been in Rome for a long time.
But because of some of the problems that Rome was having,
they blamed the Jews for that. And so the Emperor Claudius
actually kicked the Jews out of Rome in the year 49.
So they all get booted out. So while they're gone, the
church, which had been started, that becomes more and more
gentile. Now this, just bear with me.
This is all very important to the book.
So it becomes more and more Gentile.
So when the Jews are allowed back, they come and they find
that the church has a gentile Christian community toward bent
toward it. And they develop different
customs and different practices. And this creates A cultural
clash. And that's part of what what
Paul has to write about. And so we see that Jewish
Christians raised under the law of Moses often struggled with
the Gentiles lack of adherence to their customs.
While the Gentile believers didn't believe they had to had
to worry about the law. They were beyond that and, and,
and without it. So the issue of integrating
Gentile believers into what was an initially a Jewish movement
and then vice versa was a very defining challenge for the early
church. Don't miss that.
So Paul's letter was written to them.
Romans was written to some degree dealing with these
significant tensions between these two groups and, and
sometimes we would read it today and we wouldn't recognize that,
but that's a big part of this book.
Tony Morita in his and I appreciate Tony Marita's work in
his commentary, he he says the book of Romans reflects Paul's
attempt to address these concerns by emphasizing the
shared foundation of the gospel that salvation is through faith
in Jesus Christ for both Jews and Gentiles alike.
And we may say, well, what's that got to do with us today?
Well, we come from all kinds of different backgrounds and we're
going to continue to welcome people from different
backgrounds and we need everybody to understand the
gospels for everybody. Your socio economic, ethnicity,
education, where you grew up, where you didn't grow up, what
county you're from, none of that's got to matter when it
comes to the gospel. And so Paul also wanted them to
to to become, frankly, in a practical way, he was writing to
unite these two groups, but he also wanted this church to
become a base of operations from which he could go to Spain.
He wanted them to help him and and be a place where he could
come back and report. And so his letter is helping to
shape the church's understanding of unity, the inclusive nature
of the gospel, which was crucial.
This is such a big deal because as Christianity is going to
spread across the Roman Empire and beyond, that inclusive
concept has got to be a part. Everybody must be welcomed into
the faith, and it can't simply be something we try to hold
onto. And so he does this as he
provides this very comprehensive explanation of the gospel.
He addresses both faith and practice.
It's a very practical study we're getting ready to get into.
And he clarifies salvations available to all, regardless of
your background. And he encourages folks to live
in harmony. So he also clarifies that
righteousness comes from from from faith, not from the works,
not from law. And and these and so these these
Roman believers needed this as well to kind of work through
that. But here's a whole nother part
of the story. See this first sermon, I got to
give you the backdrop. These Romans weren't just under
this internal pressure. These Romans were facing massive
external pressure because they lived in Rome.
And so the empire was incredibly pluralistic.
They had many, many, many competing beliefs that would
just counteract one another. What's the truth?
What's not the truth? What and, and different Pagan
beliefs and backgrounds. As you can imagine, they stole
from the Greeks, they stole from others, they had their own.
And so there's this conglomeration of religion
there. And so their environment posed
real challenges for early Christians.
And these early Christians were pressured to conform to societal
norms in the Roman in the Roman concepts and, and, but also they
had to figure out how to maintain their faith.
So this book is really for us today.
Marita again writes Paul's teaching in Romans encourages
believers to resist cultural pressures and to find their
identity in Christ. I just preached about our
identity in Christ at Southeastern Seminary's Chapel a
couple of weeks ago because my study in Romans actually led me
down that road a little while as well.
Because because we recognize that in our culture today we're
in Rome and it's very much the same as it was then.
This is one of the reasons, and you've heard me use this phrase
before, that I refer to our culture today.
We're not just postmodern, we're we're pre Christian, post
postmodern. In our culture today, we are
more like the 1st century than we've ever been before, where we
have people with no background in Christianity, no background
in the Bible, no background in their understanding of God or
what this word means. And we're going to have to
approach them much like the Romans were approached by the
church there. So we see this very rich
theological content then that comes along with this.
I mean, this is a really a significant theological work.
So we're going to discuss justification by faith.
We got to discuss the role of the law because of this tension
they were having. We got to talk about the
transformative power of grace that we see here in Scripture.
So Paul's going to explain the fundamentals and the foundations
of the Christian faith, as well as how we live that out.
And so the Romans needed this to continue to be strong just like
we do. So the emphasis on that
righteousness, that ability to be seen by God as forgiven and
and then to live the right way for Christ based upon what
Christ has done for us and, and based upon his truth and how
that comes from God and is accessible to anybody who
believes in Jesus. So this, this letter becomes the
cornerstone for all kinds of our doctrines along the way.
But again, don't see this is just a doctrinal book.
This is a study for all of us. It addresses the complexities of
faith in a very diverse and challenging cultural landscape.
And if that doesn't describe our world today, I'm not sure I
could write a better sentence. We're in an incredibly diverse,
pluralistic, sometimes universalistic, sometimes
atheistic cultural dynamic today, and this study will help
us a lot with themes of unity, grace, power of the gospel.
This is very relevant for us. So Paul's going to teach about
the sinful nature of all men. He's going to teach about,
again, justification only by faith in Christ Jesus, freedom
from sin and victory in Christ. So this is a gospel message.
It's a gospel message which we're commanded to share with
the entire world. And because Romans also contains
60 Old Testament references, this this book also helps tie
all of the scripture together. This is 1 story, 1 redemptive
grand narrative about Jesus Christ from Genesis to
Revelation. Again, Chuck Swindoll writes
this is a great paragraph. He says more than a mere fire
escape. This grand plan, of which all
are invited to become a part, is nothing less than the Creator's
intention to bring His creation back under divine dominion, to
be cleansed of evil, to redeem, reclaim and renovate the
universe so that it might fully reflect His glory again.
Someday Christ will tear the veil between heaven and earth,
and the righteousness of God will sweep the Prince of the
power of the air off his temporary throne.
And this future is inevitable because God's plan is
unstoppable. So in the meantime, the
righteousness of God lives in the hearts of those of us who
have received His grace through faith in his Son Christ Jesus.
So here's a man on a mission, Paul, to distribute the most
precious commodity the world could ever see. 100% effective
cure against the terminal disease of sin and and Roman's
going to teach us what human beings are really like, what we
really need, what God has done to provide a way for us and what
kind of lifestyle we ought to live in the Christian worldview
versus this culture in which we're now engaged.
So we need to drink from the deep waters of this book.
And we'll start in chapter 1 as we're challenged this morning
specifically to be called and not ashamed.
Look at Romans one one with me. It says Paul, a servant of
Christ Jesus called to be an apostle, set apart for the
gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets
in 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.
I have just a few simple points from this first chapter this
morning that we're going to talk about.
The first one is, is that in order for us to, to not only
understand this myth, this, this calling of God, this
justification by faith, but to live it out, we have to be
called by God, God's calling us to himself.
The 1st 7 verses, if you'll notice, if you'll look at your
English translation, the 1st 7 verses have a lot of comments.
This is 1 long sentence. You can do that in Greek.
It's hard to do that, a run on sentence in English and get away
from it. Pastor Dylan's got to write some
of his PhD papers. He can't do run on sentences.
He'll get pegged for that Doctor Red ankle stands to step in and
mark them for him. But in Greek you can get away
with it. You can do all kinds of run on
sentences. You just keep adding a common.
It keeps on going forever. And so we see this one long
complex sentence with a lot of different clauses, but we
recognize that most of the Christians in Rome.
Only knew Paul from a reputation.
Now it may be that some of them had met him along the way.
And he's going to list some people by name at the end of the
book that seemed to have met him somewhere along the way who are
part of the church. But most of these people had
never met him. Most of these people didn't know
him. They'd heard of him.
His reputation had spread. And so he's he's in a sense,
giving a formal introduction, making sure they understand who
he is and what he represents. And so he refers to himself
first of all as a a servant of Christ Jesus.
And this was an interesting term for both Greeks and Romans.
They wouldn't have liked this. See, Greeks and Romans thought
that servitude, being a servant or slave of some kind.
The Greek word obviously is doulos for those who know
anything about the Greek language.
But but for a Greek or Roman, this was beneath them.
Nobody wanted to be the servant of somebody else in that
culture, in that climate, that would that would be beneath you.
And so no one wanted this title but Paul showing them and
showing us that that has to change when it comes to Christ.
When it comes to Christ, we are submitted.
When it comes to Christ, we recognize Our Calling.
When it comes to Christ, we're here to serve not only him, but
others. And then he goes on and he says
that he'd been set apart for the gospel of God.
That word means to be separated or or to reserve.
And so he's an apostle. He says that which means to one
who has been sent. So you've got to think about it.
Separated, separated to be sent. That's who he is.
That's his calling. The word missionary, that word
we use in English all the time is simply Latin for apostle.
And so the the one who has sent, the one who has called, the one
who has separated. And I wonder if that's not all
of us, if that's not all of our responsibility, maybe some go
overseas, maybe some go to a Hispanic church plant, maybe
others just need to go to their neighbor, But we're all
separated. We're all set apart in order to
be sent. And then Paul wastes no time
getting to his major theme, the theme of the whole book, the
theme of what he's after. He's right.
But but you got to remember this, and this is really
important because this is a weird book in the sense that we
often quote from Romans when we share the gospel with somebody.
We often use the Roman road or we use verses out of here when
you're going to share the gospel with a lost person.
But that wasn't the purpose of the book.
The purpose of the book was written to Christians.
And so this is a book written to the church, but he's trying to
unpack the gospel for them so that they would be equipped to
share with people in Rome, to share with people in their
world. But this is primarily a letter
of remembrance. It's a letter of clarification.
It's a letter of calling. It's a letter of discipleship.
Not, not not necessarily an evangelistic message for
salvation, although we certainly can use it for that.
That was not his original intent.
For Paul, the gospel does not just save.
Here's the here's a big point. The gospel doesn't just save
you, it shapes you. It shapes the life that you're
supposed to live, and it empowers you for service.
And so we recognize that Romans isn't just about spiritual
salvation. Romans is also very much about
spiritual growth. Who are we supposed to become as
disciples? And so the word for gospel,
evangelion, if that sounds like evangelism, it should because
it's the same word. And so when we look at the the
word, the Greek word evangelion for gospel or good news, you got
to stand this isn't a Christian word.
It didn't start there. It became one.
But this word was a common word to the Romans.
This word was used in emperor worship.
This word was used as they worship the the emperor himself
would raise himself up to Augustus, to the place of
supreme, to a place of godship. And so in emperor worship, they
actually used the word of angelion.
But what Paul's doing is showing that this was something more
specific and not about the emperor, but about the emperor
of all creation. And so he also points out that
this is something that's not new.
This was promised ahead of time. The Old Testament is the
foundation for the gospel. Don't don't miss the whole point
in this passage when you see that this was all declared ahead
of time. It was declared according to the
Spirit, but also beforehand by His prophets in the Holy
Scripture. This is not some random thought.
This is not some random accidental plan.
This is this is the divine inspiration of Scripture of all
Scripture and how God is fulfilling the hopes and the
prophecies of the Old Testament. So we see the Old Testament
centered on Jesus designed to bring people to obedience to him
by faith for his name. So the Bible's from God and the
Bible's about Jesus. And so the gospel is certainly
God's good news. He's the origin of it.
Theologian Leon Morris wrote Romans is a book about God.
No trot, no topic is treated with anything like the frequency
of God in this book. So we're going to be reading
about God and what he has done. And then Paul even launches into
these first few verses into the person and work of Jesus, and he
contrasts 2 parts of Christ's existence.
I mean, you see heavy doctrinal work here.
Just in these first verses at verse 3 says who was descended
from David According to the flesh, Jesus is fully man 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. And he's fully God, fully man
and fully God. That's who this is.
And so Jesus's work, it didn't end with his death.
He's vindicated as the Son of God and his resurrection, but
this idea of being declared to be the Son of God doesn't mean
that he wasn't the Son of God before the resurrection.
This simply means this is the declaration of his ongoing work.
This is the declaration and the emphasis emphasizing of his
exaltation, his coronation, so to speak, being recognized as
the Son of God. And so the purpose and the
ultimate goal of the gospel. Real simple.
It's just like our mission statement here.
The purpose of the gospel is to bring Christ glory.
It's to bring him the ultimate glory.
So the gospel is not preached if Christ is not preached.
That may sound like something common here at Inglewood.
You all know that. You all would think that you
would, duh. But you can understand out there
it's not. So there are churches who say
they preach the gospel who never mentioned Jesus Christ.
There are people who talk about preaching and doing the gospel
and and they're doing humanitarian work and they think
that's the gospel. Now I'm not knocking
humanitarian work. It's good to love our neighbor.
It's good to take care of our neighbor, but that's not the
gospel. If you don't talk about Jesus,
you're not talking about the gospel.
So the gospel is not preached if he's not there.
So he reminds us, Paul reminds us of his mission to redeem the
nation's. Once again, our mission
statement is our mission statement for a reason.
We are to bring God glory and join him in redeeming the
nations. Paul says for the sake of his
name among all the nations. There's a reason why we believe
what we believe. Paul longed for the nations to
hear and obey the gospel. He he had a passion for that.
To bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name
is what he says, because saving faith is obedient faith.
And sometimes I feel like we've separated these two things and
Paul's going to nail us down about that.
We want to trust in Jesus as our Savior, but we don't necessarily
want to trust Jesus as our Lord. So we can sit there and say,
well, I'm a Christian. I was saved, I walked a Nile,
got baptized, joined the church. But now my life hadn't changed a
bit. I hadn't done one thing for him
since that's not what this is about.
And Paul's going to dive deep with us in this.
He's going to, he's going to peg us for this and talk to us about
this. And so we see this and then
Paul's concluding his greeting here by identifying his audience
finally to Rome, to the Saints here at Rome.
He uses that word Saints to suggest that they too are set
apart for Christ. You, you 2 are set apart.
That's what the the word St. just means a set apart 1A holy
one to be set apart to be reserved just like he is that we
too, we're set apart, we're separated and we're sent.
That probably should have been the outline.
We're set apart, we're separated and we're sent.
And that's what he's saying. That's what you all are too.
You're right there in the middle of it.
You're right there at the center of the universe and the city of
Rome, the Control Center of the known world for him.
And you guys are just as much set apart.
You are. You all need to share in this
apostleship. You all need to share in this
mission effort. And he's going to encourage them
to do that. So when we're saved, we've
received this new identity in Christ.
The gospel should change who we are and for what we stand.
And it's remarkably gracious what God does for us when you
consider our sinful nature beforehand.
I mean, some of these Gentiles came from really Pagan
backgrounds and some of these Jewish people came from really
self-righteous, phariseical, legalistic backgrounds.
And to put these groups together must have been a fun potluck.
Look at verse 8. So now we get into it.
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 don't want you to be unaware,
brothers, that 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 the wise and to the foolish. So I am eager to preach the
gospel to you also who are in Rome.
So first of all, we see we're called by God.
But the second thing, we also need to recognize that we're
going to, if we're going to be who God wants us to be, if we're
going to grow like we're supposed to grow, we got to be
committed to the church. See, the believers in Rome
needed encouragement. And sometimes I people are funny
to me. People like to separate stuff
out from this book. You know, when Paul's writing
these letters, a huge section of the New Testament are letters
written to local churches about how you're supposed to be
involved in, behave, and live out your faith in and through
the local church. And yet it's always interesting
to me how some people try to isolate themselves from the
local church. Now I'm preaching you to the
choir because you're sitting here, but it's interesting to
me. It doesn't work that way.
It's never worked that way. And so it this is, it was not
easy to live there as a believer in Rome.
It was difficult. And so we see Paul first of all,
he's displaying his love and appreciation and commitment to
them for hanging in there. The reputation of hanging in
there and, and sharing the gospel had been spread.
He was thankful for them. He prayed for them.
He longed to see them. He, he wanted to be in the
church. He wanted to be together with
fellow believers. He wanted to be in that
community. He missed them.
He he wanted to be there so he could bless them.
He could strengthen them through his giftedness, his calling and
with the gospel. But the other thing you got to
see here is not what he says he he knows this works both ways.
He he verse 12. It says that we may be mutually
encouraged by each other. Paul also knew, I need you.
I need the church. I'm not just some maverick
missionary out here doing my own thing without any need or
without any desire to fellowship.
He knew there was mutual encouragement.
So Paul opens his heart so that they could know him and that he
could know them. And he acknowledged in that same
passage that that I know that your church is, is full of all
kinds of different people. I know there's all kinds of
different people. And that's OK.
And he expressed his heart for that.
The gospels for all people, even the Barbarians.
Now, if you're a barbarian, raise your hand now that we will
do that later. I already know some of you.
So. But the word barbarian is not
what we often think about it. We, we, we've had too much
Hollywood invested into our barbarianisms.
So a barbarian to the Greeks was to the educated Greek person,
the barbarian was just somebody who could, who could not
properly pronounce the Greek language.
And so they they considered them as uncouth and uneducated and
they were very dismissive. You got to understand how
elitist the Greeks could be to the Romans it it didn't refer to
some wild eyed savages. Although later on they would
fight Germanic Goths and Visigoths who would actually
sack Rome. But that's not who they really
meant. These were those who were not
cultured in the ways of Rome. Roman culture was very distinct
and at times very formal and very specific.
And they weren't educated or cultured in the ways of Rome.
And so they're out living on the empire's frontier, on the edge
out there. And so they're considered rude
and and crude and ignorant, but Paul says Christ is for them
too, no matter how uneducated, no matter how poor, no matter
how uncouth, no matter how rough the background, the Gospels for
them too. So we see Paul's love for the
church. We see his obligation for the
evangelization of all these people.
He's pursuing God's mission with a passion, with an obligation.
Again, let me quote Sundal. I'd just been reading him some
this week, and it says we owe the people the gospel.
We must tell others about it. Paul's passion burned with the
urgency of someone who had just found the fire escape in a
burning high rise, desperate to save others.
And he shouted, come this way, come this way.
Run down the stairway. This is how you get out.
This is the escape route. That's his desperation.
He's committed to them and wants them to grow.
So look at verse 16. Paul's arriving at his, really
his strong main point. These two verses have changed
lives. We'll see what they do today.
For I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of
God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew 1st and
also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of
God is revealed from faith. For faith as it is written, the
righteous shall live by faith. So we see Our Calling from God.
It's got to be a part of us. We see our commitment to His
church. This is His church, this is His
bride, His body. But then thirdly, we see
confidence in the power of the gospel.
So he arrives at this main point.
The gospel is the saving power of God.
The gospel is the saving power of God in which the
righteousness of God is revealed.
This is the Nerf center of the letter.
This is the central claim. Verse 17 is the key verse of the
entire letter. The gospel reveals righteousness
that is by faith. So many people today,
unfortunately in our culture, find the gospel foolishness.
Maybe you're a guest here today and you're kind of the same
boat. You just kind of enduring this.
How do you know when's it going to be quiet with lunch?
Some people think they're too sophisticated to believe such
archaic stuff. But here's Paul, in the midst of
a world just as lost, just as Pagan as our own, clearly saying
I'm not ashamed. Paul is as educated as any human
could have been in his day, from the culture from which he came.
I'm not ashamed. So today we're faced and we must
choose. We We can abandoned the gospel
out of a bear embarrassment. That's an option.
Or we can embrace the temporary shame that it might bring in our
world today. Because it might.
People might make fun of you for being a Christian.
People might make fun of you for putting that little Inglewood
Baptist Church sticker on your car.
People might make fun of you if you claim to believe a gospel,
and in a resurrection they might.
But here's what I say Inglewood. I say we stand with Paul, that
the gospel is not simply about the power of God, though it is.
The gospel is the power of God for everyone and to everyone who
believes. Paul is going to quote Habakkuk
24 stating our need for faith that that we cannot earn God's
righteousness, we must receive it by faith through Christ.
I shared this and again on Wednesday night.
I want to say it one more time that that idea of believes is
simply the Greek verb form for the noun for faith.
It means to everyone who faiths they can be, they can be saved,
Who trusts, who depends, who puts their entire weight on you,
lean on you, depend upon it, you cling to it.
You know it's your only way, your only hope, your only way to
be saved, and you're willing to live your life based upon that.
We accept the gospel, we live the gospel, and we must share
the gospel. So Paul wasn't ashamed because
he knew the gospel he preached and was teaching them about was
the only, the only appointed means for salvation.
It's the only way to be saved. These other paths, we're going
to talk about them on Wednesday night.
They won't save you. The the great devotionalist to
Oswald Chambers who sometimes you have to read 3 or 4 times to
understand. Oswald Chambers once said Paul
was not conscious of himself. He was recklessly abandoned,
totally surrendered and separated by God for one
purpose, to proclaim the gospel of God.
So without the gospel, without the power that the gospel is,
there is no salvation. And Paul will spend the rest of
this letter explaining every facet of it to us.
It's a powerful, life changing book.
You need to get your friends here.
You know, the other night I was watching and I don't always
watch these things, but for some reason this interested me.
I was watching the splashdown of Artemis 2, this spaceship that
went around the the dark side of the moon and was coming back and
they had a live broadcast of the splashdown.
And I was watching that on TV and I thought it was
interesting. There was a physicist.
I know who that physicist is. He's not a believer.
That's not a judgement statement.
That's his own statement. He's not a believer.
But he was a color commentary on the broadcast.
And at one point he said this, he says, man, as the thing hit
the ocean, those parachutes came out and the thing landed in the
ocean. He said man can eventually solve
the mystery of our existence. And I thought to myself, it was
almost, and he was such passion and excitement and it was almost
like a religious experience for him, testifying to all that man
can accomplish by his own strength.
Now, nothing against the space program per SE, but when he was
talking, a vivid thought came to my heart.
It just reminded me of a tower at a place called Babel.
The solution to our existence. Be careful.
Be careful, my friends, because we require justification, we
require salvation, we require transformation, we require to be
called and not to be ashamed of the gospel.
And frankly, this world starves to see that in US.
And when we begin to live this out to its fullness, there won't
be an empty seat in here anymore.
People will be wondering when we're going to move more seats
in because they see something here at Inglewood that they know
they desperately need. The commentator, Douglas Moo
wrote this. Just listen to this for a
minute. He says we badly need solid
grounding in the Christian worldview.
We need to know how to think Christianly about everything in
our culture if we are to be prepared to respond to the array
of religious options in our culture and to live consistently
Christian lives. If the church is to have a
meaningful and persuasive voice in the culture wars, you will
have to enunciate clearly, lovingly, and persuasively the
Christian interpretation of reality.
When you're only going to find that true reality in one place,
my friends, you're going to find it in the gospel, the real truth
and the real truth for why we exist, for our entire reality is
found there. So I look forward to our study
together, to what God is going to say to us because he alone
knows the mystery of our existence, but he wants to share
it with all of us. Father, thank you for your word.
Thank you that I don't have to add much.
I can simply share it. And Father, I pray that as Paul
wrote here, thousands of years later, the Father, that same
Holy Spirit, divinely inspired, perfect message would still
Pierce our hearts. Father, I pray that we would not
be ashamed of the gospel, but instead, Father, we would
recognize our duty to be transformed and to proclaim the
gospel. Father, thank you that we can be
saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, and that's the
only way we can be saved. And so, Father, I pray that as
we dive into your word, that Father, you'll dive into our
hearts. I pray for anyone here right now
who's never trusted in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.
They haven't believed, They haven't faith in Him.
That Father, right now you would give them that strength, that
ability, that awareness, an unavoidable truth that these
words are true and that their life must be changed.
Father, I pray that people aren't just saved.
I pray we're transformed. We live differently, we think
differently, we share differently.
So Father, I pray, Lord, as we have this moment of invitation
and reflection, that Father, you would bless us.
Lord, I pray that the Father that that if anyone's here and
they want to know more about what does it mean to be saved?
What does it mean to believe the gospel that they'd come and take
a pastor by the hand or go to our next steps room or even go
to our next steps room after the service, Father so they could
talk to someone about that others know of others who need
this. They need to know they need
transformation. And I pray Father they maybe
they need to come and just intercede at these steps as an
altar Father to pray for someone they know.
Maybe there's someone who saw the incredible, wonderful
testimony of baptism this morning, that public
identification. If I've done this, I've trusted
in Christ and I want the world to know I'm not ashamed.
I pray, Father, that someone would come and say, I want to
proclaim that relationship too. So Father, whatever someone
needs, whatever you're leading to do, I just pray, Father, as
we take our offering that you bless it.
Bless us as we offer ourselves to you.
Thank you, Father, for this chance in Christ's name, Amen.
Stand with me if you would. Some of our pastors will be
here. Our Next Steps room is there and
it's wide open now, and we'll be open after the service.
You come and respond as our ushers come as well.
Thank you so much for listening today.
And I also hope that you'll go to
ourwebsite@englewoodbaptist.com as well as our app and find many
other resources that will bless you and your families.
Thank you once again.