Lesson 61b
Romans 15:14-21 · Mike Doyle · Nov 22, 2020
Romans (2018-21), No. 139
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926192143598

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Okay, so we are in lesson 61, and they cover verses, chapter 15, starting in verse 14. And I sent out 62 this week, which should complete chapter 15. So we got down to, starting in verse 14, Paul says, now I myself am confident concerning you, my brother, and that you also are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish one another." So his persuasion, as we talked about last week, he's completely persuaded about them. And he arrived at a settled conclusion, so he's not wishy-washy. And what's he settled about? What's he confident about?

That they are full of goodness. So my first question was, is what is the goodness that Paul is persuaded about? One of the commenters that I was looking at said, he's not talking about goodness in a general sense. But he's talking about something specific to a believer. What might that be? Let's see, Dr. Constable says, goodness is moral excellence that comes through the working of God's Spirit. I'm trying to connect it with what Courtney talked about with the stronger and weaker brother, and I think the goodness here has a tie there that the believer demonstrates his love by bearing the infirmities of the weaker brother. I think that's critical, because bearing the infirmities of anybody is a difficult thing for believers to bear the infirmities of a weaker brother.

And notice he says that you are full. The word full or filled is in the perfect tense, which means they have been filled and they continue to abide in the state of fullness. So this isn't an on and off kind of thing, that it has begun in the past and it continues. And the other aspect of this verse that's really kind of interesting is that he ties it to being filled with all knowledge, which enables them to admonish one another.

Now, that sounds like we all have the license to go around and set everybody straight, that we can be wokers, you know? We can tell people. You know, we all run into people who always want to correct us and always want to make sure that we're focusing on the being rather than carrying the burdens of one another. So how does knowledge allow us to admonish? What's the word admonish mean?

Hey, Mike. Yeah. I would like to comment before we leave that goodness idea. Sure. On that, because what comes to my mind is that it could be referring to a rule of righteousness. We're righteous in Christ, you know. And you can look at good being right, righteous, and bad being wrong. So I think that could have a meaning there regarding that.

And here again, Paul's reminding them of their identity. What's that, Russ? Oh, I said that was cool. Yeah. What he said. Yeah, he's talking about, I think, that they're full of goodness. And with all knowledge is the fact that they, is he talking position or condition? David, I think he's talking position. Yeah. And then I think I mentioned this last week.

It's like you're complete in knowledge and competent to instruct. He's not referring to one individual. He's addressing the brother. So as a group, just like with any group of believers that are meeting as a church body, among them is going to be everything they need to learn and grow, unify each other. Well, notice how filled with all knowledge enables one to admonish one another.

In other words, the knowledge he's talking about isn't psychobabble that I understand you and your personality and your temperament. That isn't the focus. The focus is I understand my position in Christ. I understand your position in Christ. So we're able to discuss that and talk about it on a basis that edifies both of us, rather than me somehow having a position one step above you so I can look down at you and tell you to get your act together.

You see that? So also understanding the Word of God and having that in your heart, so you're able to share that. That's exactly right. I was going to suggest that the combination of full of goodness and filled with knowledge work together when you admonish somebody. You can't do it independent. You can't do it independent of the goodness. And I also think the foundation of all that comes back to Christ Jesus.

It's coming from him. You know, Miles Stanford told me a long time ago, you know, every once in a while somebody will say something to you and it sticks with you your whole life. I called him up one day and I was complaining about the slowness of my spiritual growth, right? None of you have ever, you guys have all been on the fast track. I was sort of dragging along here. Here's what he said to me.

He said, it takes a long time for the Spirit of God to teach you the truth. And then it takes them twice as long to teach you how and when to give it to somebody else. And so, boy, that just spoke volumes to me because I made a career out of telling the right thing to the wrong people, you know, at the wrong time. And so it was important that I learn that lesson. And I think that when Paul says here that you're filled with goodness and all knowledge, I think he's talking about people who have not only have the truth, but have learned how to use it. And that's critical, I think. And most of us just love to tell somebody else how they ought to live their life. rather than, before I talk, I ought to have my own act together.

And I ought to be able to say it in a way that's edifying rather than destructive. And that takes a long time. I mean, it takes decades sometimes. I've been wanting to tell Courtney stuff for years, but I can't. Undo your mic, Courtney, so we can hear the response to that.

In my Bible here, I have, for admonish, to answer your question, I have warn. Warn. That's a good word. Sure. You know, how you tell your brother something, warning them, it's like your children. You can warn them. that down the road and to the left where you're headed, there's a train wreck and you're going to hit it if you don't change your direction. Well, they don't listen to you. They've got to have the train wreck.

But there are people who can say things, spiritual people who can say things to you where you listen and you think, oh, wow. Oh, wow, and I think that's—he's telling these Romans that, you know, you guys are pretty good spiritually, spiritual-wise, you have knowledge, and you can warn one another. You can walk with one another.

There are a lot of people in my life, if they come to me or call me up and say something to me, I listen to them. Because I trust them. I trust them with what they've said in the past or I've watched them operate. Believe it or not, I listen to Courtney sometimes. Okay, question two, do we need to be reminded about what we already know?

And verse 15 says, nevertheless, brother, and I have written more boldly to you on some points as reminding you because of the grace given to me by God. So I've always marveled at Paul's ability that he could point out deficiencies But at the same time, finding things to commend believers with. He could always do that. And even though he taught the strong believer and the weak believer.

And I'll tell you where you really see that. It's in 2 Peter 1, verse 12 and 13. Peter says, therefore I will always be ready to remind you of these things. Even though you already know them and have been established in the truth which is present with you, I consider it right, as long as I'm in this earthly dwelling, to stir you up by way of reminder.

You know, sometimes you think that the Word of God is repetitious. Well, it is, and purposely so. And I think there's a need no matter how complete and competent each one of us are with the word, that somebody needs to remind us. Remind us, remind us. And I think that happens all the time. I'll tell you a good example of that is those of you who read The Hungry Heart every day.

Five years down the road, here you are reading something that you read five years ago, and you totally forgot about it. And it's like it's brand new to you. And you think, oh yeah. Oh yeah, you know, and I think at some point you appreciate the people in your life that do remind you about things, you know, so.

What was that reference in 1 Peter? In 1 Peter chapter 1 verse 12 and 13, I'm sorry, 2 Peter. Yeah, 2 Peter chapter 1 verses 12 and 13. Yeah. Okay. You know, this goes back a little bit to my sharing on the Lord's table. Do this in remembrance. Yeah.

It's very important. The things that he wants, he wants us to remember. Paul is now emphasizing the same thing, to remember these things. Remember, positionally, this is at the end of the letter, where he's, you know, remember all of this. All of that I've told you in this letter, remember it. It's important. And like I said, just as the Lord said, do this in remembrance, I think Paul is saying the same thing here at the end. After everything I've told you in this letter, remember, it's one whole letter. He says to remember it. And I think that's key. Yeah, and interesting, he points out In reminding you, because of the grace given to me by God, boy, if there's ever a topic that we need to be reminded about minute by minute by minute, it's the topic of grace. Grace is not a commodity in a jar in the kitchen. It's in the total environment that we live in as believers, all grace. There's no law. There's no intimidation. There's no pressure. It's all grace.

And boy, we need to be reminded about that every day, every hour. Grace, grace, grace. Like Macaulay says, the unlimited and unmerited blessings from God based on the totally adequate work of Christ. We live blessed. And grace is the greatest motivator there is. There is no greater motivator than grace. So learning grace and growing in grace is critical for us as believers. So notice how this verse and the previous verse go together. There's grace, there's knowledge, and then there's the ability to admonish one another.

Why? Because of the grace we live under, okay? Hey, Mike, that reminds me of Romans 12 where Paul says, therefore, brothers, in view of God's mercy, I've learned And Myles Stanford's writings might have helped me to see this more clearly, but he's referring to everything he just wrote before.

So in view of all this, it's a reasonable act of worship to lay down your life. But it's reminding, hey, this is what, and so many people take that verse, we take things out of context, but that's all he's saying, in view of what I just said, all these truths about grace, all these truths about the cross. in view of all that. Right. When we come up to the cross, to salvation, and we are saved, at that particular moment, that's the first experience in every human being's life of what grace is.

There has been no grace up until that point. It's been there, it's been offered, but we don't know what it is. We don't know how it works. We don't know anything about it. So one of the things at the day and the minute we're saved, we start down this road of growing in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus. We have to learn about grace and how it's an operating principle. It's just not a doctrine. It's way more than a doctrine. It's the environment that we live in.

That also goes back, I think, the verse which in 2 Peter 3.18, you're to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus. Grow in grace and in the knowledge. The intimacy, the growth, the relationship, you grow in grace but also in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus.

He says it quite clearly right there. That was his prayer for him. Yeah, that's really interesting. And the apostle of grace is Paul. So question three says, was Paul uniquely chosen by God for a specific mission? Was he? Yes. I think that grace is part of that specific mission. He was the one—you know, most people look at Paul and say, well, he's just another apostle.

He's one of the 12 and so forth, but no, he's unique. Unique in the sense that what God called him for, you know, even Peter said, boy, this Paul says some really sort of strange stuff every now and then. It's hard to understand. What was the hard thing to understand?

Grace. Peter, James, and John, and all of those other apostles, yeah, they were entering into grace, but they were coming out of Judaism, and they were coming out of walking with the Lord Jesus on the earth. And here comes the apostle Paul, who is a total grace person. And that had the sound to, especially Jews, had the sound like, boy, that's a foreign language. the uniqueness of what Paul is doing, and watch what happens. In 15, he says, I've written you boldly that you, on some points, so as to remind you again of the grace that was given to me from God.

16, to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles, ministering as a priest the gospel of God so that my offering of the Gentiles may become acceptable sanctified by the Holy Spirit. Way, way beyond mere apostleship. Way beyond that. So look at the ministry he had. And that's why we spend so much time studying Paul's epistles, because of the uniqueness of them and the uniqueness of his ministry.

Mike, that makes, that reminds me of something that I've come to so firmly believe that the gospel is the gospel of grace. Yeah. I mean, that's what it is. Yeah, it is. About what Jesus is, what he's done. It's great. It's all about grace. Yeah. And we don't, people don't get that. They think the gospel. It means all kinds of things, and it can, but it really is about grace. It's the gospel of grace. Yeah, and when you think about the basic tenets of grace, is that I'm the receiver. I don't cause anything. As soon as I think I cause something, I'm outside the realm of grace. I'm totally the receiver.

So I looked up some stuff about Paul and this whole idea of him being a ministering priest. A priest is a man who represents people before God. Darby said that Paul was an administrator officially employed by the Lord Jesus. Alfred says he was a ministering priest. Thayer said he's a public minister. He's a servant of Christ. So we could say that he's a minister of Christ Jesus, and that doesn't actually do justice to what he is, because every preacher, in a sense rightly, would deem himself to be described as a minister of Christ Jesus, but Paul was unique because he brought a new message.

The body of Christ, you know, we've asked this question before. If you took an eraser or a pair of scissors and you cut Paul out of the New Testament, what do you miss? What don't you have? You don't have anything about the church, the body of Christ, identification, grace, all that stuff goes away.

Paul's unique that way, that he, that was his ministry. It's not funny, but a story to tell you that I remember talking to a pastor once who was the pastor of a church that, and this was 20 years ago in Michigan, openly accepted homosexuals and everything. You know how many churches are doing that. And he said that they don't, they take the words of Jesus, but they don't accept all of the things that Paul said. Oh, of course not. How could that was their reason? They're very, you know? Yeah. How could I? Yeah.

I was gonna say that when you when you think about the infinite God, chooses one man to teach about grace, and he teaches about a man who was murdering Christians, a man who was fighting against the whole concept of salvation through Jesus, and he uses him to preach. Yeah, it's amazing to me how God does things sometimes, and we'll compare We'll compare Paul with Moses, because Moses was a man chosen by God for a specific purpose, just like Abraham was, Isaac, and Jacob. It seems to me that God will do that, and he enables a man to carry on. Like the Apostle Paul, it's amazing what that guy went through to just get this message out that God, that he's a minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles. I mean, think about this.

Paul's a Pharisee. He's raised as a Pharisee. He's trained as a Pharisee, and he's zealous as a Jew. And he's the guy who's running around putting Christians in jail and killing them, that God chooses to be the minister of the grace message to the Gentile world. One guy. And, you know, we learn from scripture he's not real attractive. He doesn't have, you know, he's not very glib. His whole focus is to teach Christ and Him crucified, and he's the guy that the Lord Jesus says, okay, Paul, you're my guy, and I'm sending you to the Gentiles to teach them who I am and what grace is and what my Son did.

Well, that's grace right there! Yeah! Yeah, it is! And open up the door of salvation to every Gentile in the world. Here he goes, you know. It's amazing that God would choose this one man to do this one job. And the things that he suffers is just amazing to me that, you know, We admire men that can endure hardships, but nobody endured what this guy endured, you know. So, anyway. I was just going back. I spent all day talking about the Apostle Paul.

But you can look at Acts 10.35 and 11.18, where the Gentile salvation began, in Ananias' house when the Spirit of God came down on that house.

And Peter was absolutely amazed. And he had to run back to the rest of the apostles and say, guess what, fellas? God intends to save the Gentiles. And they must have thought he was nuts, because they thought up until that time that salvation, and Christ was the Messiah, and that salvation was going to be exclusive to the Jewish people, just like everything had been for 2,500 years. But now the Gentiles.

And then he calls one man, who is a Jew, to be an apostle to the Gentiles. I often wonder, why one to the Gentiles and 11 to the Jews? Was it because the Jews were stiff-necked? Was it because the Jews had so much to unlearn? Was it because it's much easier to teach somebody from scratch than it is to try to unlearn something? One of the hardest things in Christianity is to teach the grace message to people who grew up in a denomination, because they're saturated with legalism and tradition. And grace is totally different than that.

Yeah, you know, just going back a little bit on, you know, thinking about removing Paul and what happens and where we'd be at. Just like, you know, when I was quoting 2 Peter 3.18, you know, that was Peter. And just looking at the time frame of that, that was in 66. And you know, one year before Paul and Peter are martyred, but that's after all of Paul's epistles. So you know, he's talking about grace and that.

And then I was looking at like 1 John, or you know, from John, I was in 90. And just timeframe, it's a lot, you know, completely after. And if you read, you know, just some of my highlights in my Bible about, you know, some of the thoughts in there, Again, if you pulled Paul out or any of that, none of that makes sense. So again, the thought that removing Paul, even though there are some references and you look at some of the amazing truths in 1 John and that, in year 90, but without Paul, none of that made sense. I was just reading some of the highlights that I have highlighted. It's like Paul was really the key to all of this. When you say if you remove him, you don't have anything about the body, there are references afterwards, but they don't make any sense if you don't have all the other letters from Paul. I agree. So, question four.

In verse 16, what does offering of the Gentiles mean? I'll read it to you. As a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles, ministering as a priest, the gospel of God, so that my offering of the Gentiles may become acceptable sanctified by the Holy Spirit. So what is this offering of the Gentiles to God all about?

Have you ever entertained that thought? Because it's kind of a weird, when you first see it, it's kind of a weird statement. And we sort of jump right over it. But Paul says he's offering up the Gentiles to God. So think about it, as a priest, he represents the people before God. And so Paul's priestly ministering of the gospel of God to them, the Gentiles, it must be, you can't spiritualize this away by just calling it a figurative speech. Notice that Gentiles were considered by the Jews to be unclean. but they have been sanctified or set apart by the Holy Spirit.

How? Through their being offered up by Paul by means of the gospel that we brought out in chapter 11, 17. Somebody read that verse. Mike? Yeah. Would it be that he's presenting the Gentiles, that they have accepted Christ and they're saved, and so he's presenting them to God? Yes, that's what he's doing. He's presenting them to God. That's exactly right.

If you look back at 1117, interesting verse, if some of the branches were broken off, And you being a wild olive tree, who's the wild olive tree? The Gentiles, right? You being a wild olive tree were grafted in among them, and with them became a partaker of the root and the fatness of the olive tree. So the grafting in includes you in Gentiles in salvation. which up to this point, everyone thought it was exclusively for the Jews, but it's not.

And you know what else is interesting about this verse? Lots of Gentiles today have the same attitude that the Jews had back in the day, about that they're somehow special, and they don't really need to be paying attention, you know? And this verse 17 and so forth is going to show that they're going to be taken out again if they're not faithful. Isn't that interesting?

Not as a nation, but individuals. When the Gentiles are broken off, the natural branches, Israelites, are grafted in again to the root of the promise and the blessings of Abraham. They, the Gentiles, at that point, When the rapture happens, the Gentile nations are not going to be sanctified by the Holy Spirit. We are now, but it won't be then, okay? So they won't be able to worship God like we can, because they won't be grafted in. It won't be free for them. They're going to have to go to the Jews to get to Christ. They're going to have to go through Israel. We don't have to do that. We don't have to do that, okay? Let's see. Now notice it says, the offering up of the Gentiles might thus be made acceptable. What do you think he means by acceptable? What makes you and me acceptable? Jesus.

The imputed righteousness of God. Imputed righteousness? Would you say that righteousness has been imputed to us? Or, offer another thought, that it isn't imputation, it's position. I have the righteousness of God in Christ. It isn't dualism, it's oneness. He hasn't said, well, I'm going to take some of my righteousness and impute it to you so you'll be acceptable. No, I'm going to take you and put you into Christ. And whatever is true of Christ is now true of you. See the difference? Yeah. The constable says positional sanctification is in view rather than progressive sanctification. That's exactly right.

I read another thing here. It's evident that from, and this might be from Constable, that apart from the full grace gospel of Paul, the offering up of the Gentiles could not be gladly acceptable by God, for Israel had had a law with forms and ordinances. The Gentiles had nothing. And to them, as having nothing, Paul's grace gospel came, asking nothing, but bestowing everything. See? That's the difference, and that's why we're acceptable. Oh, my goodness, I just noticed the time. I have to stop there. Hey, Mike. Yes, sir.

I wanted to mention a book. Some of you, I'm sure, have even read it, but it's called Paul the Apostle of the Heart Set Free by F.F. Bruce, and it is an amazing book that will explain so much about what we've been talking about with Paul and his gospel in relation to the other apostles. What's the name of it? The Apostle of the Heart Set Free. Okay.

I believe it's F.F. Bruce. I've read some F.F. Bruce before. I'm writing left-handed because I can't write right-handed. Well, I'll have to interpret that later. Hey, Mike, can I ask you one question? Yes, sir. I was going to say, it seems like, you know how sometimes in life things don't seem fair?

And when you think about the Jews, You know, they were in captivity for 100 years. They went through the Exodus. They conquered the land. They did all this stuff. And the Gentiles just go, I believe in Jesus. Bam! You're in. But you know what? You know what? That God offered all of this to the Jews based on the same basis you have it, by faith. Yeah. By faith. Yeah. And the first six months or seven months of the Jewish pilgrimage from Egypt out to where they camped next to Sinai was all grace. They didn't have to do anything but walk, right? All grace.

And so he gave them, and then he set the people apart, and he said to them, I'm gonna give you some principles here that'll show you how people who are set apart to me ought to behave themselves. And their attitude is, well, just tell us what to do and we'll do it, and no problem. You just tell us and we'll do it. They couldn't make it 40 days. So, anyway, all right, let's close.

Father, how we thank you for your grace. We thank you that you have been so careful through your priest to us, the Apostle Paul, to show us how this grace operates and functions, and that we might live in it more and more every minute of every day. And we thank you, we pray in your Son's precious name, amen.