Audio: https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-kt2z4-16d3d55
Well, friends, we’re going to take a little break from the book of Exodus and spend some time studying what Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Piper, JI Packer, and many others, have called “the greatest letter ever written”, the book of Romans.
It’s not uncommon for the first sermon in a new series to be less of a sermon and more of a lecture. You know how it goes: Romans was written by this person, at this time, for this reason, yada yada yada. I don’t want to do that to you this morning.
Of course, it is important that you know who wrote Romans (the apostle Paul), and why he wrote it (to unify the church in Rome), and when he wrote it (towards the end of his third missionary journey), but the main thing you need to know about this book is that it is the most thorough explanation of the gospel in all of scripture.
From the very first verse until the very last, the book of Romans unpacks the idea that God, in Christ, is reconciling sinful man back to himself in righteousness. This letter is nothing less than an explanation of how God is saving the world. So let’s dive in together. Let me read this morning’s text and then we’ll ask for God’s help in prayer.
Read the Text
I’ve got six points for you this morning:
1. Gospel Servant
2. Gospel Promise
3. Gospel Lineage
4. Gospel Proof
5. Gospel Aim
6. Gospel Grace
…
1. Gospel Servant
The book of Romans begins, like all the other NT letters, with an introduction. Paul, per usual, introduces himself as an apostle. That is, he has been called (in a special way), set apart (for a special purpose), and he has been given a special message: the gospel.
Apostles are part of God’s plan of salvation. When God sent his son to die for our sins and resurrect us to newness of life, he appointed his apostles to be the frontline preachers of that good news to the world. We’re going to talk about that more in point two, but for now, I want to show you something else really significant about this calling and setting apart language. Look at verse seven.
Here’s what I want you to see: Paul uses the same language about the Christians in Rome that he uses about himself when referring to his apostleship. Repeat.
In v.1, Paul says that he was “called” to be an apostle. Do you see that? But then in v.7, Paul says that all of the Christians in Rome are also “called”. Called to what? To apostleship? No. Called to be saints. Now, the word saint means “holy ones” or those who have been set apart for a special purpose. Well, isn’t that exactly what Paul says about himself in verse one? Look there.
So, what am I getting at here? The word for apostle, in the Greek, simply means, “sent one”. That is, someone who has been given an assignment, a mission. Paul, is a “capital A” apostle, that is, his mission is very specific and unique in salvation history. He lays the foundation for the church and reveals scripture. Again, more on that in point two. But what I want you to see here in point one is that we, too, are apostles. If you are in the love of God, you have been called and set apart as an apostle, a “lower case a” apostle, that is.
The ”capital A” apostles have passed away (having served their divine purpose), but every single Christian in this room has been called by God and set apart for a special mission that will last until the end of the age: The great commission.
Do not think for a second that the great commission is only for ministers and missionaries with training and qualifications above your pay grade. It’s not. We are ALL, as the church of Jesus Christ, called to carry on the mission that was begun by Christ and his apostles. It is our job to declare what God is doing in Jesus to bring the nations to faithful, loving obedience.
So when you walk out those doors this morning, please understand that you do so on mission. Your mission only ends when you die or Jesus comes back, whichever one comes first. Are the nations fully evangelized? No? Ok, then, the mission carries on. Preach the gospel and live it out faithfully, trusting that the Lord is using you…yes, even you…to bring about the obedience of the nations.
2. Gospel Promise
Ok, so…in point 1 we saw that God is bringing his gospel into the world through his apostles, including Paul.
But here in point 2 we’re going to see that this promise to bring the gospel into the world was made “beforehand”. Look at v.2.
There’s a lot to unpack here, so let me try to do this as succinctly as possible.
The first thing I want you to see here is that the gospel is not a new idea. God has had a plan, since before the foundations of the world, to save us from the fall. To say it another way, God had a plan to save us from the fall since before the fall happened. Listen to Ephesians 1:4…
even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love
So, the gospel is not God’s plan B. You don’t have a plan B when you’re God. Maybe Zeus needs a plan B, or the God of open theism needs a contingency, but not the God of the bible.
The second thing I want you to see here is that God has been revealing his plan to us for a very long time. Sometimes when you have a really big, important, plan, you keep it to yourself. You’re afraid that if you don’t play it close to the chest, somebody’s gonna mess it up. But not God…not the gospel. This is a plan that God has been progressively revealing since the very beginning. As soon as Adam and Eve fell in sin, God made them a promise that he wouldn’t leave them there.
The third thing I want you to see is that God has been revealing his plan through his word.
Friends, if you want to know what God is doing to save the world, you can read about it for yourselves in this book. One pastor summarizes the whole bible like this:
– The old testament is promises made, and…
– the new testament is promises kept.
If you want to know what promises politicians have made (and most likely failed to keep) you can google it. But if you want to know about God’s promises, and his track record of keeping them, there’s only one place you can look: God’s Word. His holy scriptures.
Friends, do you understand how important it is for you to trust the bible? God himself says that if the scriptures can’t be trusted, than we can’t know anything of his saving purposes for the world.
1 Corinthians 15: According to the scriptures…
Praise God that he has left us with a reliable account of all of his saving deeds!
The fourth and final thing I want you to see here is that God’s promise to save his people is recorded for us in scripture by prophets and apostles. That’s what verse 2 says, right? “He promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures”.
This is a reference primarily to the old testament. But by way of implication we also understand this to apply to the NT as well. Prophets gave us the OT, Apostles (Paul, Peter, John, etc.) gave us the NT. You would want to qualify that a little, but it’s basically right.
The book of Ephesians elaborates on this at length. Turn to Ephesians 2 with me.
“the household of God [is] built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
-Eph 2:19-22
What this text teaches us is that the church is like a massive household, and the foundation for this household was laid by the authors of scripture: Prophets and apostles. This text also teaches us, implicitly, that prophets and apostles have passed away. Regardless of what self-proclaimed modern day apostles and prophets say on the internet, scripture is clear: Apostles and Prophets served a very unique purpose in salvation history: to lay the foundation of the church. You don’t go back and relay the foundation again unless you messed it up the first time.
Now that the foundation is laid and we have the complete canon of scripture, there is no longer a need for these roles. We have all the special revelation from God we need.
Do you believe that? Do you believe that this book has everything you need…not merely to be saved…but to live a life of godliness? Friends, listen to me very carefully: God’s promises come to us through his revealed word in scripture.
• Not through your experiences in nature.
• Not through your exercise of uninfluenced reason.
• Not through self-proclaimed spiritual rock stars.
• Not through private revelation.
Since we’re talking about private revelation, the idea that God speaks to me directly, let me hang out here a little bit.
Some of us grew up or were discipled in church contexts where it was not at all unusual to hear someone say, “God told me,” or “God spoke to me and said,” or “God told me to tell you…”. Friends, this is not the way God speaks to his people today. I’m not saying unequivocally that he can’t or won’t without exception, but I am saying that the testimony of scripture is clear: The primary way God reveals his salvation promise is through his prophets and apostles in scripture. And scripture is closed. So when someone says, “God said…” they should be pointing at a chapter and verse number in the bible.
Now, that does not mean that the Holy Spirit doesn’t lead and guide his people through various means, including providence and circumstance, intuitions and burdens, and other more subjective things. But if God is making a promise…for salvation…he is not doing it outside of scripture. These (point at bible) promises are enough for your life…for your eternity. Do not add to the perfect and perfectly sufficient revelation of God. As John Owen has written:
If private revelations agree with scripture, they are unnecessary. If they disagree, they are false.
-John Owen
3. Gospel Lineage
We live in a modern, democratic republic where bloodlines mean very little…in society, in politics, in marriage. Merit, in our world, matters more than DNA. Character and competency are more important than ancestry. But in another world, an older world—be it Victorian England or ancient Israel—blood lines mattered a lot. And, in some ways, they actually still do.
For instance, right here, at the very beginning of this massively important letter, the apostle Paul makes it a point to highlight the fact that Jesus is a blood descendant of David. Look at verse 3.
Now, we’re not going to hang out here very long, because Paul doesn’t. The rest of the letter is going to unpack this reality for us at length, so there’s no need to unpack it right now. But let me just say this:
The gospel message is a Jewish message. Not in the sense that it comes with a yamaka or a requirement to obey the Jewish food laws. Quite the opposite in fact. No, the gospel message is a Jewish message because God’s plan of salvation for the world came INTO the world through the Jewish people…through the nation of Israel.
• God’s promise came to Abraham…the father of the Jews.
• The law came through Moses…the Jewish prophet.
• The righteous rule of God in the promised land was exercised through David…a Jewish king.
• The Messiah was born in the bloodline of that Jewish king. That matters.
Christians may disagree about the church’s relationship to the modern secular Jewish state known as Israel today, fine. That’s something we can debate in love. But what Paul shows us right here in the first five verses of Romans is that if we reject the Jewish roots of Christianity, we are rejecting Christianity itself.
The gospel is not just an ethereal message about a vague concept of salvation. No, the gospel is historical. It actually happened and is happening today. God really did make a promise with a man called Abraham…WHO ACTUALLY EXISTED, he really did establish a nation called Israel, he really did give them a law and a land and a covenant, and he really did bring forth the seed of David in the flesh to fulfill all of the promises of salvation that were birthed into the world through Israel. So when teachers like Andy Stanley say things like “Christians need to unhitch our faith from the OT,” you can point them back to this verse and say, “No, my gospel is a gospel of King Jesus, the promised son of David, the true and better Israel.”
4. Gospel Proof
Look at verse 4.
What Paul is saying is this: When the Spirit raised Jesus from the dead, God gave the world all the proof it would ever need that he does indeed keep his promises.
There was once a man named Vernon Wayne Howell. He was the driver of a female Seventh Day Adventist cult leader for several years before one day realizing that God was actually calling him to be the prophet (shocker!) and take over his boss’s ministry. Surprisingly, she agreed!
Shortly after this revelation, Vernon Howell changed his name to David Koresh. Koresh led a medium sized gathering of zealous followers on the Jericho Ranch in the city of Waco, Texas. Shortly after taking over as chief prophet of the cult, Koresh told his followers that God had revealed to him that Jesus was in fact NOT the lamb from the book of Revelation. Oh no! As it turned out, Koresh himself was the lamb. He alone would be the one to (at the right time, of course) open the seven seals and lead the 144,000 into their final deliverance.
The only problem with this revelation was the fact that Koresh, along with most of his followers, died—very publicly—in a fiery blaze. You see, at his compound in Waco, Koresh had been practicing polygamy, sexually abusing young girls, and stockpiling illegal weapons, which drew the attention of both the FBI and the ATF. And it was during a joint raid and siege on their compound that Koresh and his followers died, swallowed up in the smoke and flames of the enemy they referred to as Babylon.
And here’s the thing: David Koresh is still dead. He, the supposed lamb of God, never got up out of his fiery grave. David Koresh is dead …
• Just like Muhammad.
• Just like Buddha.
• Just like Joseph Smith.
Only one messiah died and then rose again, and his name is Jesus.
In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says that the resurrection of Jesus is a non-negotiable aspect of Christianity.
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures
-1 Cor 15:3-4
I once talked with a man who had walked away from the faith but still professed some kind of Christianity. We spent hours in his office debating the gospel and its implications. At one point in the conversation I said something like, “Well, friend…I think you only say that because you’re not a Christian.” He was deeply offended by my comment. “I am a Christian!” he told me insistently. “I just don’t believe in the resurrection.”
I told him, of course, that there is no such thing as a Christian who doesn’t believe in the resurrection, any more than there can be a square circle or a married bachelor. That’s not…just…like…you know…my opinion man, it’s scripture. Paul says that if you lose the resurrection, you lose everything. Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life!” No resurrection = no gospel and no salvation. Listen to how Paul says it a little later in 1 Corinthians 15.
And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.
-1 Cor 15:14-19
5. Gospel Aim
We are never saved by obedience; we are saved by grace alone through faith alone. And yet, as the book of James (and the rest of the bible) is quick to remind us, that genuine faith will never BE alone. That is, it will always show itself through obedience. Look at v.5.
Do you see that phrase there? The “obedience of faith”? It’s crucial. Paul says, “My ministry is not just to get people to intellectually assent to the gospel, or to adjust to the moral norms of the gospel, or to admire the gospel, but to believe in and obey the gospel.”
You’ll often find preachers getting wonky on the gospel when they over-emphasize one aspect of it to the neglect of the other. They’ll either…
• Talk about obedience so much that you’ll be tempted to think that God just wants rote compliance from his people, regardless of whether or not they actually love and trust him.
• Or, they’ll talk about faith so much and obedience so little that you’ll be tempted to think that God doesn’t care how we live. That we can somehow know Jesus as our Lord without actually obeying his word.
But when it comes to the gospel, obedience and faith are never pitted against each other. It’s always a both/and, never an either/or. The gospel that we proclaim is this: Repent, FROM THE HEART. Turn away from your sins, trust in Christ to be your righteousness, and then obey Christ as Lord from a place of deep and sincere love.
• It’s all too easy to have a kind of obedience that is really no obedience at all, born not primarily of faith, but of fear, or more often, of self-righteousness.
• You can also have a kind of faith that is really no faith at all, a faith that never changes our lives, never affects our actions, attitudes, beliefs, or our tongues.
Listen to me:
• if you still believe all the same things you did before you professed faith (that is, if the gospel isn’t changing your mind about some things),
• if you still do all the same things you did before you professed faith (that is, if the gospel hasn’t affected your behavior),
• if you still speak the same way you did before you professed faith,
• if you still have the same general attitude and heart disposition you did before you professed faith, then the faith you profess is false.
You have not truly believed, and you are deceived. True faith changes us at the heart level first, and then…when our heart changes…slowly but surely, everything else about us changes with it.
The gospel message that Paul preaches, that Jesus preached, that I preach, that you must preach, is the “obedience of faith”. It’s right there in the great commission:
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit [that’s the faith part…baptism is an outward symbol of an inward reality], teaching them to [obey] all that I have commanded you.
– Matthew 18:19-20
6. Gospel Grace (The Gospel Comes Home!)
We’ve spent a significant amount of time considering the gospel at arm’s length this morning. Studying it at a distance. But verse six brings the gospel home into our hearts. Look there.
• Some of us have been too quick to bring the gospel home in our walk. We haven’t actually studied it to make sure that we understand it like a jeweler bent over a precious stone.
• Others of us only study the gospel at a distance. We dissect it, we break it down and put it back together again, we take notes and discuss and debate the gospel, but we never take it into ourselves and make it personal.
• But here we see that we must not only understand the gospel but we must also feast on it and apply all of its benefits to our heart and soul.
Here’s what the message of Paul’s gospel says to you this morning, Christian:
1. You are called.
Called out of the world and into Christ.
Called out of the darkness and into light.
Called out of the dominion of Satan and into the household of God.
Called out of your sin and into the righteousness of Christ.
Called to be an ambassador of Christ, as if God were making his appeal through you, be reconciled!
Called to God, by God, to enjoy God, for the glory of God forever and ever, amen.
2. You are a saint.
You are made holy by the blood of Jesus. You have a purpose, a mission, an identity that is rooted in Christ. Some of you may believe that sainthood is only for those really good, really holy Christians. Well, I’ve got news for you: those Christians don’t exist. We’re all sinners and screw ups. The only qualification for sainthood is this: Has God called you to himself? If the answer is yes, then you are a saint.
3. You are loved.
Listen to me: if you are in Christ, God loves you. The proof can be found at the foot of the bloody cross. God loves you so much that he sent his son to save you and bring you home again.
Nothing can separate you from the love of God.
“I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
– Rom 8:38-39
4. You are at peace with God
Think about the last time you had a serious relational rift with someone. Maybe they were mad at you. Maybe you were mad at them. Maybe there was jealousy, bitterness, envy, anger, resentment, unforgiveness, etc. Do you remember how that felt? That knot in your stomach? Those hot tears streaming down your cheek. Do you remember the depression that came from it, or the anxiety, or both? Do you remember how hard it was to sleep? Do you remember how that lack of peace effected everything else in your life, from your desire to eat to your other relationships to your performance at work?
Relational strife can completely rob us of peace. But that’s usually only for a little while. It’s hard in the moment, but more often than not we move with our lives. The relationship ends, or there is reconciliation, or whatever. Then we get back to normal. But when our relationship with God is broken because of our sin, there can NEVER be peace again. Not true peace. Not meaningful peace. Not lasting peace. Not ever again.
But in Christ, God has been gracious to us, friends. He has taken that knot in our stomach and untangled it. He has wiped away our tears. He has given us rest. He has, at great cost to himself, restored us to a right relationship with where we will know nothing but joy everlasting. God, in Christ, has fixed our broken relationship and welcomed us into his peace.
If you’re here this morning and you haven’t repented of your sins and trusted in Christ, I want you to know that I know what’s going on in your heart. I really do. I know that it is full (maybe not at this moment, but more than it should be) of fear, strife, turmoil, anxiety, anger, depression and more. And I’m calling on you, right now, this morning to open your eyes and realize that you can’t fix your own heart. I’m calling on you to recognize that your heart is troubled because it is far from its maker. The only way to know peace is to know Jesus.
And he is calling out to you, even now, to receive his joy, receive his peace, receive his love…to be reconciled to your maker…to come back home. To believe the gospel. To be saved.