Chosen, not Special

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Chosen, not Special

Romans 11:16-36

October 9, 2022 • Jan Vezikov • Romans 11:16–36

Audio Transcript:

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Heavenly Father, we come to you with all humility and trembling and trepidation before your word, because you promised that you look upon those who submit themselves to your word. And that's what we're doing today, Lord. We know that your word, it's spirit breathed. It's breathed out by the living God. So Holy Spirit, you wrote these scriptures and we pray today, you come and put your search light of illumination upon them and help us understand these scriptures and help us fall in love with this theology so much so that the theology takes root and goes from our mind into our heart and transforms us.

Lord, you have called us to live a life of obedience, of faith. We're saved by grace through faith for works. And those works are the fruit that you call us to bear. And I pray that you continue to teach us to abide in Christ, abide in the vine, to be connected with Him, to remain in Him so that when we're by ourselves and there's no one there, and if Satan comes and there's attacks and temptation and accusation, we know who's we are and we know that we are connected to you. We're holding on to you with everything we have. And we pray Holy Spirit, come down a teach us and give us a zeal and a passion for your words, zeal and a passion for your gospel.

And if there's anyone who's not a Christian today, Lord, today, remove the hardness on their heart. Give them ears to hear, remove the spirit of stupor. Help them realize their great need for forgiveness. If you are a holy God, a mighty God, an awesome God, and we are just sinners and we ask that you forgive and draw into your family. Lord, bless our time in the holy scriptures. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

The title of the sermon is Chosen, Not Special. And this is important because St. Paul wants us to know that we're saved by grace through faith and that God has predestined us to salvation before the foundation of the world. But it's not because anything in us, it's all God, it's all grace. He gets all the glory. At the end of Romans eight, Paul has been explaining the gospel, explaining the effulgent glory of God in the gospel, a lavish grace of God. And as he reflects in Romans eight, his heart is stirred so much so that he gives us one of the greatest, one of the grandest doxologies in all of scripture. That's Romans 8:37 through 39.

"Knowing all these things, we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

But then in the very next chapter, in the very next verse, when contemplating the present condition of his own people, the Jewish people, Paul loves them, his mood darkens dramatically. And he says in Romans 9:1, "I'm speaking the truth in Christ. I'm not lying. My conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart." For whom? For these people that don't know Christ. Jesus Christ was Jewish. He comes to the Jewish people, he says, "Hey, I'm God, everything in the Old Testament, everything points to me. Everything points to me. He comes to His own and His own received Him not." So Paul goes from the heights of joy to the depth of despair at the very thought of his people being abandoned by God.

And then in Romans nine through 11, he explains, no God hasn't completely finally abandoned the people of Israel. No, He has great plans for them and He will draw many of them to salvation Jesus Christ. So as he explains all of that in Romans 11, all of a sudden again he's in doxological praise in Romans 11:33 through 35. "Oh the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways. For who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been His counselor or who has given a gift to Him that He might be repaid." So he goes from the height of doxology to the depth of despair back to the height of doxology all within three chapters. But what brings him back, what brings him back? What brings him back is that, in Romans 11:26 he says, "All Israel will be saved."

What does that mean? Well, this is what the chapter is about. This is what we're talking through today. He does use the imagery of grafting. I don't want to explain the grafting to you. You can find it on YouTube. I had a gentleman come to me at the end of the service, he's from Chile, he was here for two weeks for training. He's an agricultural engineer. And he said, "Everything you said is true." He said, "We do this all the time." He said "On my farm, when we see the crop isn't doing well, we break off branches that aren't bearing fruit. And we go and we find another branch and we graft it in just to make it more fruitful." And I said, "Praise be to God. The Lord gave me an illustration." So you can study up on the agricultural side. I'm going to give you the theological side today. So we're in Romans 11:16 through 36. Would you look at a text with me?

"If the dough offered as first fruits is holy, so is the whole lump, and if the root is holy, so are the branches. But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you. Then you will say, 'Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.' That is true, they were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will He spare you. Note then the kindness and the severity of God; severity toward those who have fallen, but God's kindness to you provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off. And even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again.

For if you were cut off from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree. Lest you be wise in your own sight, I want you to understand this mystery, brothers; a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way all Israel will be saved as it is written, the Deliverer will come from Zion, and he will banish ungodliness from Jacob; and this will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins. As regards the gospel, they are enemies of God for your sake. But as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. For just as you were at one time disobedient to God but now have received mercy because of their disobedience, so they too now have been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you, they also may now receive mercy.

For God has consigned all to disobedience, that He may have mercy on all. Oh, the depth and the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable are His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been His counselor? Or who has given a gift to Him that He might be repaid? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever. Amen.

Praise be to God. This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May He write these eternal truths upon our hearts. What a text, three points to frame up our time. First, do not become proud, but fear. That's verses 16 through 24. Second, the time to come in is running out. So come in. That's verses 25 to 32. And finally, our God is an awesome God. That's verses 33 to 36. First, do not become proud but fear. And I mentioned this last week and the last couple weeks. He's basically talking about grace swinging as a pendulum. So grace comes to Israel, the chosen people of God. Jesus comes to Israel full of grace and truth. Israel, as a whole, rejected Jesus. They crucified their own Messiah. And then Jesus comes back from the dead and he gives this message to go and preach the gospel to his disciples who are Jewish.

So the disciples have this grace, have this message, they're preaching it. And who comes to faith? It's the Gentiles come into faith in droves. So Paul says Israel had the pendulum of grace, it swings back to the Gentiles and at some point it's going to swing back in a special way to the Jewish people. Just to set the context, Romans 11:14 through 15. "In order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them. For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead." Paul says in his ministry to the Gentiles, he wants to magnify it because he's doing the same thing God's doing. God is drawing Gentiles to himself in a miraculous way so that the Jewish people look at the Gentiles receiving grace and get provoked with envy, with jealousy and say, "How is it that they are enjoying a relationship with God and we are not?" And Paul says there will come a time when they will accept. God is going to send a special move in the spirit where the Jewish people en mass, are going to accept the gospel.

And he says with their acceptance, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead. And this imagery he's using is, he looks at Israel and he says Israel, Jewish people, he says there's no spiritual vitality, and he's using language from Ezekiel. This is Ezekiel 37 where it says, "The hand of the Lord was upon me and He brought me out in the spirit of the Lord and set me down the middle of the valley. It was full of bones and He led me around among them and behold there were very many on the surface of the valley and behold they were very dry. And He said to me, 'Son of man, can these bones live?' And I answered, 'Oh Lord God, you know.' Then He said to me, 'Prophesy over these bones and say to them, 'Oh dry bones, hear the word of the Lord, thus says the Lord God to these bones, behold, I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live and I will lay sinews upon you and will cause flesh to come upon you and cover you with skin and put breath in you and you shall live. And you shall know that I am the Lord.'"

He has this incredible vision to the prophet of Ezekiel and he shows that just bones, the bones are the people of God. And he says, You, Ezekiel, a man of God, prophesy, speak God's word over these bones and watch the sphere of God take the word of God and apply it to dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead corpses, bones. And He speaks and they come to life. And this is just a picture of what will happen, what does happen with Gentiles, what does happen now with every single one of us. We hear the word of God and that's how people are converted. And in the same way as he's been saying in Romans 10, we are called to preach the gospel and we're called to preach a gospel in such a way where we believe that as we speak the gospel, as we explain who God is, that he's holy, that we're sinners, that Jesus is the only way. As we explain, we have to believe that Jesus Christ is going to draw people to himself by the power of the spirit. There will come incredible life. That's what He's promising.

In Romans 11:16, he continues the argument. "If the dough offered as first fruits is holy, so is the whole lump, and if the root is holy, so are the branches." He's mixing metaphors. That's what Paul does. There's first fruits, there's lumps and there's the root and the branches. But basically the idea is, he says the first fruits that were brought to the temple, at the harvest, you get the first fruit, the best fruit, you bring it to the Lord. And what happens is, as you give that to the Lord, the rest of your crop is consecrated to God because you have given him the first fruits. That's really the idea. What he's saying is because there is a true remnant in Israel, the first Jews, they've already come to faith. This was people at the time of St. Paul preaching Jewish people coming to faith, Gentiles coming to faith.

He's saying since the remnant the true Israel is coming to faith, that's proof that national Israel, the rest of the dough one day will be reckoned as holy. And then he switches the metaphor back to the olive tree and branches and presses the olive tree metaphor in verse 17. "If some of the branches were broken off and you, although a wild olive shoot were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree." He's saying this is the same metaphor that Jesus used in John 15. Jesus said, "I am the vine, you are the bridges. Whoever doesn't bear fruit shall be broken off and tossed into the fire." And in the same way he says the Jewish people thought that they were connected to the vine just by virtue of their birth, by virtue of their race, of their genealogy.

He says, "No, the only way that we remain connected to Jesus Christ is by receiving his grace, repenting of sin, and being connected to him by faith." The broken off branches here are disobedient, apostate Jewish people, the ones who stumbled and were cut off from the promises of God. He uses this analogy of the olive tree because Jesus uses this one. God uses it to explain his relationship with the people of Israel. He chooses the olive tree because the olive tree is interesting in that it's one of the most durable trees. The roots go deep. The trees can live for three to 400 years. It's a symbol of strength and durability. But he's saying that the olive tree grows in particular in a place where you wouldn't expect anything to grow. But because the root is Jesus, because the root is divine, then there can be life when we're connected to Christ. The branches were broken off to Jewish people.

But Paul says, you, the chosen Gentiles, verse 18, "Do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root but the root that supports you." This is really what he wants us to understand. Hey, if you understand the gospel of election that God saved you. Before the foundation of the world, your name is written in the Book of Life, never, ever, ever, ever allow pride to enter your heart because of this. God shows you not because of anything special in you. So how could Paul be any more graphic? He says, Remember who you are. Remember the grace of God that brought you in. The root is Christ, the branch is Israel. And the grafted olive shoot is the Gentiles. And what keeps Gentiles connected to the root? It's grace, it's faith in God.

Romans 11, 19 through 22, "Then you will say, 'Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.' That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will He spare you. Note then the kindness and severity of God; severity to those who have fallen, but God's kindness to you, provided you continue in His kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off." Saying make sure, make sure that you are truly connected. Christian, make sure that you are truly elect. Confirm your election, confirm it by abiding in Jesus Christ. Confirm it by believing. You stand fast through faith. That is your responsibility in the chapters about election, God's great election, plans before the foundation of the world. He does give us a job to do. There's a responsibility. You stand firm in the faith.

One of the great things and one of great purposes, objectives that we have at Mosaic is teaching you how to, teaching everyone, how to abide in Jesus Christ. Teaching you to have a one-on-one relationship with Christ. Teaching you how to have a relationship with Christ without a mediator, with no one in between you and the Lord, where you and the Lord have a relationship that's vibrant and full of vitality without someone in the middle. Because if you got someone in the middle, then God's just a friend of a friend. I want to get myself out of the way between you and Jesus. I'll just give one illustration.

I've got four daughters, praise be to God. My youngest is Milana, she's five, she's a kindergartner. And Milana has been really excited about the fact that we purchased a new vehicle and I purchased this vehicle, I was praying for a long time. Lord, send us a vehicle because we were in a Toyota Highlander with third row that barely fit anyone. And if you know anything about girls, if they're not comfortable, they let you know about it. And I've got five of them. So I prayed about a vehicle. And the other thing is, I've been in the city for 13 years, everything's cramped. And I'm like, you know what, the Lord won't let me live in a suburb. So what's a vehicle that's the closest to feeling like you live in the suburbs? So I got a Chevy Suburban, it's tremendous. Tinted windows and black rims. I got it salvaged, so it was in a flood. So I've got an illustration for next week in Romans 12. But what I'm saying, Milana wanted me to drive her to school because she's like, "Dad, all my friends, are going to think I'm cool", because I pull up like a Fed and just let her out.

And so I'm going to the back and we're going to the car. And then as we're about to get in the, there's a garbage, it's Tuesday, the garbage truck, it's pulling into my complex and we're not getting out. So then we're going around the building and she's like, "Dad, at least I can hold your hand." We're going to school. She's so sweet. And the way she holds my hand, she grabs my thumb. So we're walking and then as we go around our building, there's trees and there's a fence and there's a clearance of about six inches. So we're not going through together. And I stop. I said, "Milana, you got to let go of my thumb. You got to go first and you just got to go by yourself."

That's what we try to do at Mosaic. There comes a point in your life where it's just you and God. Mom and dad aren't there, your friends aren't there. Your community group isn't there, it's just you and the Lord and you have a decision to make. Am I going to stand firm in faith? Am I going to stand in the faith? That's what abiding means. That's what we try to teach, to abide in the Lord. No one's forcing you to read the Bible. You open the Bible. No one's forcing you to pray. No one's forcing you to worship, no one's forcing you to share the gospel, but you do it because you're standing fast through faith. And I want you to notice that standing fast through faith is contrasted with being proud. He says, don't be proud. There's nothing in you. But pride is what gets in the way of seeing God for who He is. Pride gets in the way of saving faith.

Most people today, they're not Christians, not because there's not information, information's out there. Any questions you have that are in the way of you receiving Christ as Lord and Savior, the answers are out there. We can help you with that. But what really gets in the way is the pride, pride of, am I going to submit to the God of the universe and that that's part of salvation, with the humility of repenting of sin. And he says, Look, you, Gentiles, beware. God is good to you. God is kind to you and we celebrate that. But there is also a severity of God, that God is an all-consuming fire, that for some people, God for all of eternity will be severe. And he says, you need to be aware of that. Make sure that you are not cut off. Make sure that you truly are connected to the Lord.

Notice in verses 23 and 24, Paul clearly anticipates a dramatic reversal of Israel's present condition of being cut off from the messianic route. Verse 23. "And even they, the Jewish people, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in. For God has the power to graft them in again. For if they were cut off from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree." God has the power to graft Jewish people in again if they do not continue in their unbelief. So in the future, when this move of God comes, and by the way, I think the move of God is already happening because if you look at the stats of how many Jewish people, how many people have converted from Judaism to Christianity in the past 50 years, it's higher than it's ever been in the past 2000 years.

So what he's saying here is, in the end times, God is going to draw up Jewish people like never before, but they're going to be drawn in the same exact way. Nothing that we do is going to change when this happens. It's not like we become more Jewish. He says it's all about faith. It's all about faith. You got to repent and believe in Jesus Christ. If the root is capable of sustaining wild olive trees, then when a natural branch comes back, obviously, it can be grafted in naturally. Hosea 14 is alluded to here, Hosea 14:1 and four through six. God talking to Israel says, "Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity. I will heal their apostasy. I will love them freely for my anger has turned from them. I will be like the dew to Israel. He will blossom like the lily. He will take root like the trees of Lebanon. His shoot shall spread out. His beauty shall be like the olive and his fragrance like Lebanon."

So that's good news. But the time to come in is running out. Verse 25. "Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers. A partial hardening has come upon Israel until the fullness of Gentiles has come in." So he's talking about this partial hardening where God has closed off the hearts of many of the Jewish people as a consequence for their rejection of Jesus Christ. But there's going to be a change in the situation. And what's that change connected to? It's connected to the fullness of Gentiles coming in. Coming into what? Coming into the family of God, the household of God, being grafted into the vine. That's what he's saying. So he's saying the number of Gentiles, the elect number of gentiles, that number is already decided by God and with each passing day, that number is diminished. It's getting closer to being closed off.

So the idea here is, there will come a time when it's too late to trust in Jesus Christ. We know this. We know this from the text. We know this from the fact that we're all going to die. There will come a time when any and every one of us, we will die. So we must be ready. We must be ready to receive the gospel of Jesus Christ even today. This is a change situation, he's talking about in verse 26. "And in this way, all Israel will be saved." What does he mean by all Israel will be saved? Well, what he means is the same thing he's been explaining in Romans nine through 11, the remnant elect. God is going to save a number, we don't know how many, of ethnic Jewish people.

And by all, he means all of the elect that God has chosen. "The Deliverer will come from Zion." He's talking about Jesus. "And He will banish ungodliness from Jacob." You see how active that is? He's just banishing the ungodliness. It's almost as if they had no choice. He just comes in. His fear is going to come in, banish ungodliness and this will be my covenant with them when I take away their sin. So since Israel is presently hardened toward their Messiah because of unbelief, what changes their situation is that God is going to bring in Gentiles and the fullness of Gentiles, once it comes in, it's almost as if the door closes to the Gentiles. And then God brings in the Jewish people in a powerful way. And the salvation of ethnic Israel is the beginning of the end.

We must know that. When we start seeing Jewish people coming to faith in droves, in significant numbers, we need to know this is the beginning of the end. And this interpretation comports with Jesus' words in Luke 21:24. It says, "They will fall by the edge of the sword and be led captive among the nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled." Once the times the Gentiles are fulfilled, God removes Israel's present hardness of heart and the nation will at long last return to their Messiah. So what do we do? God does that, but what's our job? Our job is to stand to the faith and our job is to preach the gospel, with faith, praying, God, remove hardness. God, remove hardness, please, God. In particular, the Jewish people.

And as we're looking at Romans 11 and talking about Jewish people coming to faith and their messiah, Jesus Christ, I just find it uncanny. And I just want to point out that we are sitting in a synagogue. This is a synagogue and we're sitting here on a Sunday, Temple Ohabei Shalom, and we're talking about Jesus Christ, the Messiah. I do not think it's an accident that we're here. I think God has positioned us in a place like Boston where there there's a large Jewish community and we worship in a temple. I think it's a great opportunity for us to proactively share the gospel with our Jewish friends and neighbors.

And as I was preaching this morning, a brother came up to me, he's like, "Bro, we're so ahead of you." I was like, "What?" He's like, "Yeah, we do sleepovers with our kids on Saturday nights." He said, "One condition. We'll only let you sleep over our house if you go to church with us on Sunday." I was like, "That's brilliant." And then he says, "And the Jewish kids, they always say, 'Yeah, but we're Jewish.'" And then he's trained his Christian kids to say, "Yeah, but we meet in the synagogue." So they cancel each other out and then you can continue a conversation, because if you tried to share the gospel with Jewish people around here, that's exactly ... You shared your gospel, and they're like, "I'm Jewish." And then we're like, "So is Jesus." And then they're like, "But I go to synagogue." And I'm like, "So do we." And they're like, "I'm busy on Saturdays." "Great, because we go to church on Sundays", and that's it. And you just continue the conversation. By then they're like, "All right, fine, I'll get saved."

That's what we believe, but I think we're already seeing it. There are people like Jewish descent coming to faith at Mosaic. We're seeing it. We want more of it. And what I'm telling you is, you should be emboldened, dear Christians, to share the gospel. You know the Jewish scriptures probably a thousand times better than any Jewish person that you, like secular Jewish people around. It's because they don't know their own scriptures. So if you are Jewish and you're like, "You know what, that's offensive that I don't know my scriptures." Good, you should be offended. Read your own scriptures, read the Hebrew scriptures and then keep going and learn about Jesus.

Romans 11:28. "As regards to gospel, they are enemies for your sake. But as regards election, they're beloved for the sake of their forefathers, for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable." He says that the people that God has elected salvation, they will come to salvation. If God has promised the gift of salvation to one of the elect, those gifts are irrevocable because God can't take his gifts back. The supreme gift that he's talking about is the gift of salvation, the gift of grace, the gift of mercy. And God will never, under any circumstances, revoke that gift. If you are truly in Christ, if you're truly a child of God, if you're truly connected to Jesus Christ, he's saying that gift is irrevocable and he continues in verse 30, 31. "Just as you were at one time disobedient to God but now have received mercy because of their disobedience, so they too have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you, they also may now receive mercy."

So God gives the gifts of his word to Israel. They become disobedient. Through their disobedience, the Gentiles receive mercy and then through the Gentiles mercy, through the Gentiles preaching the gospel to Jewish people, they will receive mercy as well. Verse 32. "For God has consigned all to disobedience that He may have mercy on all." What's he talking about? He's talked about this in Romans five, that in Adam we all stand condemned, but God will have mercy on those who are in Christ, the root, when both the wild branches and the natural branches, Gentiles, Israel crafted back in. As Paul realized is what he's saying, as Paul realizes what the Holy Spirit is writing through him, that God will send a powerful move for the Holy Spirit and draw many of His kinsmen into Himself. At the end, Paul has spent three chapters thinking about all of these incredible themes, all he can do is worship. That's how he concludes.

And this is point three. Our God is an awesome God. Paul follows his extraordinary affirmation of everything he just said. He follows it up with a sigh, a holy groan, if you will. And you're like, Where's the holy groan? It's in the word, in the very next verse, verse 33. Oh. O-H. But it's right there in the Greek. It's like, oh. It's a holy groan where he's like, I can't even, I can't help myself. All I can do is just worship God. It just flies out of him. "Oh, the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

Pastor Andy Davis was here today. He's a good friend and a mentor and he is a pastor in North Carolina. He was here today and he said you could preach three sermons through this one verse and you can. There's so much in this text, in verses 33 through 36. Reading between lines, you see that Paul's heart is filled with love for God, worship for God, and he wants to glorify God. And this is the point of all true theology. We want you to learn theology at Mosaic. We teach theology, but we never want theology to stay just in the mind. That is just useless in the mind.

Theology, true theology, has to go from the mind and the roots have to go deep into the heart. That's the only way you will be transformed. And the first lesson of systematic theology deals with the fact that you will never completely know God. You'll never comprehend God 100%. And hopefully Romans nine through 11 has already shown you that. No, God is incomprehensible. The fullness of the essence of God's glory so far transcends human ability to understand. All it can do is stand in awe of God. Well, God reveals what we can grasp, but it's only to a certain degree. There's dimensions to God, there's levels to understanding God. God is infinite and we are finite creatures. Even after you spend 10,000 years in heaven, fear saying, even when we are no longer looking through the glass darkly but basking in the glory of God, even then you will never have an exhaustive knowledge of God.

Eternity isn't long enough for creatures to completely, comprehensively understand Creator. Never in this world or the next will we be able to grasp God completely. So we're left where we worship. His judgments are unsearchable, therefore we need the spirit of God to lumen God's word and make God's word intelligible to us. Romans 11:34. "For who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been His counselor?" No one's fully known the mind of the Lord, his mind is absolutely perfect. There's no folly in his mind. His mind is a treasure store of wisdom. And God doesn't need us to counsel Him. Sometimes we try to, in our prayers. We try to inform God. We try to tell God how He should change His plan. Lord, I've got some advice for you, please. And God just laughs at us. No. No one can. You can't. What do you mean, counsel him?

Romans 11:35. "Or who has given a gift to Him that He might be repaid?" No, you can't give Him anything. You can't get Him to owe you anything. That's not how it works. Romans 11:36. For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things to Him be glory forever. Amen." In this single verse, we find the sum and the substance of the whole biblical revelation of the being and character of God. In these three succinct prepositions, from, through, and to Him are all things. This verse is so chockfull of spiritual power. I'm telling you, meditate on, chew over this verse all week. "From Him and through Him and to Him are all things." He's the ultimate source of everything. From Him comes everything. So meaning, nothing that happens, nothing that happens, occurs outside of the sovereign will of God.

So every single thing that happens is in some sense from Him, all the good and all the bad. And if you walk with the Lord, you will know that there comes seasons of trial and tribulation and pain and suffering. And you, dear Christian, you go back to this verse and you say, from Him are all things. From Him. All the good and the bad. This is Job. Job says, God, you've given me, you've taken. Praise be the name of the Lord. From Him are all things. Truth, beauty, goodness, but also suffering, also pruning, also transformation through the gospel. From Him are all things. Through Him are all things. This is Colossians 1:15 through 17. He, Christ, is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him, all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things. And in Him all things hold together."

Through him are all things. All things that come to pass in this world ultimately come to pass through the sovereign agency of God Himself. From Him, through Him, and to Him are all things. The word to indicates the purpose toward which everything is moving. What is the purpose? Where is everything going? What is the goal of the universe? What is the ultimate purpose of all history? In a word, the answer is God. He's the alpha and He is the omega. He's the beginning and He's the end. He's the source. And all things are moving in history and in the universe to fulfill the purpose of God.

So where are we left, verse 36. "For from Him and through Him and to Him and all things. To Him be glory forever. Amen." Glory. In the Hebrew, it's the word kavod, which means weightiness, significance, value, gravitas. God's glory is so transcendent and it is so singularly transcendent no one can possess any glory in a similar magnitude. God reveals his glory in the Old Testament through the shekinah cloud. And the shekinah cloud is so excellent in its brilliance that the human beings have to shield their eyes from this glory lest they go blind. And that's just the outward manifestation of the glory of God, of the eternal inward dignity of God. In Romans 21 and 22, this is how holy scripture ends and talks about a holy city descending, coming down out of heaven. And strangely, it is described as a place where the sun does not shine. There are no candles, there's no moon, there's no artificial source of light. And you would think that such a place would just be dark, perpetual darkness.

No. The author of Revelation tells us there's no need of a sun or artificial light. Why? Because the glory of God, the very radiance of His son bathes the holy city in perpetual light. It's the glow from the very face of God. The manifestation of His glory illuminates every single square inch of the kingdom of heaven. And the light of the glory of God is never extinguished. That's why the apostle says to him, "Be glory forever." The glory of God begins in eternity, will continue for eternity. And when we come into His presence to worship him, the only appropriate response is reverence and awe, and humility and submission. Why? Why? Because this glorious God of inscrutable judgments, unsearchable ways, this glory, from Him through Him, to Him, just this glorious God who created everything. He humbled Himself to the point where He becomes a baby.

The infinite breaks into the finite, the eternal breaks into the temporal. God comes and He lives with us. He becomes a baby. He comes into all of our garbage, all of our trash, just all of our sin and brokenness, this whole mess. And He comes and He lives and He lives this perfect life that He then offers up as a sacrifice. God, the Father, take my life, not theirs. He goes to the cross, this great God, glorious God on the cross. He's being crucified after being mocked and scourged. He's being crucified. And He says, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." They were clearly guilty. He says, "Forgive them." Lord, Lord Jesus. What are you doing on the cross? You created everything. Lord, why don't you just kill everybody? No, no, no. The only way that these people could be saved, the only way that any one of us can be saved is through Jesus Christ dying on the cross for our sins. Only He can bear the full weight of the wrath of God, the son of God, the son of man, fully God fully man.

Only He can stand in the gap between us and God. He is the only mediator. So look to the cross, dear friend, repent of your sin. Trust in Jesus Christ. He came back from the dead. Now He's reigning and He's ruling and He will come back and He will judge and then it will be too late. So if you're not a Christian today, we ask that you cry out to the Lord from the depth of your soul. Cry out, Lord Jesus Christ, forgive me of my sins. Lord, have mercy on me. I'm a wicked, a great sinner. And the very moment you do that from the bottom of your heart, you're saved. You're saved. You're welcome to the fold of God.

Your eternity is secure. Your name is written in heaven. And once you're in the family, you know what we tell you? We say your name is written in heaven before the foundation of the world, so don't get proud. Stand fast through faith and fear, because we worship an awesome God. Lord God, we pray to you. It's all we can do. We thank you and we take this text, Lord, and we marvel at it. We marvel at your glory. We marvel at your goodness to us. We know that we deserve a severity, but you offer us a goodness because of your son, Jesus Christ. Lord Jesus, we thank you that you are amongst us through the preaching of your word. And we thank you, Holy Spirit, that you're with us today. I pray, Holy Spirit, stir us right now to worship you with everything we got, to worship you in spirit and in truth. And I pray if there's anyone who's still not sure of where they stand with you, I pray today that they will not leave this place without making sure. They will talk to someone or they pray to you and cry out and beg you for mercy. Lord, bless our time as we worship you and pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Final Faithful Instructions

January 15, 2023 • Tyler Burns • Romans 16:17–27

Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches or donate to this ministry, please visit http://mosaicboston.com So we finally made it to the last week of Romans. Yeah, praise God, we are very thankful for the year that we have been in it. This is a clap of celebration, not of it's over with. No, amen. It has been 11 months, I believe, two weeks and two days since we started the Book of Romans, and we are finally in the last section of this text. And so what we're going to see is how Paul is a master of communication. He knows how to communicate points to people. And any good public speaker, in any format, knows how to communicate clearly what they are trying to say. I pray that I communicate clearly to you what the Lord is trying to say through me today. But if you've taken any classes on public speaking, on sermons, on how to communicate to people, there's a very common three part saying for how to communicate, and I'll get to it in a second. No one knows exactly where this phrase or idea or originated. Some people attribute it to Aristotle, some to like other philosophers and whoever. The earliest date that we have it written down is 1908, and it's in a piece called Three Parts of a Sermon. If you've been at Mosaic for a while, we love three-part sermons, but it's a little bit different here. But it's by a pastor as Mr. Joette, and he talks of a preacher who was communicating to him how to communicate to others. So he says, "How do you prepare your sermon?" The elder pastor says, "I take my text and I divide my sermon into three parts. In the first part, I tell them what I'm going to tell them. In the second part, I will tell them. And in the third part, I tell them what I told him." And that's exactly what we see Paul doing in this text. We have been in Romans for a long time, and if you remember way back to the first sermon in Romans, Paul told us what he is going to tell us. He had a thesis statement. And then we've spent a year hearing what Paul told us. And now, today, he's going to tell us what he has been telling us for the past year that we've been in this text. And so it's his conclusion, it's his summary, but it's not just a restatement of the same things for the sake of concluding. It's a restatement to show how each and every one of the themes and things he has been trying to say to us actually has practical implications for the church today. So before I get into the reading of scripture and the preaching of God's word, I just want to break down the major overarching themes from the Book of Romans for us real quickly. We've spent a year real deep in the details. This is the high arching themes of the Book of Romans. So in Romans 1:1-15, he starts with a greeting to the church in Rome, and a expression of his desire of his wanting to be with them and be in fellowship with them. Then in verses five and then 16 and 17, we sort of see Paul's thesis statement twice stated. So in Romans 1:5, Paul says, "Through whom we have received grace," through whom is Christ, "we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of His name among all nations." Then in verses 16 and 17, Paul says, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it as the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first, and also 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." Paul stated his point in writing the book of Romans is to produce faithful obedience from the church to the Lord, that's verse five. It's the same thing in 16 and 17, from faith, once you are saved, once you have saving faith in Christ for faith, for living a life of faithful obedience. That's why the righteous shall live by faith. So that's Paul's thesis to promote faithful obedience to the Lord and the church. And then the rest of chapter one through the end of chapter five, Paul is arguing about how this faithful obedience is not the same as legal works. It's not the same thing as fulfilling the law or doing your duty. It's a joyous, faithful obedience to the Lord out of love for him. And when we strive to live in love for God, now in chapter six through the end of chapter eight, we get the battle of the spirit versus the flesh. We want to do good. We want to follow the Lord. We want to live by the Spirit. But there is the flesh, the sinful desires, the earthly nature within us that is waging war and trying to push against the Spirit. And so we talked about how we are called to live by the Spirit, not by flesh, to follow the Spirit, to put our flesh to death. And that's a battle. It's a war that's waging. And so what do we do? How do we fight this? Well, first we start by trusting the sovereignty of God, that's chapters nine through the end of chapter 11. In this battle, in this life, all of it is under the umbrella of God is in control. He is Lord and sovereign. Then in chapters 12 through the end of 14, he gets into the specific practicals, "Here's what you do. Here's how you live Christians. Here are the marks of a Christian. What to do as a church." Then he sums it all up, kind of saying, "This is how we're able to actually do it." In 15:1-21, he says, "It's all because of the hope we have in Christ." That everything Paul has written about in the Book of Romans, we need to focus on Christ and have hope that comes from him alone. To be able to live practically for God, to be able to recognize God's sovereignty in difficult times, to be able to fight in the Spirit and reject the flesh, to live in faithful obedience, not as one completing the law, it all requires hope in Christ. And then last week we see how Paul is sort of completing his themes. We talked about his longing, his greeting to many brothers and sisters in the church. Last week we talked about that. And so this week we're seeing Paul's conclusion, and I'm summarizing all of what he has said before, because I want us to be looking at the text we'll read today and seeing where is Paul making connections to these themes? Where is he drawing from these points to try and bring it all about to the practical life of the church today? So with that summary, let's pray over the reading and preaching of God's word. Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you that we have the opportunity to gather here today to praise and worship and honor your name. We thank you that you give us your word, your scriptures to challenge us, to strengthen us, to provoke in us a desire for faithful obedience to you. We thank you for the gift that is our ability to serve and live for you. In this time, use your word, use your scriptures to challenge us, where we need to be challenge, to strengthen us, where we need to be strengthened, and encourage us ultimately to live lives that glorify your name. In Jesus' name, amen. Alrighty. So with that, we actually are not going to have three points today, because I told you what I'm going to tell you, and I've told you that Paul's already told us it. So now I'm just going to go to the third point and tell you what he's been telling you. But what we're going to do is we'll read the text and then I'll go through verse by verse just to point out, this is the theme that Paul is arguing and drawing from. So our text today is Romans 16:17-27 with you'll read with me, you can follow along in your bibles or on the screens behind me. It says this, "I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive. For your obedience is known to all, so that I rejoice over you, but I want you to be wise as to what is good and innocent as to what is evil. The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Timothy, my fellow worker, greets you; so do Lucius and Jason and Sosipater, my kinsman. I Tertius, who wrote this letter, greet you in the Lord. Gaius, who is host to me and to the whole church, greets you. Erastus, the city treasurer, and our brother Quartus, greet you. Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith, to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen." Alrighty, so we will start in verse 17, at the beginning of this text. And what Paul is focusing on is the practicalities of the Christian life. What we talked a lot about in these last few chapters, that was sort of the ending of Paul's argument, is how to live as a Christian. And Paul's argument for the practical life of a Christian, he summarizes with two points. First, focus on the gospel, and second, focus on unity within the church. That is the summary of all the things that Paul has written in terms of the practical life of a Christian. And here in verse 17, he says, "I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them." And so he's drawing on the text from Romans 14:13. His point that he made there is says this, "Therefore let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother." If you remember back in chapter 14, Paul's argument of not passing judgment was specifically, "If someone bears the name of Christ, if they are a Christian, they're in Christ. They are saved. It is not your ability to save them or not save them, to condemn them for what they say or do. God alone saves. So do not pass judgment on them, condemning them. And also rather than condemning them, now, decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of the brother." So focus on the gospel. If they are saved, that is the power of God, that is their identity through Christ, and do not put up any hindrances. Now, the hindrance that Paul was talking about specifically in chapter 14 was meat offered to idols, right? Some Christians said, "We can't eat meat offered to idols, lest anyone think I'm dare worshiping that idol?" Then other Christians were like, "Idols aren't real. We could eat whatever we want." And there was division within churches because of this issue. And Paul's saying, "No, no, we don't have any divisions. We seek, we focus on unity within the church based on the gospel. If it is in the gospel, that is what we focus on." What's interesting, and a brother in the church pointed out to me this week that it ends by saying, "Avoid people who causes division." Seems like it's causing division. Well, two things that we need to recognize here is that, first, Paul is calling for the flip of what he was saying before. Before he said, "Seek unity and don't create division yourselves." Now, "Avoid those who do cause division and reject the gospel." Well, what is this about? It's first, we as Christians are called ourselves, specifically, individually but also corporately as a body to seek this, to seek unity, to pursue unity in practicality and to live it out. And to focus on the gospel ourselves, to hold the gospel of Jesus Christ in utmost authority over our lives. And when we do that for ourselves, we want to protect it. We want to protect that sanctity. We don't want anything to come in to this body and affect that belief. So we do need to protect the gospel of Christ. Now, are we causing divisions by doing that? No, we aren't. Why? Because Paul is clear, "Those that are causing these divisions are not part of the body to begin with." This is verse 18, "For such persons," those causing divisions, "do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive." See, we cannot serve the Lord and our own appetites. You can't do both. It's one or the other. And this is Paul's argument from chapter six through eight of the Spirit versus the flesh. You can't serve two masters. This is from Romans 8:5-8, it says, "For those who live according to their flesh, set their minds on things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God." And so what Paul is talking about is not division within the church. It's about recognizing that if you are causing division, you are in sin, and you cannot please both your own satisfactions, your own appetites, it's literally your stomach, your hungers, your earthly desires, your flesh and the Lord. And so when we see those that are serving their own desires solely, they are not serving the Lord, we should recognize that, as not what Christ is about and not what Christ is like. And there's always grace and forgiveness and repentance. So if you see somebody who is causing divisions within the church, call them to repentance, and forgive them if they do. If you are causing divisions within the church, call you to repent, and there will be forgiveness, and you will be in the Lord. And we can put aside the desires of our flesh to live in the Spirit. And again, it says that, "Those who set their mind on the Spirit, it brings life and peace." Well, what is the gospel? The gospel is the story of life. The life that we can have eternal life through the working of Christ. And peace is the unity that we seek in this church, but also the peace of our hearts and mind, because of the gospel of Christ. So if you're here today and you're not a Christian, I want to tell you, there are two sides of this, Spirit and the flesh, serving Christ and serving yourself. Ultimately, we'll see that as serving the kingdom of Satan. But I urge of you to run to Christ, pray to Him, seek Him, go to Him, because He desires relationship with you. He died on the cross. He left everything in heaven above to come and save you from your sins, if you have faith and trust in Him. If you will say, "Lord Jesus, I submit my life to you. You are the only one who can save me and bring me into the Spirit, and save me from this sinful flesh of mine." And Paul then goes on talking to the church in Rome, recognizing that they have been saved and they are sanctified, and he knows that by their obedience. Actually before I get to that, quick point, at the end of verse 18, it talks about that, "Those who do not serve the Christ but serve their own appetites, do so by smooth talk and flattery." I like the word flattery. Well, I don't like the word flattery, but I like that it's here. When I think about flattery, what I think about is people telling me I look good when I don't. Like, "Oh, Tyler, you smell great. Is that new cologne?" It's like, I've just been running up and down stairs. I've been sweating. I know I smell terrible. That's not good. That's not true. That's flattery. But that's what flattery is emphasizing here is praise that is not true. So we just sang a song before the service about how God is worthy of praise. That's actually the same word as flattery here. But the difference is, yeah, God is worthy of praise. God is holy. He is worthy of glory. He is almighty. So it's not flattery, it's praise. Now, when someone gives us praise, and we know it's not true, that's flattery. I don't know about you, but my least favorite compliment to ever receive is, "You're such a good person." Jesus is very clear, there is none good but one and that is the Lord God. And so when I hear that, all that goes through my mind is, "You have no idea how much of a sinner I am. You have no idea how wicked I am that you say I'm good." What Paul is saying here is, "Watch out for people who tell you what you want to hear. Watch out for people who tell you how great you are and amazing you are, when it's not true." You see, this was what was causing division in so many churches in the first century, and throughout all of history, is that people start to say, "You know what? I'm going to tell people what they want to hear. I'm going to tell them how awesome and great they are, and then they'll follow me." But, Paul's saying, "No, follow those not who speak well, not who have smooth talk, but those who live lives of faithful obedience." Don't listen to what I'm saying or any other preacher at Mosaic says, because we are eloquent, check us. Are we faithfully following the Lord? And by God's grace we strive to, we desire to. And anyone who is faithfully obedient to the Lord, they are the ones to follow, regardless of how well they speak, regardless of how charismatic they are, are they bearing fruit of faithfulness to the Lord? Follow them and praise them, because then it's true. Praise God that you are able to live a life of faithful obedience and bestow that honor upon such people. And that's what Paul does here, right? In verse 19, he says, "For your obedience is known to all, so that I rejoice over you, but I want you to be wise as to what is good and innocent as to what is evil." Paul rejoices, he brings praise over the church in Rome, because he knows that they have been obedient. He's also clarifying, he's like, "I'm not saying these things about you. You haven't been the ones causing division. You aren't the ones with smooth talk and flattery. I'm thankful and praising God for you because of your obedience." And what Paul is drawing on is that faithful works, faithful obedience is not the same thing as fulfilling of the law. And where do we see that clearly is the rejoicing that Paul gives for their obedience. Have you ever rejoiced because someone followed the law? That's like, you're supposed to follow the law, just do it like we don't rejoice and celebrate the fact. Guys, I can tell you this past week I did not murder anyone. Great. Yeah, exactly. That proves my point. No one rejoices over me doing what the law says I'm supposed to do. You're like, "No, duh, just do what you're supposed to do." But what we rejoice over is when people do things that they're not supposed to do, that they are not supposed to be able to do. And this is what Paul argues in Romans chapter four and in chapter five, kind of together, that whole argument he brings it about. But in 4:1-5, Paul says this, "What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him, who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness." See, when we work, we get wages, right? You have a job, you get paid. So when you receive wages for the work you do, that's just what you're supposed to get. When you get a gift, that is a cause for rejoice and because you know don't deserve it. And what this text is saying, is that Abraham was counted as righteous, was counting as faithful before the Lord because of his faith. He was counted as doing good things, as fulfilling the law, because of his faith, not because of the works he did. And so he is in a position of saved by grace through faith. And anyone who bears the name of Christ is in the same. We are in a position, a state of faith by grace, of grace by faith, I should say. Well, so then what do we do from that position? This was Paul's argument in his thesis that from faith, for faith, you are in faith. From that faith, now you go in faith, you do faith, you live in faith. And this is Romans 5:2-5, "Through him," through Christ, "we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand," this is the state we are in because of faith, "and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God." Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." We're in a position of faith, now, we live in faith. We live in a way that allows us to endure suffering, to build character, to produce hope in us. Why? Because of the faithful obedience to God that we are able to live in because of the state of grace through faith that we are in. And we rejoice over it, right? He says twice that, "We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God, but we also rejoice in our sufferings." There is a rejoicing, and that's Paul's point here. He says, "I rejoice over your obedience," because when we see the obedience in our lives, when we see the obedience in other faithful Christians lives, we look at them and what we see is not them doing good things. What we look at is we see that God has saved them and has allowed them to live a life that actually brings honor and glory to God. Praise God. That's not possible for any of us to do unless it's a gift of God. So when we see faithful obedience, we should rejoice, we should celebrate it, not because it's good work, but because it's a gift from God. And then he says this little phrase, "Be wise as to what is good and innocent as to what is evil." The word innocent literally means unmixed, untainted. What he's talking about is purity. Be wise as to what is good without any evil mixed in. Okay, well, and what is wisdom? My working definition that I don't know where I got it from, but I've heard for many years and I love about wisdom is knowledge applied. It's not just knowing what is good, but actually living in it and applying it to day-to-day life. I can see what God says is good and apply it to my day-to-day situations. So what Paul is calling for us to do is to strive for perfection. Oh, that's a hard thing to do, right? Now, none of us are perfect, none of us achieve it. But again, it is a gift from God in the first place that we could do anything good. And so if that is true, then we trust God and we seek him, and he will enable us to remove the evil within our hearts, within our lives. And so Christians, we are called to examine ourselves. We are called to look at our lives and say, "Where is their sin? Where is there evil? Where is there something within my heart and my life that I am not submitting to the Lord?" And we're called to cut it out. We're called to remove it. We're called to submit it fully to the Lord and be sanctified, so that we are unmixed, we're innocent to evil. Now, Paul transitions very easily to verse 20, which is all about the sovereignty of God in this. If we want to strive for perfection, if we want to grow in sanctification, we need God to be in control of it. That's verse 20, where Paul says this, "The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you." So Paul's encouragement for us as we're striving to be faithfully obedient, to do what is good and remove evil, is that God will crush Satan under our feet. This is my favorite verse in this text. I love this verse, it's good pre-workout. You should just read it before you lift. But it's really interesting, because it's God doing the crushing. It says, "God will crush you." Sorry, "God will soon crush Satan." Sorry, slip of the talk. No, God's not going to crush you, by god's grace, if you're in Christ, so repent and believe. God will soon crush Satan. But it's under our feet, not under His feet, under our feet, but God is the one doing the crushing. What is going on here? If you think back and remember to the story of creation and the fall of Adam and Eve, the very first prophecy of the Messiah is in Genesis 3, and it's about how Jesus, the Messiah, will crush the serpent's head, will crush him with His foot. And in Hebrews 2, we see that Jesus is that Messiah who has done this. In Hebrews 2:14, it says this, "Since therefore the children's share in flesh and blood, he himself," Jesus, "likewise, partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil." What it's saying is that we are flesh and blood, we are people, and Jesus Christ, likewise, took on flesh. This is what we celebrated at Christmas. He became like us. He took on flesh. Why? So that through his death, his death on the cross, he might destroy the one who has the power of death. It is Satan. That word destroy and crush that it's the same idea. It's complete, utter destruction, completely destroys. It's the idea of a fine China vase that you just take and throw and smash on the ground. It's just shattered into millions and billions of pieces. And you could never put it back together the way it was before. It's completely destroyed. It's no longer what it was. Jesus did that. Jesus defeated Satan in that complete total way from his death and resurrection on the cross, because he proved that he has power over Satan, sin, and death. And just like Christ's righteousness is applied to us through faith, so is this applied to us. This actually comes from the book of Luke. In Luke 10, Jesus sends out 72 disciples and tells them, "Go preach the gospel to anyone who will listen." And those 72 come back, and this is what it says in Luke 10:17, The 72 returned with joy saying, "Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!" And he said to them, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy and nothing shall hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven." See, God is in control of all things. Romans tells us that all things are from Him, through Him, and to Him. He is in control of all. And what He has ordained from the beginning is that Christ will defeat Satan. That the kingdom of God will reign and power and might and defeat and crush and utterly destroy the kingdom of Satan. And by God's sovereign grace, we are called to partake in that mission. We are called to partake in the treading of the kingdom of Satan underfoot. And how do we do that? Not by rejoicing in it, not by celebrating and getting power hungry and being like, "This is great. We can do all this." No, but we rejoice that our rejoice that our names are written in heaven. We rejoice in the salvation that comes from Christ alone. And like those 72 that were sent out, the great commission calls us to be sent out, to go and preach the gospel to all nations, to all who have not heard. Why? Because it's good, it's true, because we desire for people to be saved? Yes, and this is how God ordained us to continually tread, excuse me, continually tread the kingdom of Satan underfoot. We recognize that it is the kingdom of God versus the kingdom of Satan. And so when we see places where God is not at, where the world is not in submission to the Lord, where kingdom of Satan is ruling, we march into those areas and boldly, faithfully proclaim the gospel to anyone and everyone who will listen. And we usher in the kingdom of God in places where it is not, because we recognize kingdom of Satan you have no power, you have been defeated from Christ. And as we look forward to the day that that is fully realized, at the second coming of Christ, we still are faithful in ushering the kingdom of God here and now. We want to trust in the sovereignty of God. But specifically what Paul is calling us to do that in is the preaching and proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of those who hear. So in everything in life, trust in the sovereignty of God, but especially in the preaching of the gospel. And then in verses 21 through 23, Paul gets into a little bit more of greetings saying hello to more people. If you're here last week what we talked about was how the word greeting is Paul welcoming as if into their own home. We talked about how Paul genuinely loved and cared for other Christians, and he can't help but greet more people and send more greetings from other people, because they actually love and care for each other. So if you want more information on that, listen to last week sermon where we talk about how Christians, we are called to love each other here in this room, but every single person who bears the name of Christ, we are called to love and care for. But in verses 21 through 23, Paul says this, "Timothy, my fellow worker, greets you; so do Lucius and Jason and Sosipater, my kinsman. I Tertius, who wrote this letter, greet you in the Lord. Gaius, who is host to me and to the whole church greets you. Erastus, the city treasurer, and our brother Quartus, greets you." So rather than greeting people who are at Rome, he's sending greetings from people that are with him, encouraging them like, "Church in Rome, there are people who love and care about you here too." And this is just like my personal head cannon. This is not certain, so don't... it's not certain, but Tertius and Quartus, it says, "Our brother Quartus," I believe they're physical, literal brothers. But anyway, here's why Tertius means third and Quartus means fourth. So great creativity, parents, they named their kids first, second, third, fourth. And praise God, I haven't had any teenagers roll through. "Oh, you're the first one. What's your name? First, oh, second, third..." Thank you parents for creativity in naming your kids. And if you name is first, second, third, fourth, I'm sorry, but the Lord still loves you, and we will all receive a new name in heaven anyway, so it's okay. No, anyway, sorry. So he is just continually pointing out his themes that he is going through. He has his greetings, his longing to be with the people in Rome. And then in verses 25 through 27, the largest part of his conclusion, his summary, he focuses on the most important thing. The most important thing for how all of this applies to us today is that we need to hope in Christ alone. So verses 25 to 27, he says this, "Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel in the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith, to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen." Starts by saying, "Now to him who is able to strengthen you..." Well, who is that? That is God. That is Christ. He is the one who is able to strengthen us. So when we're looking to live in faithful obedience, when we're looking for living in life in the Spirit and to follow all the practical wisdom and guidance that the scriptures give us, we first need to recognize that the strength we need to do this comes from Christ alone. Comes from the hope that we can have that He is with us, He is strengthening us, He is encouraging us, He is there. Then he says, "According to my gospel." Paul, it's not your gospel, it's the gospel. Don't hold it for yourself. No, this is incredible, because what Paul is saying is he really truly believes the gospel applies to everything about him. He has internalized the gospel, recognizes the reality of the power it has over who he is. It's not just the gospel, it's not just the good news, it's his good news, because it's the only way that he can be saved. It's the only way that he can have hope in Christ. It's the only way he can have hope in this life. So Christians, do we actually think the gospel applies to every single area of our life? Do we look at parts of our lives, what we think, what we say, what we do, and say, "Is this following the gospel? How does the gospel transform this?" And do we actually have pride in this? Paul is bold enough and proud enough to say, it is his gospel to declare to everyone that it is his. He takes ownership of it. It's not just something he thinks about or likes or prefers. It is his gospel. It's part of his identity. It is his identity. Christians, are we bold enough to proclaim to those around us, "It's our gospel too"? We're not ashamed of the gospel, right? That was his thesis in verse 16, chapter one. I'm not ashamed of the gospel, we're not ashamed of it, because it's our gospel. It's the only thing that saves us, as we talked about earlier. It's the only thing that brings life and peace in this world and in the one to come. Then he says, "In the preaching of Jesus Christ," I love this too because that's part of why I'm up here. That's part of why every preacher does what they do is we want you guys, we want all of us, myself included, to focus on Christ. To focus on Christ, so that you are strengthened, you have hope in Him, so that way we can live lives of faithful obedience. I'm not up here just to talk about things that were written a long time ago. I'm not up here just to say whatever I want to. I'm up here so that we can all, as a church, as a body be unified and strengthened and encouraged. So that when we walk out those doors, we don't just say, "That was nice. I had a good time." No, that we walk out these doors saying, "I am ready. I am prepared. I am strengthened to be able to live this day, this week, this life in honor of God, to bring glory and praise to His name." And in this text, Paul can't help but focus on the sovereignty of God still, right? That's the next part. "According to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations..." Paul is saying, "This salvation through Christ alone has been God's plan, his sovereign plan for all of human history. And what gives us the strength to go and live lives of faith... we need His help in living lives of faithful obedience." And it's his command. I love that, too, by God's command. God's command is do not fail. He is true. He keeps his word. He is honorable, and it is His command that all nations will hear the gospel. And so when we see that we take encouragement, we take hope in Christ, because Christ coming, His death and resurrection, His life here on earth is proof of God's sovereignty. It is validating to us that when we look at Christ, when we see the hope we have in Christ, yeah, God's sovereignty is real. It's not just in theological idea. It's not just something we think about, but it is proven true through the life of Christ. And He can change all nations by it, by this reality, by his sovereignty. And within this conclusion, he just slips in his thesis one more time, just to make sure we all understood and we all heard it. Verse 26, "But has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings and has made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God..." Why? "To bring about the obedience of faith, to the only wise God be glory forever more through Jesus Christ! Amen." The obedience of faith is a gift from God that we even get to live at all, let alone live a life that brings honor and glory to His name. And so we should live lives of obedience, faithful obedience to the Lord, joyfully, trusting in his sovereignty, focusing on the hope we have in Christ. And as it says in verse 27, "All for the glory of God." That is the way we bring the greatest glory to God's name by living lives that honor Him, by living lives that are faithfully obedient to His word. And that when others see it, they recognize it as God in us, and that we are then able to proclaim the gospel to all who witness and see. So I told you what I was going to tell you, talked about what Paul has already told us. I just told you what I've been telling you. We are called to live lives of faithful obedience to the Lord. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, you are good. We thank you that we get to honor and glorify your name. We thank you that we get to live in obedience to you. We thank you for that gift. Give us hearts that are able to recognize where sin is in us and to run to you, to repent of it to you, and remove it from our hearts, remove it from our lives. Lord, give us hearts that truly desire to see your kingdom come here on earth, to live faithfully marching forward for your kingdom. And give us hearts that no matter what circumstances come our way, are focused on Christ, are focused on the hope that you alone provide, and will strengthen us to be able to get through all of life's situations. We thank you and we praise you. In Jesus' name, amen.

Greetings from Paul

January 8, 2023 • Tyler Burns • Romans 15:23—16:16

Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches or donate to this ministry, please visit http://mosaicboston.com So we will be in Romans 15:22 through chapter 16:16. So we got a lot. We're going through a lot real fast today. There's a lot of topics covered here. So instead of reading the whole thing and then going into it, we'll read it in chunks as we go along. And I want us to focus on the major theme of Paul's argument here in Romans. And in this section, the idea that he is addressing is essentially how do we relate to one another? How do we interact with each other as Christians in real life, when sometimes things aren't always going as planned and aren't what you expect them to be? What should our mentality be towards one another? So with that, will you pray with me over the preaching of God's word. Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you that you allow us to be here together today to worship and bring honor and glory to your name. Lord, we thank you that you are a good and loving God and we ask that you give us love for one another in the same way that you love your church. Help us to truly seek the wellbeing and welfare of our brothers and sisters in Christ, to desire good for all your people. First and foremost, for those in your local church here that you have placed us in, but also for those who bear the name of Christ around the world. Help us to love and care for one another, all for the glory of your name. In Jesus' name. Amen. Alrighty. So we will still be spending our time in three points here today. The first point is be encouraged by other Christians. Secondly, pray for other Christians. And third, praise God for other Christians. So first, be encouraged by other Christians. And this is in verses 22 through 29 of chapter 15 where it says this, "This is the reason why I've so often been hindered from coming to you. But now since I no longer have any room for work in these regions, and since I have longed for many years to come to you, I hope to see you in passing as I go to Spain and to be helped on my journey there by you, once I have enjoyed your company for a while. At present, however, I'm going to Jerusalem, bringing aid to the saints for Macedonia and Achaea have been pleased to make some contribution for the poor among the saints at Jerusalem. For they were pleased to do it and indeed they owe it to them, for if the Gentiles have come to share in their spiritual blessings, they ought also to be of service to them in material blessings. When therefore I have completed this and have delivered to them what has been collected I will leave for Spain by way of you. I know that when I come to you, I will come in the fullness of the blessing of Christ." We'll pause there for now. And so the first point, be encouraged by other Christians. And Paul is talking about his desire, his wants to visit this church in Rome, a church he has never met before, a church that he had no part in planting, it was not planted by him. So he just wanted to go and be encouraged by a faithful church somewhere in the world, because they were faithful, they were worshiping God and he wanted that to be an encouragement to his soul. But he says in the beginning, "This is the reason I have been hindered." Well, what is the reason? That goes back to chapter 15, verse 20. He says, "I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named." So Paul is saying, "I really want to spend time in fellowship, be encouraged by this other church somewhere in the world, but God has placed a call on my life and I need to fulfill that call before I can go and experience that." So one thing that we should take note of here is we've been spending a lot of time talking about our calling, like that God has placed a calling on every single one of our lives, that God has placed us in specific cities, specific parts of the world, but also specific jobs, occupations, roles, and we are called to be faithful to the Lord in that calling wherever we are. And we need to understand that that calling takes precedent in our lives. We talked last week about fully submitting everything in our lives to God, to his will, to his desires. And that for Paul took precedent even more than something that is good, fellowshipping with other believers. Now, fellowshipping with other believers is good and something to be desired and we should want to do that, but it's not more important than the mission. And why I point this out is to say Paul is talking about another church. He is not talking about fellowship in the local church that he is at. So what I bring up to say is that we are still called to fellowship with one another, but oftentimes we might see other churches doing great and glorious things for the Kingdom of God and praise God for those churches, and we should want and desire to be with them and just simply be encouraged by the work that they are doing that is good, and it's something we should desire and do. But it shouldn't be in place of our faithfulness to the ministry that God has placed on our lives. Let us start by being faithful in service to the Lord here in our local church, the place where he has placed us, and as we are faithful here it grows the opportunity for more encouragement from other churches because we get to say, "Hey, I've been faithful. I need encouragement. I need strength and restoration. I can go to another faithful church and be encouraged by them." But we cannot neglect the call that God has placed on our lives wherever that may be. And secondly, I want to point out that this is Paul's view of rest. Paul views rest as fellowship with other believers. This is interesting. Is that how we view of rest? I think oftentimes we idolize rest to the point of saying, "I just need to be alone and nobody talk to me and then I'll be better." It's good, spend time alone. Every person needs some time alone with the Lord and to get rest. Sleep. Sleep is important. That is all good. I'm not trying to say anything against those things, but intrinsic to rest is fellowship with one another, with believers. This is part of the idea of Sabbathing, right? Sabbathing we talk about as a day of rest. But Sabbath is not a day to be alone by yourself and not talk to anybody. Sabbath is a time to be in fellowship with other believers. Alistair Begg is a preacher I believe in the Cleveland area who I love and respect and he has a sermon series on Sabbathing, I highly recommend it. It's a two-part series, but it completely changed the way I view Sabbathing and I'm sure it will for you. But one of the things Alistair says about it, I want you to read for us, he says this, "Loved ones, I've got to say something. Whenever our experience of worship is so devalued and our notion of the Lord's Day is so disintegrated so as to conceive of it in such a way that we believe that the religious exercises are supposed to get over and done with as fast as they possibly can so that we may get on with the day, then we stand condemned before the fourth commandment." This is keep the Sabbath, "We ought actually to be getting down on our knees and thanking God for the privilege of being brought under the orb of influence of a church that has determined on the basis of holy scripture that we will give every opportunity on the Lord's day for all the things that the Lord's day was intended to mean, for worship, for prayer, for study, for fellowship, for holy contemplation. And the fact that it does not appeal to us says more about the low level of our spiritual appetites than it does about anything else." Pretty harsh words. But it is meant to be an encouragement to us to say let's actually love and enjoy and praise God for the Sabbath. Let's honestly praise God for the opportunity that we get to meet in a church together and be encouraged by one another, that we have that power in each other's lives to strengthen and encourage and worship God together. And this is how much Paul loves God's people that he's like, "I'm working all the time, I'm planting churches." He's doing everything he can, "I want to go somewhere else. I want to go to Spain and plant churches. So for my rest and energy to plant another church, I'm just going to go and hang out in another faithful church. I'm just going to be there for a while. Be encouraged, be strengthened. Spend time together, be in each other's homes." That's what Paul takes encouragement from. So dear Christians, do we love to be with each other? Do we like to spend time together? Do we encourage each other when we are together? Are we building each other up for the sake of the mission that God has called each and every one of us too for the spread of the gospel? And we are also called not to think just about ourselves in the local church. Again, Paul is writing to other Christians that he has never met to the church in Rome, and he connects them with other churches that he has planted. This is in verses 26 and 27. He says, "For Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to make some contribution for the poor among the saints at Jerusalem. For they were pleased to do it and indeed they owe it to them, for if the Gentiles have come to share in their spiritual blessings, they ought also to be of service to them in material blessings." So Paul recognizes that the church in Jerusalem was a spiritual blessing to all the other churches. What does that mean? Well, the gospel started, Christ came and was raised and the first church was in Jerusalem that worshiped him. And from there it went across the world. And so Paul recognized the need of the gospel to spread and the influence of the church in Jerusalem to have influence on other churches, and then in response, those churches should still care for the church in Jerusalem. So there's two specific ways that Paul brings this up. But first is we are called to care for those Christians who have had an influence on our spiritual health and wellbeing and our growth in life. Praise God for Faith Baptist Church in Hamilton, New Jersey, the church I grew up in, because they played an integral part in my faith as a Christian. And without them I don't know if I would be a Christian, I do because God is sovereign and he's in control of all things and he chose me to be safe in his child, so I am. And he would work his will through all things, but he chose to use that church. And I praise God for that and I want to honor them and be encouraged by the work that they're doing. And for many of us, we have home churches, we have places where we had heard the gospel for the first time and where we came to faith and we are called to honor them, we are called to remember them, be encouraged by them and encourage them in their times of need. For many people here Mosaic may be that church, Mosaic may be the church where you came to faith, it was instrumental in your growth. It is instrumental even to this day in my growth as a Christian. And I praise God for this church. And Paul says that those churches who are in need, like the church in Jerusalem, we are called to help. The churches in Galatia only existed because of the work of the church in Jerusalem. So they owed it to them, he said, to help and to give. It was also their pleasure, right? It's that balance of they were pleased to give aid and to help the church in Jerusalem in their time of need, but they did owe it. It was their responsibility they should have, and in the same way if we see those that have been instrumental in our faith, in our salvation and our growth and walk with Christ, we should joyfully seek to help them. And we kind of owe it to them, because they have brought us to this place and our relationship with Christ. And then secondly, he talks specifically about the poor in Jerusalem. And so before I get to the poor in Jerusalem, he points out that the church is giving to help the contribution of the poor in Jerusalem are Macedonia and Achaia. Well if you know anything about Macedonia, what the church in Macedonia is famous for as being poor. In Second Corinthians, Paul talks about the church in Macedonia as saying, "They're the ones that have suffered and endured great suffering and endured through poverty." And so they are known for being poor, yet they are the ones giving to the poor in Jerusalem. Well, their portion that they save and keep it for themselves so that they can be prosperous and take it, what's important to know is that in Second Corinthians Paul says that they have endured through that poverty. Not that they aren't poor anymore, but that they have proven faithful even in poverty, that they have proven to be able to care for one another, to provide for each other's needs even in their own poverty. So that way they could, with whatever they had left, give to those in need. So what does that mean for us. Christians do we care for those in need in our church first? Do we see people in this body who are in need, physical, financial needs, it's giving monetary value to those who are poor? Do we see brothers and sisters and help them? And the easiest way for this to start is our community groups, if you see somebody in your group who you know is in need, do we help them? Do we actually take steps to help. By God's grace a few years ago, I've been in a couple different community groups, but in one of the groups I was in a member was not able to pay for rent, was unable to afford rent, and another member of the group was financially blessed in that season and offered to pay for the rent of that person for a few months and was like, "I don't want them to know I'm going to do it, anonymously and give it to them." And I'm saying this because it's not me, I'm not involved in any of this. So this is I'm praising God for the work that he has done through other people. But they genuinely cared and loved each other, and they saw somebody in their group in need and they provided. We as Christians, as brothers and sisters in Christ need to be prepared to do the same, to care for one another practically in reality, even if it costs money, even if it's financial, even if it's time, even if it's relational, no matter what it is, we need to love each other enough to actually care for each other practically. And when you are able to do that, then your area of influence of generosity begins to grow, right? If you're able to provide for one another and care for each other in your group, maybe you get to the point where you say, "Hey, there's no one in our community group that has any needs." Praise God if that's your group, and if that's the case, maybe you should talk to other community group leaders and be like, "Hey, is there anyone in need? We have a wealth, we have an abundance within our group. Can we help you? Is there anyone in need?" And help each other. And then when we as a church, when we as Mosaic are helping each other, genuinely, always providing for each other's needs, supporting and encouraging each other when we need it, then God gives us that margin, that blessing to be able to give even more generously, regardless of the amount of our finances. That's never the point for Paul. The point is that they were faithful regardless of their finances. The church in Macedonia was faithful in the little that they had, that God blessed them with the ability to bless others. So Christians, let's strive to be a church that is faithful with what we have to provide for each other, care for each other, so that way we can become a greater blessing to those around the world. To the other churches in the city, to other churches that love the Lord and are in need. We want to be able to care for each other. And so you notice that the point is be encouraged by other Christians, but I'm talking a lot about how we can encourage other Christians. It's because to say be encouraged and encourage other Christians was too long of a point, it didn't really fit on the slide, but it's easy to say be encouraged. That's very passive. And how that happens is we have to encourage each other and then we will be encouraged by others when we are all living out this call. But point number two is pray for other Christians. This is in chapter 15, verses 30 through 33. It says this, "I appeal to you brothers by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the spirit to strive together with me in your prayers to God on my behalf, that I may be delivered from the unbelievers in Judea and that my service for Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints, so that by God's will I may come to you with joy and be refreshed in your company. May the God of peace be with you all. Amen." So Paul is begging, or is asking, appealing to this church in Rome and saying, "Please pray for me." Saying, "I am trying to do what God has called me to do. Please pray for me." He needed their help. He was asking specifically for prayer to be delivered from the unbelievers in Judea who sought his arrest, who wanted him to be arrested for preaching the gospel. And so he wanted deliverance from them so he could be faithful in delivering the gift to the church in Jerusalem and be faithful in proclaiming the gospel around the world, specifically in Spain. And so what we need to understand is that when we are apart physically from each other and from other believers, what we are primarily called to is prayer. This is how we wage war, spiritual warfare, with brothers and sisters around the world when we are not able to physically be present with them. I know a lot of us have friends and family who are not from this area. Maybe we are not from this area, we're a transplant, and so we want to care and protect our friends and family back home, but we're not there. How can we do that? First and foremost, we pray. We pray hard. John Piper says, "You cannot know what prayer is for until you know that life is war." And so when we view that as the reality, we will be praying for each other and we will be praying for those we love and care about. But it's also for just everybody who is calling and who is faithfully following the call of Christ in their life, who bears the name of Christian. We need to be praying for Christ's church universal, but for the people especially that we know are in need. And Paul's asking for the church that doesn't know him to be doing this. So it's not just our best friends that we pray for, but it's when we hear of a brother or sister in Christ that's in need we pray, we seek their wellbeing, we do what we can to help. But what's really, I find interesting, I find really fun, I guess, fun may not be the right word but fun about this text is that Paul is asking for a deliverance and he was not delivered. If you know the story of Paul, he went to Jerusalem, delivered the gift, and he was arrested there. And it was actually because of his arrest that he appealed as a Roman citizen to go to Rome, and so Paul's desire, the reason he was asking for the church in Rome to pray for him is so that first he can go and be encouraged by the church in Rome, then he could go and preach the gospel where it had not yet been named, in Spain. Well God didn't answer the prayer the way he wanted him to, but God's plans are bigger than our plans and God's thoughts are bigger than our thoughts. So God used Paul's imprisonment actually to bring him to Rome, that was the way through which Paul was able to arrive and land in Rome. And not only that, we are told in history that the church in Rome heard of Paul's arrival when his ship landed and the group of Roman soldiers, was escorting him to the city that they walked 30 to 40 miles south of Rome to meet him, to greet with him, to celebrate his arrival and worship and praise God together 30 and 40 mile walk back to Rome. All in the witness of the Roman guards who are keeping him imprisoned. Paul wanted to be encouraged by the church in Rome, he was encouraged by the church in Rome, just not how he had planned or expected. And once he was in Rome, he was under house arrest where he was able to have as many visitors as he wanted coming and going. And so the church in Rome were primarily the ones visiting him and caring for him while he was in prison. The second thing Paul wanted to do was to go to Spain to preach the gospel where it had not been named. Sorry, Spain didn't get to hear Paul preach, but the gospel still has reached Spain. We're very thankful and praise God that the gospel reached Spain. We love Spain. But what happened while Paul was in prison at Rome? He wrote Ephesians, he wrote Philippians, he wrote Colossians, he wrote the books to Timothy. You see, Paul's vision for the spread of the gospel was Spain, God's vision for the spread of the gospel was these books that we hold in our sacred scriptures to this day that have been used around the world and for generations to proclaim the gospel to those who have not heard it and had not yet known it. So when we pray for Christians, those in need, those who need our help either in our local church or the church abroad, we need to recognize prayer does have power to change things. Prayer is important. It is how we wage war against the kingdom of Satan and for the Kingdom of God. And while we are persistent in our prayer, we trust the sovereignty of God. We trust that God is in control of all things and that his plans are greater than our plans and that even when we want things to go a certain way and the answer to our prayers may seem no in that moment, God is still working for good. He's still working for the spread and glory of his Kingdom and of the gospel. And lastly, I want to point out verse 33 is prayer language in and of itself. In verse 33, Paul says, "May the God of peace be with you all. Amen." Paul is praying for the church as he is asking them to pray for him. This is our relationship, we need to be praying for each other. And lastly, in this point, sorry, I say lastly and people think it's the end, it's not. Lastly in this point. Don't be that guy that says, "Praying for you." And doesn't actually pray. We all know we all have been there. We all understand. But don't be that guy. If prayer truly is how we wage war against the kingdom of Satan to say, "I'll pray for you." Is a promise to go out into the battlefield with somebody and then to not pray is to not go, and to leave them alone. So if you tell somebody, "I'm going to pray for you, pray for them." Do it, write, make notes, write calendar alarms, whatever you need to do to remember, do it. And that should also remind you to when you say it in the first place, to actually mean it, to be going in with the heart of, "I'm going to pray for you." And not a default response of, "They're saying something that's too much for me to handle. So I'll just say this to shut them up, I'm praying for you." No, no, no. We need to really mean it and truly pray for each other. And lastly, point three, we are called to praise God for other Christians. This is chapter 16 verses one through 16. And there are a ton of names in here. I promise I'm going to butcher half of them. I'm sorry. But I'm going to read through it, because Paul wanted to honor these people. I want to honor these people. But I also want to encourage you, if you like history, if you like puzzles, if you like seeing how things all fit together, really delve into this text and into the names and who they are and what it's been. It's actually been really a blessing to me this past week, but it's really fun just to see who these people are and what they've done. So if you like that kind of stuff, dig even deeper into the names. But I know a lot of us, the names, it's just a, okay, I'm going to skim through or skip over this section and get to the good stuff. But this is the good stuff too. So we're going to preach even the names, but Romans 16 versus one through 16 says this, "I commend to you our sister, Phoebe, a servant of the church at Cenchreae, that you may welcome her and the Lord in our way worthy of the saints and help her in whatever she may need from you. For she has been a patron of many and of myself as well. Greet Prisca and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus who risked their necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks, but all the churches of the Gentiles give thanks as well. Greet also the church in their house. Greet my beloved Epaenetus, who was the first convert to Christ in Asia. Greet Mary who has worked hard for you. Greet Adronicus and Junia, my kinsman and fellow prisoners, they are well known to the apostles and they were in Christ before me. Great Ampliatus, my beloved in the Lord. Greet Urbanus, our fellow worker in Christ and my beloved Stachys, greet Apelles who is approved in Christ. Greet those who belong to the family of Aristobolus, greet my kinsman Herodion. Greet those in the Lord who belong to the family of Narcissus. Greet those workers in the Lord, Tryphaena and Tryphosa. Greet the beloved Persis who has worked hard in the Lord. Greet Rufus chosen in the Lord. Also his mother who has been a mother to me as well. Greet Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas and the brothers who are with them. Greet Philol-" Oh man, sorry, "Greet Philologus, Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas and all the saints who are with them. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ greet you." All right. Told first service this, so second service if any of you are in teens, I want you to know you're all going to have to read this out loud to each other tonight. Just, no, I'm just kidding. But Paul here lists and greets those Christians who he has worked with and served the Lord with together, and writes essentially a letter of recommendation to the church in Rome for these people. So want to be clear about something, he is not writing to a church that he knows and picking out a couple of good people in there. I thought that's what was happening before I really started my study, and I was like, "Oh, maybe on Sunday I should go up and be like praise God for this person and that person and greet all of these people." And then I was like, "Yeah, that's just going to cause division because I don't know everybody who does everything in this church. And many of you that I do not know are still faithfully serving the Lord and are worthy of being honored before him for the work that you do." So that's not what Paul is doing, that's not what he's doing. What he is doing is he's writing about Christians, primarily Christians that he had met in Ephesus, we'll get into that in a second, to a church in Rome that they are newcomers to. They are newly members of this church in Rome. And he is writing a greeting to the church to say, "Welcome these people. They are faithful, they have served the Lord with me. They have proclaimed the gospel and have been used powerfully for the Kingdom of God. Welcome them." And Paul is thankful for all of the work that these people have done. These are people that didn't move around with Paul, didn't always stay with him, didn't go everywhere he went. He understood that they had calls that were different than his, but were ultimately about proclaiming the gospel. And so he was thankful and praised God for the impact that they had on his life and on the world around them. But I want to point out again that it is specifically people from Ephesus, mostly, not entirely. And we can go through all the names and see who is from where and go through all that, but to give just an example, I'm going to look at verse three where it says, "Greet Prisca and Aquila." For many of you, you might sound familiar and be like, "That sounds a little off." Well, it's Priscilla and Aquila, that's her full name. And why does he call her Prisca? It just shows that Paul actually was friends with these people. He actually liked them and they had nicknames for each other like, "Hey Priscilla, that's too formal. Prisca sounds good." So it's good. Have nicknames for each other, call each other by loving names. But they were people who helped him plant the church in Ephesus and helped him plant the church in Corinth. They were founding members of those churches and had worked powerfully with Paul for the Kingdom of God. He praises God for them. He says in an event that we do not know about, that they risked their necks for his life. So he is thankful for them. I'm bringing this up specifically because some scholars will try and say, "Oh, there's a lot of people in Ephesus. This is the wrong church. He meant to write to Ephesus and then they threw on Rome later." And I'm just trying to show that it was meant for Rome, because what we know is that in Acts chapter 18, we are told that Priscilla and Aquila were removed and kicked out of Rome for being Christians, because all of the Christians were kicked out of Rome at that time by a decree, and that decree ended seven years before Paul wrote this letter to the Romans. And so like many people there, you could see the floods of people, actually the church in Rome, the Jewish population in Rome grew more so after the people returned, because they had gone out, proclaimed the word of the Lord, and then more people came back with them than were there before. And so the church grew, but you saw a mass return of people who had been exiled from Rome, returned to Rome. And Priscilla and Aquila were likely these people. And we saw that, if you look at a map, you could see Ephesus is on Western Turkey, and that's what they called Asia in the Bible times, Asia was Western Turkey, just so you know. But Ephesus was there. Then they traveled to Corinth with Paul, which is essentially halfway between Ephesus and Rome, so we see that throughout their faithful ministry proclaiming the gospel, helping Paul and all that he did, they were journeying back to Rome, which is why they're here now. And Paul is saying, "Hey, there's these people in your church Rome, and they're just faithful servants. Welcome them. Praise God for them." And the word for greet I love, because it literally just means as welcoming someone into your home, the same way that you would welcome someone into your home, welcome these people in your church. So a few points that we should take away from this church is that first, do we welcome Christians? Do we welcome people into this building? When people enter this door, do we think of it as they are entering our home let's welcome them. Let's greet them. Let's genuinely care for them and love them, and greet them as you would to your own home. Not just a hello and goodbye, but actually spend time with them. Talk to them, get to know them. I just want, I got to point out the holy kiss thing, in verse 16, it says, "Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the churches in Christ greet you." That had always been a little weird to me. Why are we kissing each other in church? That seems odd. But then thinking about greeting each other as welcoming into your own home, it makes all the sense in the world. For those of you who don't know, I'm Italian, and what that means is you hug and kiss everybody when you see them and you welcome them. I learned at a young age that not everybody does that. I was a kid, my friend's grandfather had just passed away, I had never met her grandmother before and we were at the funeral and I saw the grandmother and I was just like, "I want to show her that I love her and I care for her." So I hugged her and I kissed her on the cheek and she was mortified. And I was like, "I am so sorry." I was seven so I think she brushed it off, but I was like... Anyway, so I learned not everybody kisses on the cheek. So I stopped doing that. And then I moved to Boston. You all know. But I was in college at Northeastern and first day there, I met a few people, we became friends, it was good, the next day I was like, "We hung out, we had a good time, we're friends, I'm going to give everybody a hug." So I'm like going down the line, giving everybody a hug. And then I get to the first girl in the line and I give her a hug and she just freezes. And I was like, "Oh no, I did something horribly wrong." I am sorry to that person. We became really good friends after that. Praise God that she forgave me. But I was like, "Okay." That's not the point. The point is not that, but the point is to love and greet each other as if they're your family, so you need wisdom, you need to act wisely, but welcome people in your home as if they're your family. What this means for me now is we have a community group in our home and our community group, we eat dinner at the start. Why? Because my family loves food. Again, we're Italian, but when I'm with my family, the primary thing we talk about is what food are we going to eat? Oh, we eat breakfast, we're done with breakfast, what are we going to eat for lunch? We're done with lunch, what are we going to eat for dinner? What are we eating for the rest of the week? And we spend time eating food together and having fun. And so my community group is my family, and so therefore we eat together, we spend time together. And it doesn't have to be a meal. It doesn't matter what the thing is, but think about what do you do with your family? How do you welcome and greet your family? Are you willing to do that with each other here? Do you love your brothers and sisters in Christ enough to do that and actually welcome people, again, with wisdom, but actually loving and caring for one another? I want to read a quote from Justin Martyr, because he gives the context for when and where this holy kiss was used in the churches primarily. So in his first writings, Justin Martyr says this, "But we, after we have thus washed him." So that's baptism, "Who has been convinced and has ascended to our teaching." So someone is saved, agrees with the gospel, they are baptized, "Bringing him to the place where those who are called brethren are assembled in order that we may offer hearty prayers and communion in common for ourselves and for the baptized person, and for all others in every place that we may be counted worthy, not that we have learned the truth by our works." Sorry, lost my place, "Now that we have learned the truth by our works also to be found good citizens and keepers of the commandments so that we may be saved with an everlasting salvation. Having ended the prayers we salute one another with a kiss." So this is literally how the early church welcomed people into the family. You're saved, you're baptized. We all kiss on the cheek. Holy kiss. But the point is that was how families greeted each other then, and when somebody is saved, when a person is saved, brought into the family of God, they are actually viewed as being brought into the family, not just another person in a building. So let's welcome people like that, and when we see the work that others are doing in the church, the ways that they have encouraged us, developed our faith in the church we bring praise to God and we love each other like Christ loved the church. This is the summary of the whole sermon. Love each other like Christ loved the church. How's that? He actually loved them. That was real. And he did it practically. He gave up everything, he came to earth, he lived for them, provided for their needs, cared for them. Ultimately, and the most loving thing of all, died on the cross to save us all from our sins when we trust in him. And so we are called to love each other with real love, but a practical love, sometimes may be costly, but that is able to proclaim the love of God to all those who are witnesses. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you. We praise you that you have saved us through the working of your son Jesus, and that you loved us enough to not stay in heaven and shout that you love us, but to come and show us, to live it out practically. Lord, help us have hearts to love each other, help us practically with our hands, with our time, with our money, with everything that we have, provide and care for each other in times of need. Lord, help us to do this faithfully so that we can overflow with generosity, so that we can be a greater blessing to those around us, to the churches, to the missionaries, to the world around us, to those who bear the name of Christ, so that we can see your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. Lord, we thank you and we praise you in Jesus' name. Amen.

Holy Spirit Powered Hope

December 11, 2022 • Tyler Burns • Romans 15:1–21

Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston in our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit http://mosaicboston.com What we will do today is I want to clarify a little bit of where we are at in the book of Romans. I'll introduce it, we'll read the text and then we will pray and continue. But we are in chapter 15, the second to last chapter. We're not reading the whole chapter. Verses one through 21 is where we will be. And the first part of this chapter, Paul is sort of summarizing what we talked about last week, what he talked about in the last chapter, but then he is connecting it to his summary of the book as a whole. Paul is starting to wrap up, remind us of everything that Paul has been trying to say in this letter to the church in Rome. So, if you remember, I mentioned last week, but also way back in the beginning of the series, we talked about how Paul's purpose in writing the book of Romans is to encourage the church to faithful obedience to the Lord. So, here, Paul is going to be making that connection, be wrapping it up, summarizing how everything he has written is leading to that. So, as I read, I'm going to read the whole text all the way through. As I'm reading, be thinking, be meditating on what is Paul saying about faithful obedience? And then we will pray over the preaching of God's word. So, in Romans chapter 15 verse one, it says this, "We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. For Christ did not please Himself, but as it is written, 'The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.' For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction that through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope. May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written. 'Therefore, I will praise you among the Gentiles and sing to your name.' And again it is said, 'Rejoice, O Gentiles, with His people.' And again, praise the Lord all you gentiles and let all the peoples extol him.' And again, Isaiah says, 'The root of Jesse will come, even he who arises to rule the Gentiles in him will the Gentiles hope.' May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace and believing so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another. But on some points I have written to you very boldly by the way of reminder, because of the grace given me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. In Christ Jesus then I have reason to be proud of my work for God, for I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience, by word and deed, by the power and signs and wonders, by the power of the spirit of God, so that from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum, I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ. And thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else's foundation. But as it is written, 'Those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand.'" Let's pray over the preaching of God's word. Heavenly Father, Lord, we come to you and we thank you that you are a God of endurance, encouragement, and hope. Lord, fill us with your spirit, fill us with the power of your spirit to be able to live lives of faithful obedience to you, lives full of hope in you. Help us, Lord, in our weakness, help us when life is hard and when seasons of difficulty are on us. Give us your strength, your power, so that we can praise you and we can glorify you as one body, your body, the church. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, we will be spending our time in three points today. First point is be rooted in hope. The second point is abound in hope. And the third point is fulfill your call. So, point number one, be rooted in hope. This is verses one through seven. I'm not going to read it all again, but he starts again with this summary of the strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak. And the failings, I don't like that word because it makes us look down on people, but it's just the weaknesses of the weak. Where people are weak, bear with them. And this is the idea we talked about in last chapter, in chapter 14, that it is the duty, it is the obligation of the strong to not hold onto their strength, to not hold onto their freedom and their rights to do whatever they want, but instead to use that to serve those who are weak. To bring about unity and harmony within the church so that way we can praise God. And that's what Paul clarifies here in verses six and seven. He says that, "Together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you for the glory of God." So, unity within the church is not just for the sake of unity. Unity and laying down your rights for others is not just so we can all get along. That's true and good, but the point of it is so that we as one body in unity can bring praises and honor and glory to God, because he deserves it. That we as his church, unified, strong together, bring praises and glory to him. That is the point he was getting at last week and in this text of why we seek unity, why we seek harmony with one another. But the emphasis of this section of the text is in verse four where he says, "For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope." We talk a lot about the idea of hope during the holiday seasons, during Christmas time. Hope is something that we look for then, but we always need hope. Every single day we need hope. Hope is something that is powerful. It has the power to encourage us to continue on, even when life is hard and when things look desperate and when times of despair are there, hope can power us through. And the base state that we as Christians are called to our at the very least to have hope. Now how do we have hope? Paul is encouraging us and he's telling us, instructing us, that the ways we have hope are first and foremost, endurance and the encouragement of the scriptures. And so endurance, what does he mean by endurance? Paul is calling back, he is referencing his own writings in this book, in Romans chapter five, where he tells us the process of how we get to hope. So, in chapter five, verses two through five, it says this, "Through him, Christ Jesus, we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." And so Paul outlines the root of endurance to hope. And the connecting factor is character, but it assumes suffering. That is the start, the impetus of the endurance and the hope is actually suffering. And it's something that we can all admit is that life is hard and that if we are Christians, we will suffer. That is a promise actually that scripture gives to us, that Christians will suffer. And then we need to endure and then we have character and we have hope. So, what is character? Character is referring to the results of a test. Okay, what does that mean? So, suffering is that you are presented with a test. Endurance is you taking the test. And character is what was the result? Pass/fail? And the idea that Paul is saying for how endurance and character leads to hope, is that we can look back on times in our lives where God has caused us to endure through suffering to pass that test and endure and remain faithful to him and say, "Yeah, God helped me pass this. He helped me endure through the suffering. He can do it again." Anytime I face suffering, I can have hope that God will help me endure through it. And so when Paul is saying endurance leads to hope, we need to look back. We need to look back on our lives, look back on the faithfulness of God to help us endure and say, "He's going to do it again. He can do it again. God is faithful, he will help me endure." And then secondly it says that we get hope from the encouragement of scripture. And here I asked myself a question and the question was, "How often do I go to scripture for encouragement?" Not just because I'm supposed to read it, not to learn more information, not because it's part of my routine, or I'm supposed to, or it's good, which it's good, it is. We should do it for those reasons as well. But do we actually read scripture to gain encouragement? To gain hope in this life? And what Paul has said is that everything that has been written in former days was written for this reason. And the idea is what is in the Bible? What is this book about? It's a book filled with the faithfulness of God in times when people sometimes endured and sometimes failed in enduring, but regardless of the people, God was still faithful. And so we need to be going through scripture, not just to learn, but instead to say, "God, give me hope." Give me hope that you are faithful no matter what. Give me hope that you have power, you are sovereign, you are in control, you are a loving good God. Give me that hope always, so I can be encouraged. I can have hope. And this is what we are called to as Christians, to be rooted in this. We need to have this as a foundation in our lives, because Christ is our source of hope. And in verse five, I love his transition to this. In verse five he says this, "May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus." Paul just told us you want to have hope, seek endurance, be endure, and the encouragement of the scriptures. Read the scripture. And then immediately he prays. This is prayer language when he says, "May the God of..." He is praying over the church and he is saying, "May the God of encouragement and endurance..." The point is, it's not about us. When we endure, it's not us enduring. It's God causing us, helping us to endure. He is the God of endurance, so he can help us endure. When we need encouragement from the scripture, we don't just pick up this book and be like, "I'm not encouraged." We go to God and seek encouragement from him, because he is the God of encouragement as well. And we cannot separate the fact that if we want hope, we need to pray. You can't separate those. Paul knows that this is intrinsically needed. It's not his ability to speak, it's not their ability to endure, be encouraged. It's our need to pray and cry out to God when we don't have endurance, when times are hard, when we are suffering, God help me. And when we are struggling and we're sad, depressed, we have no hope, God encourage me. And he will. He's faithful to do that. But not only that, we need to be doing this for each other. Paul here is not looking at himself saying, "I need encouragement, I need endurance." He's looking at someone who is weak, a church who is weak and hurting. And he's saying to them, "May the God of endurance help you endure. May the God of encouragement fill you with encouragement." We, as the body of Christ, need to be doing that for each other, need to care about each other enough to do that. And once we are rooted in this hope, we have that as a foundation in our lives. It enables us to live, to move on, to carry on regardless of circumstances, you could say to live in faithful obedience to the Lord. But we don't stop there. When we have hope, that is the base, the foundation. But actually Paul encourages us and scripture encourages us to now abound in hope. And this is verses eight through 13 where it says this, "For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written, 'Therefore, I will praise you among the Gentiles and sing to your name.' And again it is said, 'Rejoice, Oh Gentiles, with his people.' And again, 'Praise the Lord all you gentiles and let all the peoples extol him.' And again, Isaiah says, 'The root of Jesse will come, even he who arises to rule the Gentiles in him will the Gentiles hope.' May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope." So, just some quick clarification and understanding. Paul starts with his talk about the circumcised and the Gentiles. What is he talking about here? He's talking about that regardless of any life circumstances, regardless of even where we come from, who we are, Christ is our only source of hope in this life. He's saying to the circumcised, to the religious Jews who knew and had heard and been raised in the law, Christ gives them hope. Why? Because he has fulfilled the promises of the scriptures. They can look at the faith that they were raised in and say, "Christ has fulfilled all the promises of God. God is trustworthy, he is reliable. We can depend on him. God that gives us hope." And to the Gentiles, to those who had no religious in the scripture's upbringing, he says, still, God is the hope for you. And he quotes a bunch of verses from the Old Testament. Why? To show that God always was the hope of the Gentiles, even before Christ came. But he's hope for the Gentiles, because it shows the mercy of God on all. Gentiles, you didn't know the laws, you weren't raised in the people of Israel, yet God had mercy on you. That gives us hope. I don't know about everyone who's here, but me personally, I am a Gentile. I am a Gentile. I was not raised as a Jewish or of the nation of Israel or any of that. And I have hope, because God loved his people enough to say, "I'm going to even save this guy," and praise God for that. And we should praise God. And regardless of our nationality, our backgrounds, regardless of anything, Christ alone is our hope. And again, in verse 13, it's prayer language. It's prayer language. "May the God of hope, the God who is hope, fill you with all joy and peace and believing so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope." The word abound, it's an overflow, it's an excess. It's a more than you could ever want or need. May the God of hope help you reach that point through the power of the Holy Spirit with joy and peace and believing. I like that part too, because as we believe we have hope, we believe, we trust in God, he promises to fill us with joy and with peace that we can then continue to grow in hope. And this points directly back to the last chapter, in chapter 14 verse 17 where it says, "For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." What Paul is making the connection to is the kingdom of God is a kingdom of peace, it's a kingdom of joy, and we need the God of hope to fill us with that. But he will when we are faithful in obedience to him. When we are believing and trusting in him, he will do that. And then God will also help us grow in hope. And this is the cycle of growth for a Christian. We start with hope. We start with the gospel. The gospel and hope are interchangeable, because the gospel is the only reason we have hope. But also there's scripture to say that it's interchangeable. And this is from 1 Peter 1:3. It says, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." So, as Christians, we start in a place of hope. We start with the gospel. Why is the gospel hope? Well, the gospel is saying that we are all sinners. That God, Jesus Christ, left his throne above, did not count the freedom and rights that he had, like we talked about last week, as something to be held onto, but gave them up to come to earth, live a perfect life, die on the cross and save us from our sins, and be raised again to prove that he has the power, he has the command and dominion over everything in life and death. And we can have hope in him that through his work we can spend eternity with God when we put our trust in him and say, "Jesus, help me. I need a savior. I need you to save me. I need you to help me." What this also means is that apart from Christ, there is no hope. This goes back to the first few chapters of Romans where we spent a lot of time talking about God's wrath. It was not a lot of fun, but it was true and it's good and it's helpful, because the idea is that when we are in sin, we have no hope. We are in sin. We are deserving of eternity apart from God, eternity in hell, condemned for our sins. But praise be to God that he did not leave us like that, and he sent his son Jesus Christ to save us. So, if you are here today and you are not a Christian, I beg of you, I urge you, take hope. Turn to Christ, submit to him and say, "Lord Jesus, I need hope. I have no source of hope in this life. Lord Jesus, help me." Submit your life to him and he will help you, he will give you hope. So, that's the starting point, that's where we start, and then we endure. We get a little bit of suffering. We talked about this already. We endure, we suffer, we endure. We get more hope, we get encouragement from the scriptures. We get hope. We get a little more hope. And that more hope allows us to endure a little more. And the more we endure, the more that we are able to see hope. And the more that we have hope, the more we can endure. And it's a cycle and it's how we grow as Christians. But it also implies that it means more suffering is coming and that as you grow, life will get harder and harder. And that God knows that and he wants to help us endure and give us hope, but we can't rely on ourselves. The moment we rely on our own strength, we are bound to break. And this is the greatest temptation in these seasons. When you endure, you feel pretty good. You're like, "Wow, I accomplished something." And as we already said, it's not us, it's God. It's the power of the Holy Spirit that lets us do it. But after time and time again of seeing God's faithfulness and helping us endure, we are tempted to say, "Wow, I did a good job of enduring," or, "I was able to do it. So, bring on the suffering. I'm ready to go. I can do it again." Once we do that, it's just a matter of time before we break. We cannot and should not allow ourselves to rely on our own strength. It's the power of God alone. This is why it says in this verse that, "By the power of the Holy Spirit, we may abound in hope." We cannot break that chain. We cannot break our need and dependence upon the Holy Spirit. We need the spirit to strengthen us. And once we abound in hope, once we are overflowing, overwhelmed by hope, because of the power of the Holy Spirit, we actually have the ability to fulfill the call that God has placed on our lives. This is verses 14 through 21. It says this, "I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another. But on some points I have written to you very boldly by way of reminder, because of the grace given me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. In Christ Jesus then, I have reason to be proud of my work for God. I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience, by word and deed, by signs and wonders, by the power of the spirit of God, so that from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum, I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ." I'll pause there for a second. I want to point out real quick in verse 14 that Paul says he is satisfied about his brothers. Does that mean he's saying that he is satisfied with their maturity? He recognizes that they are mature, they are filled with goodness, they are seeking righteousness, they're filled with knowledge, they're able to instruct each other. They are a mature church. This is actually a very mature statement by Paul, because he is trusting in God for them. And what is natural and what is a natural temptation is to be cynical and to question and say, "Yeah, I've heard about you, but I'm not so sure." And what I mean by cynical is, cynical is an inherent distrust of someone or something else. And I'm bringing this up here specifically because it is in direct contradiction to the idea of hope. Cynicism is directly opposed to hope. Why? Because you're distrusting. Well, who are you distrusting? When we are being cynical, we are showing we are distrusting God's sovereignty in all situations, that he is in control of everything. We as Christians are called to be hopeful, not cynical. And this is hard. The reason I bring this up specifically is because we live in a city that we talk about, it's really hard to be a Christian in Boston sometimes. We also talk about how it's just hard to be a Christian in general sometimes to faithfully obey the Lord. And what we are naturally drawn to is this cynical nature. The world has failed us. The world has disappointed us. We should not trust everything. That makes sense. So, naturally we are changed to that. And the longer you're in this city, the more you see it. And I bring this up because I know it's something that our pastors, our staff, every single one of us in this church, we all struggle with this temptation to become cynical. I was talking with Pastor Shane earlier this week. He gave me permission to share this. But he talked about how he even felt in his life that cynicism had crept in and that he had stopped being as hopeful and as joyful as he once was. And he praised God that he was able to recognize that and see that, and we should all follow his example of recognizing it in our own lives and cutting it out, getting rid of it and seeking to be hopeful. We need to be hopeful again, because it's what enables us to carry on. When we are cynical, we will not carry on. We will not live lives of faithful obedience. And cynicism is easier too. It's a lot easier than being hopeful. And this is a little bit of a tangent, but it's related, so hang with me for a second. The first service, I believe, is the first time ever that I've preached without mentioning my wife, which is crazy to me. And after the service, she came up to me and I didn't do as good of a job in the first service in explaining the cynicism part. And she was like what was speaking to her in this time, she texted me and it was really clear to me and I was like, "Wow, that's even better than what I said." So, I'm just going to read what she sent me. She just gave it as encouragement to me, but it's better than what I was saying, so I'm going to read it. Cynicism is easier than hope. We hate to be disappointed. We hate to be wrong, to look foolish. Cynicism protects us from too high of an expectation, but God has proven his faithfulness. He's proven that our hope is not in vain. We don't need to fear disappointment because we know that in the end, God will always get the glory. God will always get the victory. And we have confident hope in knowing he wants to use our lives in his church in unity to give him that glory. Praise God. That's why I married her. Amen. Yeah, we can clap. Thank you. Thank you. Amen. Praise God. But that's the point. That's how cynicism contradicts hope, is like we stop trusting in God. Cynicism is easier. It's so much easier to do that. But we're not called to the easy thing, we're called to the faithful thing. And faithful obedience is to trust in God regardless. And so Paul here, bringing it back to verse 14, Paul is trusting in God over a church that he's never met. He doesn't know these people, he's never met these people. He just has heard good things and he's saying, "I'm trusting God that you're good." I'm not going to be skeptical and cynical and say, "Well, you're probably not as good as I've heard you are." He's trusting in them. Yet he wrote an entire book, a very long dense book of instruction of guidance to this church. Paul, if they are a mature church that you are trusting God that they are solid and faithful, why are you even writing them all these instructions? Well, this is what he says in verse 15. He says, "On some points I have written to you very boldly by way of reminder because of the grace given me by God." And the idea is that first and foremost, Paul did speak very boldly here. He had said some harsh things about the wrath of God, about sin, and he is proclaiming boldly that they need to be unified and all this stuff. Why? First, it's the grace of God that has been given to him. It was God's grace, the position, the call upon his life that God had put. And so he is just being faithful to the call that God has put upon him. But this idea is that God told him he needed to instruct and encourage the church in this way. So, he was faithful in doing it and he was like, "I understand. He's not perfect, I'm not perfect, we're not perfect. But I'm giving you this bold statement, because God told me I need to, I'm supposed to. That's the call on my life." But he also says, "By way of reminder," he knows that they know this. He knows that they know the gospel. Specifically what he is reminding them of is the gospel. And I want to be clear when I'm up here, when any pastor or any preacher is up here, our job is not to give a good new idea, to give something for you to think about intellectually. Our job is to speak boldly on what God has given us grace to say by way of reminder, of drawing us all back to the gospel. The reminder is the gospel. And it's not just Paul that talks about this. Peter talks about this as well in 2 Peter. Give me a second to find it in 2 Peter 1:12 and 13 it says this, "Therefore, I intend always to remind you of these qualities, though you know them and are established in the truth that you have. I think it is right, as long as I am in this body, to stir up by way of reminder." Peter, Paul, they both recognize churches know the gospel. You know the gospel. But if we are to have hope, and if we are to live in faithful obedience to the Lord, to do what God has called us to do, we always need to be reminded of the hope we first had. Again, once we remove ourselves from the power of the Holy Spirit, we'll lose hope. Once we rely on ourselves, we'll lose hope. So, we constantly need to be reminded of the reason we began to have hope in the first place. That is what should stir us up most to obedience to the Lord. And I want to be clear as well that Christians, we are not Gnostics. What do I mean by that? What does Gnostics mean? We are not people who seek to grow and gain higher levels of Christianity by our continual growth in knowledge and information. It's not the idea that we get more information, so we get more knowledge, so we become a better Christian. And then we get more knowledge and higher knowledge and higher knowledge until we become the ultimate holy Christian. That's not what Christianity is. Instead, we are Christians seeking to have more and more hope in our lives by the continual reminder of Christ and him crucified and raised from the dead. That is again the cycle of growth, how we grow. It's not grow to be better, greater, more important or holy Christians. The goal is to be more hopeful, faithful Christians, to be faithful to serving the Lord, to live as he has called us to, and to fulfill the specific call he has on our lives. And for me in this season, for me right now, the call that God has is to be up here preaching and proclaiming the gospel. That's not the call for every single person. That's not even the call for me in every season. But every single Christian has a call, has a purpose, has something that God has ordained for them to do and to fulfill. And we can, and scripture even says that we can be proud of it. It's interesting, verses 17 through 19, he says this, "In Christ Jesus then I have reason to be proud of my work for God, for I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the spirit of God so that from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ." In Christ. So, in Christ, being rooted in Christ, Paul then has reason to be proud. What is his reason to be proud? Everything that Christ. Has done that's not really pride, it's honor and pride in God. He's saying, "I can be proud of everything that I've done, because it's not me. I had nothing to do with it. It's God. It's God who did it all." And here I'm just going to take a moment to be vulnerable with you guys, I have nothing in and of myself that means I should be here, that I should be up here. Last week I preached, but then afterwards at CG, one of the couples, good friends of ours in our CG was like, "Man, it was like it's a different Tyler up there, but it was good." And it's like it's not just a different me, it's that the spirit is powerful and the spirit moves. And all that I am doing before service, while worship is happening, while the band is practicing, I'm sitting over there and I'm praying because I know how wicked of a sinner I am. I know I don't deserve to be up here. And I can say, "God, I am so weak. I have nothing to give that I should be here. Lord, pour out your spirit. Help me. Empower me through your Holy Spirit to be able to say anything that is encouraging to your church, that is helpful to your church." And so while I'm up here, if anything I say is good and encouraging and sanctifying you, that's from the Holy Spirit. If anything you don't like and is bad, that's all me. I'm sorry, I apologize. But Paul says that he's speaking of nothing except for what Christ has done in every area of his life. This is where he says, "By word and by deed," by anything he says and anything he does, even the miraculous stuff, even he says, "By the power of signs and wonders." People looked at Paul and was like, "Wow, he was doing miracles. This is great. He is awesome. He is the super spiritual guy. He must be incredible." And Paul says, "It's by the power of the Spirit of God." If we want to be proud of the work we do, and if we want to be able to fulfill the call we have on our lives, we need to rely solely on the power of the Holy Spirit. Paul said something very bold here too. He says that he has fulfilled the ministry of the gospel. You sure, Paul? You sure you couldn't have done a little bit more? You sure that you did everything? You completely, totally fulfilled the call of the ministry of the gospel from Jerusalem to all the areas you said? Are you sure? Paul says, "Yeah." He's confident. And why is Paul confident? Because when the Spirit led, he followed. This talks about in the rest of 15 and in some of 16, all the people he met and the ways he traveled and wanting to go one place, but the spirit preventing him and so he went another. Paul can say he has faithfully completed all that God had placed on his life, because he listened to the spirit. He trusted the Holy Spirit. When the Spirit said go, he went [inaudible] the call of the gospel on our lives when we remain faithful and reliant and dependent on the power of the Holy Spirit in everything we say, do and wherever we go. Whatever that call is for each of us, you do have a call. God has a purpose for you here. Trust in the Holy Spirit. Ask God for the power of the Spirit to enable you to do what you need to do. And what is Paul's response when he says, "I have fulfilled, I've done everything?" "Thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel." Wait, Paul, thought you fulfilled the ministry of the gospel? He's like, "Yeah, I fulfilled it in the ministry and the call that God had in that season. And once I fulfilled it, I have another call. I have something else that I am supposed to do." And as we grow in our faith, as we go from just being a base level of hope in Christ to growing and growing and growing in our hope and trust and dependence on God, he will continue to use us. We will never reach a point where we're done being useful to God. He can always use us for his glory and for his kingdom. Again, so long as we are dependent on the power of the Holy Spirit and on the power of God. I want to close just by reading the two verses where Paul prays over the church. I want you to know that I do pray this over you, over me, over all of us. That this is something we should be praying for each other, but I want us all to take encouragement from it. So, I'll read those and then I'll close in prayer. In chapter 15:5 it says this, "May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another in accord with Christ Jesus. That together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." And then in verse 13, "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope." Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you, we praise you, we lift up our voices to you and say, thank you, God. You are glorious. You are good. Strengthen us. Help us to endure. Encourage us, give us encouragement through your word so that we can have hope always in you. Grow our hope. Fill us with your spirit. Give us the power of your spirit. Equip us to live lives faithful to you. To be hopeful regardless of anything that this world throws at us, or that this life has to offer, that you are good, you are faithful, you are in control. You will give us peace. You will give us joy. Help us fulfill the call you have placed on our lives. Give us your power so that we can see your kingdom come here, so that we can see the world change for your glory and for your namesake. In Jesus' name, amen.