Lesson 61c

Okay, so we are in Lesson 61, and we had found our way in Romans 15, down to verse 18. So, anybody got the verses in front of them? Somebody read verse 18. For I will not dare to speak of any of those things which Christ has not wrought by me. make the Gentiles obedient by word and deed. OK. So my question is, why does Paul speak only of his calling and work?

Why would he do just that? I think the obvious answer is that he is indicating the distinctiveness of his work. What makes his work so distinctive and his calling so distinctive? Because it's different from the other apostles. Easy question. What makes it so different? He was the apostle to the Gentiles. That's right.

He's the apostle to the Gentiles, which means that what he has to say is primarily to the Gentiles, which the interesting thing about Paul's ministry You ever notice that the Lord sent what amounted to 12 apostles to the nation of Israel and only one to all of Gentiles? Why do you think that's the way it is? Why would he only need one to the Gentiles and 12? I mean, were the Jews that stubborn?

Hi. My attitude is that I think it's much tougher to unlearn something and replace it with something new than it is to start from scratch. And so I think that that's why, one, his ministry is unique, but two, why it only took one guy. Now, he's a special guy.

There's no doubt about that. He has special credentials to do what God has called him to do. But he doesn't want, one of the other reasons for this question is that he doesn't want to confuse what he's doing and taking any glory from God's work through him. He recognizes that everything he does is because the Spirit of God does something through him. And he's not to be credited. It's not for his own glory. It's for the glory of the Lord himself. And I think that's a point that each one of us, each one of us, by the way, has a ministry of some kind. It's not about our glory. It's about we operate to act as a conduit for the glory of the Lord Jesus and that's why we exist. That's why he has called us to do things. We'll talk a little bit about that later in the main service.

So he's only going to talk about what Christ has done through him through preaching and attesting to miracles and attending to where he is and the power of the Holy Spirit. That's all he's going to talk about. You know, that's indicative, I think, of those who serve the Lord, that they do talk about what the Lord is doing and not what they're doing, and that they are just being used.

So an example would be, if you look at verse 19, it would be, let me get it up here. uh... in the power of the signs and wonders in the power of the spirit so that from jerusalem and roundabout as far i can't say that word liricum liricum i have fully preached the gospel now notice signs and wonders which are miracles and stuff that he could do and did like all the apostles could do and it's in the power of the holy spirit I don't know if you realize it, but if you're sitting down in your family room and you're counseling with another believer, that's in the power of the Holy Spirit if it's going to be effective. It has to be, because he's the one that communicates. He communicates the spiritual truth. You're the vehicle through which he's doing it, but it's the power of the Spirit that does it.

Another great example is like when Paul, in Acts 28, where he was building a fire, and a snake came out of the fire and bit him in the hand. Everybody thought he was gonna die, but he didn't. Stuff like that that goes on primarily was to authenticate his ministry to the Jews, but also, in that case, in Acts 28, the viewpoint of the people that saw that and the subsequent spreading of that event, Paul had to really work hard to step out of the spotlight and put the glory and the focus on the Lord where it belonged. Even though he was healing people on that island and he was doing all kinds of things, he knew where the glory should be.

So, how tough is it for us all of us involved in whatever ministry we're in, to not just steal a little bit of the glory. Is that a hard thing? I guess it isn't, huh? No. I think it's the flesh, you know, loves to get in the spotlight and get recognition and all that. We're going to be strongly tempted, but it's a choice we make, you know, whether we're going to go that route or not.

And then I know, just from my own personal experience, that God's just allowed me to go through these times of trial and suffering and brokenness, you know, so that, because I don't want the glory, but the flesh is so pulled to feel that if we're not careful. But it's through my own experience, like I said, through this brokenness, here I am again in this situation with the dawn. Lord, you know, I can't do this. You know, I didn't really see this coming in this way. But it just brings more humility in a sense, you know, and humbleness. But it's easier to... No, that's good because a lot of times you, you know, you're just going along and living your life, so to speak. Things happen and you wonder, Oh, well, that was pretty cool. You know, the Lord did a cool thing. But then you realize, well, wait a minute, it's the Lord who did it.

I mean, I have to tell you sometimes, and I remember my eyes lit up years and years ago when Hal Malloy was talking about this from the pulpit. He said that he'd be halfway home from church, and this thought, it's like a little person was talking in his ear. He'd say to him, boy, Hal, you did a great job this morning. He would entertain that thought for about 15 seconds and then it would hit him like, wait a minute, I didn't do anything. Our sin nature always wants to stick its finger in there and take credit. It always does, it always does. Every blessing that we realize and every involvement that we have in the work of the Lord is all by grace. We are not the cause of anything. OK, eight, what two things did the Lord Jesus work through Paul to accomplish? What was he trying to do with the Gentiles?

And I can tell you what one of the commenters said. See if you agree with this. One, he worked with a view towards obedience on the part of the Gentiles. So, you know, I'm one of those guys, when I see that word obedience, the hackles go up on the back of my neck. But I agree with him if I think about what obedience does God require of Gentiles? What's the obedience? that they repent. It's the obedience of faith that we would believe, that we would trust Him with what He has to say and what Paul was working with the Gentiles, Christ working in Paul to make the Gentiles believe the gospel, believe the message.

In other words, respond to it by faith, which is by personal faith. And so Paul uses that as a vindication of why he's writing to the Romans. Why is he doing it? Because he wants them to understand the information, and he wants them to believe it. And I would say that same principle holds true today.

I mean, one of the things that we discover is, well, When we have conversations, what are we really investigating with each other? Well, what do you really believe? You may know a lot of stuff, but what do you really believe? What are you hanging on to in terms of your faith? Or do you just have an impulse, or do you have an experience, or do you have some other thing that you need to have in your life to verify that God's word is true? but that it just objectively, if the Lord says it, it's good enough for me.

If you're like me, I run into things in the Word of God where I, it isn't that I doubt it, it's just so foreign. The concept is so foreign, I just have to take it and say, okay, I trust you about this, but I really don't understand what you're doing or what you mean here.

And so, learning to walk by faith is one of the things that Paul is trying to teach these Gentiles to do, to believe what he has to say. To me, that's a huge thing, because the whole Gentile world's faith is based on what Paul taught. One guy, one guy, and he had detractors following him wherever he went. the Judaizers and others that they just absolutely were not buying into anything he had to say and were trying to disparage him wherever he went. The second thing I wrote down, it's not on his own impulse but in Christ that he does it and the Romans as Gentiles lie within the sphere in which Christ works through him. So two things, He was trying to get them to listen to the gospel and to believe it, and to recognize that what this grace coming towards them was real. It wasn't manufactured. So verse 20, somebody read verse 20. Yea, so I have strived to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build upon another man's foundation. Interesting concept.

So what was his ambition regarding preaching the gospel? Was it because he wanted to tell them that we're all going to meet at church on Sunday at 10 o'clock? It's interesting that Paul has this desire to go where nobody else has ever gone. That he would be the one who would preach the message of the gospel where it had never been preached before.

So you think he had a pretty virgin territory? I would think he did. I would think he did because you've got to think about what Paul's message is and as he goes through these countries, what they must have thought about what he was saying, you know, based on whatever religion. It makes me think of his I'm in Athens.

Can you hear Courtney? Push the button, push it. Courtney, go ahead. Yeah. I can't hear him. I'll repeat what he said in a minute. Um, uh, Courtney was saying that his mission was to spread the gospel. So if you're going to spread the gospel, you don't go to the same town every time. You're, you're expanding it. You're going someplace new, uh, all the time. So that's, that's what he's doing. So, um, what I find, uh, say something, Courtney, see if they hear you. They're shaking their head no. Okay. Courtney was doing something a minute ago where his volume came way up. Oh. Okay.

No, I mean that's a great point because All the way back from Genesis forward and even after the Tower of Babel, what God told people to do was to spread out over the earth and subdue it. And what did they do? They went about 20 miles down the road and started the city. And they never went anywhere. They all band together. And so then they decided in Babel that they were gonna build these towers and reach up to God.

And what did he do? He changed the language for what purpose? So they would have to spread out. And look what he did with the Jews in Jerusalem who had become Christians. They were supposed to be spreading the gospel too, but they got real comfortable in Jerusalem. So what did he do?

He sent the Romans in there to take their temple down a stone at a time and spread them out so that the gospel message would go. Along with that, of course, is the other things that are in place that we'll talk about next week on the fullness of times. The Greek language was a common language throughout the whole civilized world, first time in history that that ever happened, so the gospel could get spread that way. The Romans had built all these wonderful roads, so you had access to go wherever. And so here's Paul taking advantage of both of those things. And what is he doing? His focus is to spread the gospel.

He did not want to go, although he did on his journeys, go back through places he'd been before. But his mission was not to ever settle down someplace. It was always to go continue to virgin territory. Like he talked about after Rome he was going to go to Spain. The Greek language was in Spain, the roads were there. Jim? I think he was directed by the Holy Spirit to go to so many different places. So, you know, I'm sure he would rather have settled in one place, you know, but I don't think the Holy Spirit wanted him to do that.

You know, I was thinking about this and about how missionaries go to places now and they sort of establish an environment and they stay there. And I think that probably, I've always admired the way New Tribes does it, is that they go in to a place where they don't even know the language.

And they spend time there learning the language so they can translate the language into a Bible. and they can give the good news, the gospel message to whoever they're talking to in their native language. Well, that takes years to do that kind of thing. And then when they establish a church and the language and the Bible's in place, they pack up and go home. They leave. So I find that just amazing, that it doesn't become an enterprise centrally located in a place. At first it does, but then the message of the gospel is spread by the people in that area who come to Christ.

Mike, I had a couple of thoughts on that. I know here in Canada, maybe it was the same in the U.S., but I think the Holy Spirit gives evangelists, missionaries, a certain desire like that, because they say the missionaries reached many of the Indian people before the fur traders did. They had such a strong desire to get out into the wilderness and find these people that had never heard. And another point is when JD and Les McCall you were up here, they taught us so much, but in their leaving here, our growth began to be, I don't know, there's something about that when the missionary leaves. And you're kind of on your own that you have to learn to depend on the Holy Spirit and your growth takes on a whole new dimension. Oh, that's a great point. That is a really good point. Courtney? I don't know if you hear, but I think it needs both.

Paul went there, but then he established churches with elders and all that. So it's like the missionary. The new tribes may come in, but you still need the missionary there to continue the work. So it's the same process. Paul was the one like new tribes, but the missionaries are the ones like once they establish. For you know continue the growth continue the teaching and all that drives in and out you may or may not have it grow But so I think it's the same procedure.

I don't I don't discount missionaries for staying there because that's what Paul established that they would be formed and then he would go on and spread the word again kind of what you say he spreads the word any of you guys hear that I I think the really key word that comes out of this verse is the word foundation. Um, Courtney, you said establish, um, and you're right.

Some say some go, uh, we're not Paul. We didn't have the same. It may be a little unfair to compare Paul to a missionary in the same sense in all the ways, but just because he was so unique, he was unique among the 12. He was different as an apostle. to the Gentiles, and so he's establishing something far greater in terms of the name. And that verse 20 talks about that.

And I think the word foundation is something that, yeah, I'd be interested to see or hear what the class has to say about. What does that mean, to establish a foundation? Yeah, that's a great question, JD. What does it mean to establish a foundation?

Is it just to just to give the basic gospel message and that's it? Answer, no. No, it's much more than that. And that's why the book of Romans serves such a great purpose for us to learn. What is he trying to do? He's not only establishing the gospel message, but the foundation of the life that is lived and how the life is laid down in front of everybody, the foundation is a lot more than just believing on the person and work of Christ, I think.

You know, we in our day think that if we have a a pretty good handle on identification truths that we somehow have moved ahead of the foundational people. No, I think identification is foundational. I think all of Romans is foundational. The whole book is a foundation. And everything works off of that. Because here's the interesting thing about Romans. Romans never leaves the earth. Understand what I mean by that? Compare Romans with Ephesians or Colossians or any of these other books. Where are you headed? You're headed off the earth to heaven, right? Romans never leaves that. It stays on the earth because it's all foundation. That all has to be in place before there's an understanding of my position in Christ and what that means and where it is. You see that?

And Mike, it goes back to when we first started this class was in Newell's book in the back. These books are not chronological. This is the foundation, and then we move on and Paul reveals a little bit more each time. So this is the foundational one, and that's why I thought it was kind of walks through how it is through all the epistles, how he grows from focused only on earth to now as he walks through, and that's where the books are laid out to grow us as believers. So what Courtney's talking about is that the foundation of Romans is, like Newell talks about at the end of Newell's Romans, he lays out spiritual order of the epistles. And it's not the order that they are printed in your Bible, it's the spiritual order. And Romans is the first one. It's the foundation. It's the concrete that you build on from after that. So... Hey, Mike. Yes, sir. You know, it makes me think about the foundations to be solid in grace. Because Galatians is right, is it the next book that's after Romans.

And here's Paul addressing this issue of the law and grace. Because if you don't get that clear to somebody, it's new right away. You know, because what I'll be thinking is all about doing to become. Then teaches you got to do to become. Sure. And God teaches and then do. And if that's not a solid rock to lay on the foundation, then, like you said earlier, it's easier to teach somebody something new than to try to talk to somebody to unlearn something. Right. I had a conversation, I met some guys on Saturdays, and this one fella, he's just so, he doesn't have it clear yet about what's the law versus grace. And that's a real challenge. He's in the majority. Yeah.

Hey Mike, Mike, I had a I was thinking that maybe one of the foundational pieces is that until we have really placed our faith in Christ and believe, we're not indwelled by the Spirit yet. And once we believe we're indwelled by the Spirit, the 34 things are true of us. And so if you can get people filled with the Holy Spirit through faith alone, then they can start learning. Yeah, well that's true. In order to begin to understand anything to the right of Romans 3, Romans 3 has to be in place. You have to believe in the personal work of Christ.

And then the expansion of what that means comes along, but if you take a step back and look at Romans 3, frees us from the penalty of our sins. That's a new thing. So a person comes along and he believes that and he recognizes and understands because of the Spirit persuades him that he's not gonna have to answer for any of his sins, whether he did them in the past, whether he's doing them right now or even in the future, he's free. But then you get a little farther down the road and you begin to wonder, gee, I wonder if the Lord did anything about the source of that sinfulness. It's one thing to, you know, and you find yourself as a growing believer, you're in that mode of confess, you know, and sin and confess and sin and confess and sin and confess. And then that brings in the question, at least in my mind, well, did the Lord do anything about the source of my sinning? And so here comes Romans six. And Romans 6 tells us that we were identified, we were on that cross, co-crucified with Christ, buried and resurrected.

Wow. That's pretty cool. And absolutely no human logic could make any sense of that. So by faith you take it. And then he begins to expand. If that's true, then look at the ramifications of the fact that you were crucified with Christ, you were buried with him and resurrected, and now that you're resurrected, look at the ramifications from that. I'm now totally under grace. There isn't anything left for me to do. I don't have to prove or achieve or acquire anything other than my position, and Christ is already there.

So he starts to lay out grace, and then he, in seven, he hits the issue of law. You know, and he uses the example of a marriage contract that, you know, that a man's married, or a woman's married to a man as long as he lives, but if he dies, she's free. With a man is the lost system. So now we have a new system. The new system is grace, and I'm no longer under a lost system.

And then from the rest of seven, he explains how a believer with all of that information is still trying to live the Christian life out of his own efforts. And guess what happens? He's a total failure. He's a total failure. So you can see how it builds.

It goes from sins to sin, to sin nature, to position in Christ, free from the law, and then you get to Romans 8. And I've always thought that Romans 8 was the beginning of the Christian life. Everything up to that point tells you how you got there and what you have. And so you start moving forward.

And then you go through 8, 9, 10, 11 talks about what God did with the Jews. He set them aside. And starting in 12, he said, now, by the mercies of God, present your body a living sacrifice, which is your reasonable service. Holy and acceptable to me. About that time in your Christian experience, you're thinking, well, I wonder what God wants me to do with my body.

And then it keeps going. But then you get to Galatians, like David was talking about, where it's real, real easy for the Galatians to go back to law. It's real easy for any of us to go back to law, because we think, I've got to do this in order for God to bless me. It's an entirely new concept in our minds when we realize I've already been blessed.

The law says, if you obey me, I will bless you. Grace says, because I've totally blessed you, you'll obey me, you'll respond. That's a whole new, I mean, those thoughts never entered your mind before you were saved. You weren't capable of receiving, that didn't make any sense whatsoever.

But now it starts to make sense because of the cross. because of our resurrection with him. And not only that, it starts talking about being seated in the heavenlies. Now we get to leave the earth. Wow. So that's why it's so important. Everybody's been talking about understanding the foundation. You've got to have that foundation because there's things that are going to be said in other epistles that without that foundation, you can't understand them. You just simply can't understand them. because they don't make any sense to you. Talking a different language, so to speak. Okay. Last question,

10. Describe what Paul meant by, quote, having a great desire to go to Rome. What did he mean by that? It's just that Rome was the next stop?

What I think Paul is talking about here and what he's expressing is the heart that the Spirit of God put in him to actually go and see these people, that he wanted to be satisfied with the fellowship and just the camaraderie with the believers in Rome.

And he really desired to go there and hang out with them see that they, almost every place he went, he always wanted to stay longer, but he had to move on. And I can see why he would want to. You get involved with a group of believers, and they're growing, and you're excited, and they're excited, but now you gotta leave and go. Well, he's written this letter to Rome, the Romans, but he's never been there.

And we're gonna find out in the next chapter, there's a whole bunch of people in Rome that he knows. because he acknowledges them and says say hello to this person and that person. So he has in his heart an affection for these Romans. And that's what a true evangelist has.

He has an affection for the people he's ministering to. You care about them. It's like demonstrated in our fellowship. Look at the care that we all have for Tom Mallinson. you know, that we would do anything to help that guy under any circumstances. And we're probably not done yet with him.

And I think that's what happens within a group of believers, is that there's a love that's developed, and you start to anticipate, start to anticipate hanging out with those people, and you really miss it. I know I do. I haven't been out of town in a while, but I know when I'm gone for a week or two, I can't wait to get back, because this is my family. Okay, so I see it's time.

So we will do lesson 62 next week. Maybe we'll do the whole lesson if we go fast. Maybe a JD, why don't you do it? You're really good at going fast. You didn't ask me. Well, I could ask you. Why is everybody laughing right now? I don't understand. You want to do Lesson 62? Yeah, put me on the spot, why don't you? Of course I do. Notice how I asked it? I didn't say will you do it, do you want to do it? Let's do this, J.D., let's talk tomorrow about it and we'll go from there. I'm always, yeah, I'm available, so. Okay. All right, let's close. Father, how we thank you for your grace and thank you for this study that we have and the basics of who we are in Christ. We pray in his precious name, amen.