SPEAKER_00: Our reading today is from Romans chapter one, verses one to seven.
SPEAKER_00: Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the glory gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures, concerning His Son, who has descended from David according to the flesh, and was declared to be the Son of God in power, according to the spirit of holiness, by res by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, to all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints.
SPEAKER_00: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And so reads God's word.
SPEAKER_03: Let me add my welcome to Benz.
SPEAKER_03: My name is Mark, one of the leaders here at City.
SPEAKER_03: You're very welcome with us, especially if you're new or visiting.
SPEAKER_03: And uh we are beginning a brand new series today in uh Paul's letter to the Romans.
SPEAKER_03: It was a very short reading, uh, especially if you've been here through the Genesis series where we've been reading 30, 40 verses at a time.
SPEAKER_03: Oh, Mark's just doing seven verses.
SPEAKER_03: Yes, uh, because there's lots in there.
SPEAKER_03: And in fact, whoever's on the clicker in a minute, um, I'll probably actually get you to go back to the first slide of the reading because then it's just up there because most of it isn't contained on that first slide.
SPEAKER_03: You don't need to do it right now.
SPEAKER_03: I'll tell you, I'll tell you when.
SPEAKER_03: Um we're going to be in uh the first half of Romans uh for uh the next six months up until the end of June.
SPEAKER_03: We'll get to the end of chapter eight, then we'll take a break over uh the summer, we'll do the Psalms, and then we'll come back to the second half of Romans.
SPEAKER_03: Um, the really gnarly chapters of 9, 10, and 11, if you've ever read the book, um, in September, because I need that sort of time to try and figure out what 9, 10, and 11 are really all saying.
SPEAKER_03: So we're basically spending the better part of the year in uh this letter.
SPEAKER_03: And why are we walking uh slow so slowly through this book?
SPEAKER_03: Well, uh, in uh put simply, it's impossible to sprint up Everest, and that's what Romans is.
SPEAKER_03: Romans is being described as the Mount Everest of the New Testament, uh, not because it's hard to conquer, though certainly there are difficult parts in it.
SPEAKER_03: Uh, it's Paul's longest and densest letter.
SPEAKER_03: Uh, it's not called Everest because of the impact that it's had on people's lives, though it has.
SPEAKER_03: Uh, it sparked the the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago with a uh a German monk uh sitting in his study reading Romans chapter one, in fact, but we'll come to next week, and realizing that actually, in order to be made right with God, all that you have to do is place your faith in what God has done.
SPEAKER_03: That man was called Martin Luther.
SPEAKER_03: It's had an impact on my own life and my own faith story.
SPEAKER_03: Nor is it our Everest because uh, or sorry, rather, it is our Everest because from its peaks we get a glimpse of and we are able to survey something of the grandeur of who God is.
SPEAKER_03: We see in this letter something of his character, his justice, his mercy, his grace that is lavish and abundant, his love, his transforming power.
SPEAKER_03: It's from the peaks of Romans that we see the majesty of God.
SPEAKER_03: And so it is good as we climb this mountain to turn around and to look and to see the marvelous vistas that Paul is sketching for us.
SPEAKER_03: Should us, like no other book in the New Testament, the dimensions of the gospel, the good news of who Jesus is, that lies at the heart of what Christianity is all about.
SPEAKER_03: I say that uh that it lies at the heart of what Christianity is all about because Christianity is fundamentally news.
SPEAKER_03: Good news.
SPEAKER_03: Christianity is not about good advice.
SPEAKER_03: It's not about coming here on a Sunday morning and uh and being given you five steps for a prosperous new year, or three keys to unlocking a healthy marriage, or uh seven tips for better parenting.
SPEAKER_03: Christianity is not about giving you advice for your week.
SPEAKER_03: It's not good advice, it's good news.
SPEAKER_03: God has done something in history and he is declaring it to you.
SPEAKER_03: Now, of course, that has implications for how you live through the rest of your week, and there is wisdom to be gleaned for how you uh how you work and how you love and how you parent and all of those things.
SPEAKER_03: But at its core, the gospel is good news.
SPEAKER_03: God has acted in human history and he is declaring it to you now.
SPEAKER_03: Romans sketches the dimensions of this good news by showing us the depths of our need of God, how far we have gone from him.
SPEAKER_03: That's really what the first three chapters are all about.
SPEAKER_03: The depth of our of our sin and our need of God.
SPEAKER_03: And then Paul turns and he shows us the lengths with which God has gone in order to bring us back to him and the heights that he has raised us to.
SPEAKER_03: And we mustn't forget, I mean, maybe you're not familiar with uh with Christian things at all.
SPEAKER_03: And you maybe don't know who Paul is, but let's remember, let's remind ourselves, who is Paul?
SPEAKER_03: Paul was somebody who was utterly opposed to the message of Christianity.
SPEAKER_03: He hated Christians.
SPEAKER_03: He was a first-century terrorist.
SPEAKER_03: He was there at the at the murder of the first Christian martyr, Stephen.
SPEAKER_03: They laid, the men who stoned Stephen laid their garments at his feast, at his feet.
SPEAKER_03: He approved of it, he sanctioned the murder of Christians.
SPEAKER_03: He was on his way to take more Christians into captivity when Jesus Christ appeared to him and transformed his life.
SPEAKER_03: And so he begins this letter by saying, Paul, a servant, servant, literally a slave, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle.
SPEAKER_03: He sees himself now as a man under authority, called by God and set apart for the task of what?
SPEAKER_03: Well, of communicating the good news of Jesus, the gospel of Jesus, to the ends of the earth.
SPEAKER_03: So you have to ask yourself, well, what sort of message takes a man like Paul and changes him this much?
SPEAKER_03: And if it can change Paul that much, what on earth can it do for you?
SPEAKER_03: To go from murderous hostility to Christianity to being its chief advocate?
SPEAKER_03: Writing 13 of the 27 New Testament books.
SPEAKER_03: What sort of message overtakes a person so much that he is willing to write in even in his introduction?
SPEAKER_03: We haven't even got to the main body of the letter.
SPEAKER_03: Paul's just saying hello, and yet he can't wait to tell you what the good news of Jesus is.
SPEAKER_03: It overtakes him, even as he's saying the dear Romans part.
SPEAKER_03: He said, I've got to tell you about these things.
SPEAKER_03: And he was raised from the dead, he's descended from David.
SPEAKER_03: And what sort of message overtakes and overwhelms a person like that?
SPEAKER_03: And what sort of message causes someone to glory in being a servant?
SPEAKER_03: Paul, a servant of Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: That he willingly, voluntarily sets aside power and comfort and position and prestige and wealth and safety, and says, You know what?
SPEAKER_03: What's the one chief thing that you need to know about me?
SPEAKER_03: I'm a servant of Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: What sort of message does that for someone?
SPEAKER_03: Maybe you're here this morning and you have no sense of what the good news of Jesus is.
SPEAKER_03: Or maybe just a vague sense from attending church services from time to time.
SPEAKER_03: Well, Paul wants to sketch it for you now, even in these opening verses.
SPEAKER_03: To give you a sense of what the gospel is.
SPEAKER_03: And so it's a great Sunday for you to be here.
SPEAKER_03: Maybe you're here and you've grown up in the church, and you kind of feel like you know what the gospel is.
SPEAKER_03: Well, I still think that these verses contain things that will challenge us, encourage us, set us up for this new year and help us to grow deeper into Christ.
SPEAKER_03: So let's journey with Paul just in these few verses as as we sketch out what the gospel is.
SPEAKER_03: And this is where uh whoever's on the clicker can go back.
SPEAKER_03: I know you've got to go through a song, and I'm sorry about that.
SPEAKER_03: But if you go back to just the first slide of the reading, um there we go.
SPEAKER_03: Well, I know that I know that's technically the first slide, but that doesn't give anybody any help.
SPEAKER_03: This one.
SPEAKER_03: Um the first thing that we need to see about the gospel is that the gospel is God's.
SPEAKER_03: The gospel is God's.
SPEAKER_03: Have a look at it there.
SPEAKER_03: Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, that is, a sent one, somebody who is sent authoritatively with the message of Jesus, set apart for the gospel of God.
SPEAKER_03: Set apart for the gospel of God.
SPEAKER_03: God owns the gospel, it's God's gospel, it's God's declaration.
SPEAKER_03: And I think of the implications of that.
SPEAKER_03: The first and chief implication of that is it answers the question as to whether or not there is a God.
SPEAKER_03: Paul is declaring to us here that there is a God who stands behind this universe, this material world, and that he has spoken into it, that he has written himself into the story, that there is more to life than the material, that there is more that matters than matter itself, and what's more, this gospel is God's news, not Paul's, and not an institution of the churches.
SPEAKER_03: It's not that the church or Paul all sat down and said, Okay, what do we want the message of Christianity to be?
SPEAKER_03: It's kind of the Dan Brown sense of things.
SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
SPEAKER_03: Dan Brown is a pretty uh pretty dated reference now, but this idea uh that comes up every now and again that really what happened was that around about the time of the conversion of Constantine, uh, all of these bishops sat down and they decided what books of the Bible that they wanted in and what ones they didn't, and they decided what they wanted Christianity to be in order to secure their power base.
SPEAKER_03: And all of that technically is called nonsense.
SPEAKER_03: Uh, because that's not what happened.
SPEAKER_03: Uh, and we can go into the details of why that's nonsense, uh, and that's just made up by Dan Brown.
SPEAKER_03: No, the the the books of the New Testament were uh were largely decided upon by the generation immediately after the apostles.
SPEAKER_03: Uh, and you can read about that in a um in a document called the Didicy, which is the teaching of the Twelve.
SPEAKER_03: But the point here is that Paul and the rest of the church aren't just kind of making up what Christianity is.
SPEAKER_03: Paul's like, Paul's like an ampost mailman, he's delivering the message, he's not writing it.
SPEAKER_02: God has written it, God has spoken, he has declared this good news.
SPEAKER_02: Because there is a God who is there and he speaks.
SPEAKER_03: The gospel is God's news, God's good news, not good advice.
SPEAKER_03: God has done something in history and he is declaring it now to all of humanity.
SPEAKER_03: And so the question then is well, what is God declaring to us all?
SPEAKER_03: What is God speaking to all of humanity?
SPEAKER_03: And Paul will answer that question, but before we get there, he gives a short but important little detour.
SPEAKER_03: This is verse 2 on the screen behind me.
SPEAKER_03: So he says that it's set apart for the gospel of God, and then kind of in in brackets, in parentheses, he says, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures.
SPEAKER_03: This is an important point because it shows that the gospel isn't something new.
SPEAKER_03: That the gospel, the good news of God, is the fulfillment of all that was promised.
SPEAKER_03: Now, if you were here during the Genesis series, it's one of the things we talked about a lot in Abraham's life was God was making promises to Abraham.
SPEAKER_03: And finally, we're saying that God was fulfilling those promises, that God is faithful always to his promises.
SPEAKER_03: And Paul here is reaffirming that, that everything that Jesus is and everything that he has done is the fulfillment of promises laid down in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_03: So Paul wants these readers and us to know that the gospel isn't something new.
SPEAKER_03: It didn't just spring out of Paul's imagination or from a hole in the ground, but rather it's the fulfillment and the consummation of everything that has gone before.
SPEAKER_03: What that means for us is that the Old Testament all points to what the gospel fulfills.
SPEAKER_03: The gospel is not distinct from or contradictory to God's promises of old.
SPEAKER_03: Rather, it's the full realization of them.
SPEAKER_03: Again, we can kind of have this false notion of the God of the Old Testament, bit of a jerk.
SPEAKER_03: God of the New Testament, Jesus cuddling sheep, you know, blessing children, much nicer, softer, God of the Old Testament, very hard, very stern.
SPEAKER_03: No, that that is a false, that's a false distinction, one that the Bible doesn't make.
SPEAKER_03: No, no.
SPEAKER_03: In the Old Testament, what we have are the promises of God concealed, and in the New Testament, the promises of God revealed.
SPEAKER_03: The Old Testament is shadows all pointing towards what Jesus would ultimately fulfill.
SPEAKER_03: And so this again has implications for us.
SPEAKER_03: First, we need to remember God always keeps his promises.
SPEAKER_03: Paul's saying that the coming of Jesus is the culmination, the fulfillment, the full realization of everything that God had laid down in ages past in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_03: What that means then, secondly, in terms of implications, is that you need the Old Testament in order to fully understand the gospel.
SPEAKER_03: We need the Old Testament in order to understand the kind of declaration that God is making.
SPEAKER_03: And so, Christian, if you're uh if you're reading the scriptures, you need a varied diet of old and new.
SPEAKER_03: And yeah, old's harder because it's so foreign to our mind.
SPEAKER_03: And yet, contained therein are all of these types and shadows.
SPEAKER_03: That when we when we think about, well, when you're reading about the priestly system of people standing between us and God and the and the temple with its great curtain saying, keep out, all of that's foreshadowing.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus, that that better priest, that better mediator who stands between us and God, who has obliterated the need for any other earthly priests, and has made a way into the very presence of God.
SPEAKER_03: As you read about the sacrifices of the Old Testament, you know, you're just you're just you know trudging through the book of Leviticus and thinking, why do I have to wave grain?
SPEAKER_03: Uh or you know, why are all of these sacrifices happening?
SPEAKER_03: Well, it's because God is showing us the seriousness of sin and how much it alienates us from God and from one another, and how it is only because of a sacrifice that we can come close to God, and that Jesus Himself is that sacrifice.
SPEAKER_03: So the Old Testament points to everything that would be fulfilled in Jesus, and so Paul then returns to the content of the gospel.
SPEAKER_03: What is God declaring to humanity?
SPEAKER_03: So we're on verse three.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it should be.
SPEAKER_03: Are we still on verse three out there?
SPEAKER_03: Yes, we are.
SPEAKER_03: Good.
SPEAKER_03: So have a look at it.
SPEAKER_03: So set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures.
SPEAKER_03: And what's this gospel about?
SPEAKER_03: Well, it's concerning who?
SPEAKER_03: It's concerning his son, who was declared, sorry, who was descended from David according to the flesh, and was declared to be son of the son of God in power according to the res the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.
SPEAKER_03: Now there's a lot there.
SPEAKER_03: But the chief point, this is the third point, is that the gospel, the good news of Christianity, is about God's Son.
SPEAKER_03: It is concerning Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: I uh I don't remember my conversion.
SPEAKER_03: I don't remember a moment of kneeling by my bed.
SPEAKER_03: I wasn't in a service, I don't remember going forward.
SPEAKER_03: I don't remember the moment when God changed my heart.
SPEAKER_03: I don't know if I was awake or asleep.
SPEAKER_03: I don't know where I was.
SPEAKER_03: I don't remember when I became a Christian.
SPEAKER_03: I know roughly what age I was.
SPEAKER_03: I'm assured now that I am a Christian.
SPEAKER_03: Please uh don't don't think this is quite the New Year's revelation from Mark.
SPEAKER_03: Uh I'm assured that I am a believer, a follower in Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: But if you were to say, well, what's the what's the day, what's the hour, what's the moment that you raised your hand or you cried in a meeting or you prayed a special prayer?
SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
SPEAKER_03: I don't remember.
SPEAKER_03: I know that I was about 14 years old.
SPEAKER_03: I know that I was uh invited to be part of a Bible study through the book of Romans.
SPEAKER_03: And I know when that was, and I know that by the end of that time, I was a different person to when I started, but I don't remember a moment.
SPEAKER_03: And for a while that kind of bothered me because there can be a there's kind of a subset of Christianity that really kind of focuses on when did you make the decision?
SPEAKER_03: When did you decide to follow Jesus?
SPEAKER_03: You know, we've been singing that song.
SPEAKER_03: I've decided to follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: You know, uh I I think that's the tune, anyway.
SPEAKER_03: I didn't know.
SPEAKER_03: And maybe you're sitting here and you believe that Jesus has changed your heart, and you don't know either.
SPEAKER_03: That used to bother me for a while.
SPEAKER_03: I was like, why can't I, why don't I have a spiritual birthday?
SPEAKER_03: And it's great if you have a spiritual birthday.
SPEAKER_03: You remember that moment when you realize that that everything that God had done for you was true.
SPEAKER_02: But I never had that.
SPEAKER_03: And I'm kind of glad now.
SPEAKER_03: And the reason why I'm kind of glad that I don't remember the moment when I decided to follow Jesus is because the good news of Jesus isn't ultimately about me.
SPEAKER_03: It doesn't place me at the center of the story.
SPEAKER_03: You know, when uh you you see an old photograph of uh of you with a group of friends or an old school photograph.
SPEAKER_03: Well, who's the first person that you look for?
SPEAKER_03: You look for yourself.
SPEAKER_03: You know, where am I?
SPEAKER_03: What color was my hair back then?
SPEAKER_03: Did I have hair back then?
SPEAKER_03: That's Ben looking at a photograph.
SPEAKER_03: We look for ourselves.
SPEAKER_03: But what Paul is saying here is that when we look at the gospel.
SPEAKER_03: The one who's at the center of the picture, the one who fills the whole frame, it's not me.
SPEAKER_03: It's Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: It's the gospel of God concerning his son.
SPEAKER_03: So, what has God said about his son?
SPEAKER_03: What do we learn here about Jesus?
SPEAKER_03: Well, we learn at least three things.
SPEAKER_03: The first is that he was descended from David according to the flesh, that is, according to his humanity.
SPEAKER_03: Now that has an implication, isn't it?
SPEAKER_03: Jesus was actually a human being.
SPEAKER_03: Again, we have this idea that Jesus is a he's a bit like Superman.
SPEAKER_03: You're the man of steel.
SPEAKER_03: You beam down from the planet Krypton.
SPEAKER_03: He looks like one of us, but actually he's not.
SPEAKER_03: He looks like a human being, but actually, underneath the mild-mannered reporter, he's got a big J on his chest, right?
SPEAKER_03: And so he just jumps into a phone box and off he goes.
SPEAKER_03: But that's not what Paul is saying here.
SPEAKER_03: Paul is saying that Jesus was actually a human being.
SPEAKER_03: He didn't just look like one.
SPEAKER_03: He actually took a human nature to himself.
SPEAKER_03: He was human.
SPEAKER_03: And in his humanity, he was descended from a bloke called David.
SPEAKER_03: Who is David?
SPEAKER_03: David, you remember from your Sunday school, he's a little boy.
SPEAKER_03: He's the guy with uh uh with the with the slingshot in Goliath.
SPEAKER_03: It's that David, it's King David.
SPEAKER_03: King David, the one who is at the very high point of kingship in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_03: And God made David a very special promise.
SPEAKER_03: Back in uh the book of 2 Samuel, chapter 7, he promised David that a descendant of his would always and eternally sit on David's throne.
SPEAKER_03: That the Messiah, that just means the promised king, the forever king, would come from David's line.
SPEAKER_03: And what Paul is saying here, and other gospel writers, they trace the lineage down.
SPEAKER_03: So if you if you read all the list of names at the start of the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew wants to show you that Jesus is descended first from Abraham, that is, the promises that we were looking at last term, and descended from David the king.
SPEAKER_03: Because he is the fulfillment, he is that Messiah, that Christ.
SPEAKER_03: Messiah and Christ are the same word, just in two different languages.
SPEAKER_03: But he is God's promised forever king.
SPEAKER_03: And he has come from the line of David.
SPEAKER_03: So he is fully human, the fulfillment of this promise made to David, but not only that, he is also simultaneously God's divine son.
SPEAKER_03: That's verse 4.
SPEAKER_03: He was declared to be the Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of Holiness, by his resurrection from the dead.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus Christ our Lord.
SPEAKER_02: How do we know that Jesus is the Son of God?
SPEAKER_02: Well, Paul's answer is because he rose from the dead.
SPEAKER_03: Because of his resurrection.
SPEAKER_03: The resurrection from the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is not a metaphor that Christians believe in.
SPEAKER_03: Christians must believe that this is a historic, verifiable physical event.
SPEAKER_03: That Jesus was dead and that he was raised back to life again.
SPEAKER_03: That is what Christianity stands and falls on.
SPEAKER_03: That if the resurrection is not true, then Christianity is not true.
SPEAKER_03: But Paul is affirming to us here that Jesus was raised from the dead and that his resurrection is the great confirmation to everyone that Jesus is the Son of God, that Jesus is who he claimed to be in the Gospels, and that it is now clear and declared to all.
SPEAKER_03: When he says, declared to be the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead, it's not that God decided to make Jesus his son and so raised him from the dead, it's that his resurrection shows him to be the son of God.
SPEAKER_03: But not only that, there's this little phrase that the resurrection declares Jesus to be the Son of God in power.
SPEAKER_02: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_03: At Christmas, what we just celebrated, we remember that Jesus came in humility, that he came in weakness, that he lived a life of homelessness and need and hunger and thirst, that he died in weakness and powerlessness.
SPEAKER_02: But now Paul is saying that by his resurrection he is enthroned in heaven as Lord of all.
SPEAKER_03: That he is not the weak and humble Christ, he is the exalted king because of his resurrection to the dead.
SPEAKER_03: The resurrection of Jesus is, in a sense, the road to his coronation.
SPEAKER_03: It is the pathway to his crowning as Lord of all.
SPEAKER_03: That's why Paul uh concludes the verse this way: declared to be uh the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of Holiness, by his resurrection of the dead, Jesus Christ, our Lord.
SPEAKER_03: How is it that he is now Lord of all?
SPEAKER_03: He is enthroned now in heaven by his resurrection to the dead.
SPEAKER_03: He is now the one to whom every knee will bow and everyone will give an account.
SPEAKER_03: Just a quick little thing that I don't know where to put this in.
SPEAKER_03: I just like it.
SPEAKER_03: It'll only take 15 seconds to tell you.
SPEAKER_03: The spirit of holiness, it's the only time that Paul describes the Holy Spirit as the spirit of holiness.
SPEAKER_03: Do you wonder why that is?
SPEAKER_03: This is something cool that I read.
SPEAKER_03: Is that it's the resurrection of a dead body.
SPEAKER_03: And so Paul's encouraging the Jewish readers that this is not some sort of weird necromancy, uh, because that would be defiling for Jews to kind of tamper with dead bodies and things like that.
SPEAKER_03: And so he says, no, no, it was the spirit of holiness, not a dark spirit, not an evil spirit, but the spirit of holiness, the Holy Spirit himself raised Jesus from the dead.
SPEAKER_03: Just thought that was quite cool.
SPEAKER_03: But I didn't quite know where to put that in.
SPEAKER_03: If that went, don't worry about it.
SPEAKER_03: Fourthly, by the way, we have six, so we're about halfway there.
SPEAKER_03: So the gospel is the declaration to the world that Jesus is Lord of all.
SPEAKER_03: Paul then in verse five has been called, he says, to go with that message.
SPEAKER_03: So he says, through whom we have received grace and apostleship.
SPEAKER_03: That's Paul's uh speaking in the uh in the first person plural there.
SPEAKER_03: We have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among the nations.
SPEAKER_03: And this answers the question of who is the gospel for?
SPEAKER_03: He tells us there, doesn't he?
SPEAKER_03: When he says, among the nations.
SPEAKER_03: Paul's writing this letter to the Romans.
SPEAKER_03: He's he's on his way to Rome.
SPEAKER_03: He's uh he's trying to get there so that uh they will supply him on a further mission to head over to Spain.
SPEAKER_03: He wants to get to Spain to tell uh the Spanish there.
SPEAKER_03: Um, I don't think they were known as Spanish at that time, uh, but he wants to get over to Spain in order to preach the gospel there.
SPEAKER_03: And so he sends a letter ahead of himself, say, look, I'm on my way, and I want to get the gospel out among the nations, because the gospel is for all nations.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus' resurrection from the dead did not declare him simply to be the Lord of the Jews.
SPEAKER_03: No, it declared him to be the Lord of the entire cosmos.
SPEAKER_03: All are under his scope, all are therefore invited to come under his good, loving, perfect rule.
SPEAKER_03: And that's the fourth point.
SPEAKER_03: Who's the gospel for?
SPEAKER_03: That's for all.
SPEAKER_02: Why?
SPEAKER_02: Because Jesus is Lord of all.
SPEAKER_02: So who should we seek to reach as Christians?
SPEAKER_02: All who's accountable to King Jesus?
SPEAKER_02: All of us.
SPEAKER_02: Who needs to hear the good news of Jesus?
SPEAKER_02: All people.
SPEAKER_02: Who are we sent to?
SPEAKER_02: All.
SPEAKER_03: I know that I'm speaking in an Irish context, and so I beg your forgiveness and your indulgence uh to mention the uh the speech that King Charles gave on Christmas Day.
SPEAKER_03: Um I'm not going to praise it, so that's how I'm going to uh get away with mentioning it in an Irish context.
SPEAKER_03: It was not a good speech.
SPEAKER_03: His mother gave better.
SPEAKER_03: It was not a good speech because it was unashamedly pluralist.
SPEAKER_03: That is, he's saying, you know, he was talking about the Abrahamic family of religions, all religions and none.
SPEAKER_03: Surely we can all come together, and it's all really the same, and everybody just kind of at heart, we all believe the same things.
SPEAKER_03: We're all journeying up God's mountain, we're all feeling God's elephant.
SPEAKER_03: You might have heard of some of those, so some of those illustrations.
SPEAKER_03: Now, I'm not sure that that idea is very fashionable anymore.
SPEAKER_03: I think that maybe we're beginning to discover that that kind of idea, that kind of bland beige, everything's the sameness, that it doesn't really work.
SPEAKER_03: And it doesn't really take in account of the differences that there are between the world religions, and it doesn't really make sense of the world that we find ourselves living in.
SPEAKER_03: I think it was maybe an idea that was a bit more fashionable twenty years ago.
SPEAKER_03: I wonder if we're beginning to see through the bland foolishness of it.
SPEAKER_02: As a son of God, raised in power, enthroned in heaven, he will suffer no rival.
SPEAKER_03: Pluralism makes no sense before the claims of Jesus, that he is God raised from the dead, enthroned on high, offering forgiveness to all, and will come again to judge the living and the dead.
SPEAKER_02: As Christians, we must affirm that he is the exclusive way back to God.
SPEAKER_02: But this exclusivity does not exclude, it invites, it invites all to come, but all to come by him, all are welcome.
SPEAKER_03: Every race, every ethnicity, every tribe and tongue and nation and social standing, economic background, sexuality, all are invited, all are called, all are welcome.
SPEAKER_02: But we only come by him.
SPEAKER_02: Both of those things must fuel our evangelism.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus is the only way, and that way is open to all who will come.
SPEAKER_02: Fifthly.
SPEAKER_03: Do we still have uh verse five?
SPEAKER_03: Oh, look, the clicker man uh or woman is just way ahead of me.
SPEAKER_03: The purpose of the gospel is this we're still in verse five, it's to bring about what Paul says here, the obedience of faith.
SPEAKER_03: You see that?
SPEAKER_03: Through him we receive grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith.
SPEAKER_03: And what does that mean?
SPEAKER_03: It's a curious little phrase.
SPEAKER_03: Let me tell you what it doesn't mean.
SPEAKER_03: It doesn't mean that we are made right with God, we are saved, we are forgiven because of the good things that we do.
SPEAKER_03: It is not the case that we need to obey in order to be loved by God.
SPEAKER_03: Now, Paul will work hard in this letter to show that we we cannot work our way back to God.
SPEAKER_03: There are no uh moral good deeds that we can do that would wipe out the uh the spiritual moral debt that we have accrued.
SPEAKER_03: It's not possible to work our way back to God.
SPEAKER_03: In fact, to think that you can work your way morally into God's good books is arrogance.
SPEAKER_03: Now, Paul will spend a lot of time showing us that the only way to be made right with God is by faith in Jesus alone.
SPEAKER_03: That it is only in trusting in his perfect, sinless life and his death on our behalf that we come back into relationship with God.
SPEAKER_03: And yet, true and living faith will always issue forth result in obedience to God, not in order to make God love us, but because God has loved us, and so in joyful response in gratitude to all that he has done, we hear his voice and we do what he says.
SPEAKER_02: It's a little bit like it's a little bit like this.
SPEAKER_02: Imagine.
SPEAKER_03: Uh I'm married to to Philippa, um, who's here.
SPEAKER_03: She was praying.
SPEAKER_03: And um imagine I came home uh one day with uh a beautiful bouquet of flowers and uh a box of uh of red Lindor, because those are her favorites, you know, the little red Lindor balls.
SPEAKER_03: And uh I gave them to Philippa and she said, Why'd you do that for me?
SPEAKER_03: And I tell her, right, oh, because you required of me.
SPEAKER_03: Uh you know, it's my duty, and I'm just I'm fulfilling the my obligations uh as your husband.
SPEAKER_03: There.
SPEAKER_03: Enjoy your flowers and your chocolates.
SPEAKER_03: How do you think the rest of my day would go?
SPEAKER_03: That would be silly, wouldn't it?
SPEAKER_03: That's that's not what motivates me uh to do nice things for my wife.
SPEAKER_03: Why do I do nice things for my wife?
SPEAKER_03: Uh nice things for my wife are are simple things like actually picking my socks, socks up off the living room floor because I take them off at night uh when I'm watching the television.
SPEAKER_03: Uh, or it's unloading the dishwasher.
SPEAKER_03: Why do I do those things?
SPEAKER_03: I don't do those things because I'm obligated to as her husband.
SPEAKER_03: I do those things because I love her.
SPEAKER_03: Don't tell her.
SPEAKER_03: And because I love her, I actually enjoy seeing her happy.
SPEAKER_03: Seeing her happy gives me joy.
SPEAKER_03: And so I do those things in order to see her happy.
SPEAKER_03: Christian obedience is like that.
SPEAKER_03: It's not like going to go, well, okay, I suppose Jesus died for me, so I better, you know, crawl over broken glass and do all of these good things.
SPEAKER_03: And no, it's a much more like a love relationship like that.
SPEAKER_03: Why do we obey God?
SPEAKER_02: Because when you're in a relationship with God, to see Him happy, to experience the pleasure of the Father, gives you joy.
SPEAKER_02: That's the motivation for Christian obedience.
SPEAKER_03: Martin Luther said that we're saved by faith alone, but saving faith is never alone.
SPEAKER_03: The gospel calls each of us not just to affirm that Jesus is Lord, but to trust him, to listen to his word, to follow what he says.
SPEAKER_03: That if he is Lord, to have him exercise that good lordship over your life and to respond in joyful obedience, especially when the obedience required of you is hard.
SPEAKER_03: And so for those of you who are following Jesus, it's worth it's worth me asking you at this point.
SPEAKER_03: Are you are you just affirming, yeah, Jesus died for my sins, love Jesus, think Jesus is great, believe in Jesus, Jesus is who he says he was.
SPEAKER_03: But are you also listening to his voice as he speaks over your life?
SPEAKER_03: Are you joyfully, willingly seeking to live under his lordship?
SPEAKER_03: Or are there bits of your life where you're like, yeah, Lord, you can have you can have this stuff, but this thing here that I really like, I'm gonna hold on to that.
SPEAKER_03: Please don't exercise your lordship over that.
SPEAKER_03: Are you listening to his voice?
SPEAKER_03: Are you seeking to follow him?
SPEAKER_03: Or are you saying one thing with your mouth and doing another with your life?
SPEAKER_02: And that's not the end.
SPEAKER_02: Paul tells us the goal of the gospel here in verse five is that all of this is done for his name's sake.
SPEAKER_03: Do you see that in verse five again?
SPEAKER_03: The obedience of faith for his namesake among the nations.
SPEAKER_03: And that's actually going to be our final point.
SPEAKER_03: It's our final point because uh for his namesake in the original comes at the end of the, uh comes at the end of the sentence.
SPEAKER_03: It's just kind of put in the middle in English.
SPEAKER_03: So we've seen that the gospel comes from God, it's God's gospel, it's the fulfillment of promises laid down in the Old Testament, it's centered on Jesus and his declaration that he is Lord of all, and that all are invited to respond to him in faith, a faith that shows forth in trust and obedience to what he says, and sixthly and finally, that all of this is for his namesake.
SPEAKER_03: That is, that's a Bible way of saying it's for his glory and honor.
SPEAKER_03: The goal of the gospel is the honoring of Jesus amongst all peoples.
SPEAKER_03: This is the goal of Paul's apostleship, to see more people come to know and love the Lord Jesus, that he might be made much of in every heart and every land.
SPEAKER_03: I think all of this is for the all this is for the glory of Jesus, all of this is for the glory of God.
SPEAKER_03: Isn't that selfish?
SPEAKER_03: You need to keep reading, you need to see, well, what are the lengths that he has gone?
SPEAKER_03: For you, the selfless life that he has lived.
SPEAKER_02: What's more, you and I, human beings, we were made to see his glory.
SPEAKER_03: We were made to give.
SPEAKER_03: Give glory and honor and worship to him, not because he needs it, but because we're invited into that relationship of joy that has always existed eternally.
SPEAKER_03: The gospel invites you to become who you were made to be.
SPEAKER_03: You when somebody becomes a Christian, they become truly human, living as they were made to live.
SPEAKER_03: This is the goal of the gospel, that Jesus might be made much of in every heart, in every land.
SPEAKER_03: This is the greatest goal and final end of all evangelism.
SPEAKER_03: That Jesus might be honored.
SPEAKER_03: That Jesus might be honored in hearts that were once hard to him.
SPEAKER_03: This is why we do what we do.
SPEAKER_03: This is why we meet Sunday after Sunday.
SPEAKER_03: This is why we desire to see people grow in faith, to deepen our joy, to deepen our dependence on God.
SPEAKER_03: This is why we want to plant more churches and see more people come to know and love the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: This is why we seek to raise up new believers and leaders who might take the gospel where Jesus is neither named nor known.
SPEAKER_03: Why do we do it all?
SPEAKER_03: We do it because we want to see Jesus honored, because he is worthy of honor and worship and glory.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_03: It's dark.
SPEAKER_03: I need some verbal response.
SPEAKER_03: That's why we do what we do.
SPEAKER_03: The gospel is not good advice, it is good news that God has acted in history to bring us from darkness to light, to bring us from death to life.
SPEAKER_03: That He has worked in the sending of His Son to take our sin by dying on that cross for us.
SPEAKER_03: And now He is gloriously enthroned in heaven.
SPEAKER_03: He is Lord of all.
SPEAKER_03: And it is only a matter of time until we all see that good lordship.
SPEAKER_03: And the invitation is that we would all come now to live under his good and perfect rule, to have a life that is forgiven, a life of joy and delight and obedience that lives not for ourselves, like Paul, like Paul did.
SPEAKER_03: Paul has now set that all aside and says, I'm a servant of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_03: The best thing that I can do with my life is give it away for the glory of another.
SPEAKER_03: The gospel is calling you out of yourself and to give your life for something that is far greater than you could possibly imagine.
SPEAKER_02: To live a life under good King Jesus, the one who is raised from the dead, to all who are in Rome, loved by God, called to be saints, grace to you in peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_02: Who is the Christian?
SPEAKER_02: Loved by God.
SPEAKER_02: You're loved by God.
SPEAKER_03: Paul will show you how much.