Set apart for the Gospel of God

Well, good morning. I'm glad to see folks here. We need to continue to pray for Mike. Hopefully he's listening. He said he'd listen and decide what he was going to teach after I taught. So that's good. Of course, Mike has already kind of given you an introduction so far. He gave you kind of the picture of Romans and what people had said about it. So I'm going to kind of dive into it. I think Mike may go back and actually go through.

His plan was that one Sunday he wasn't feeling well that to go through kind of chapter by chapter and explain the whole book, the whole picture of the book. And he may do that after in a couple of weeks here, hopefully, Lord willing. So I'm just going to dive into the first, actually just the first four verses today. I labeled that set apart for the gospel of God.

And that's one of the things that Paul talked about himself. And we're going to examine the structure of the letters that Paul wrote. Today we write letters. We have a format that we write. To John, from Mary, greetings, and then goodbye at the end. The letters in that time were different.

So let's get into it here. First of all, I want to give an outline. This is from our brother Hal. which I thought was really quite good. So this is an outline of the first 17 verses in chapter 1. One of the themes, or probably the theme, if you will, of the book of Romans is kind of given in verses 16 and 17. I'd like to read that.

And it says in verse 16 of chapter 1, For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first, also to the Greek. For it, the gospel, is the righteousness of God, is revealed in us from faith to faith, as it is written, but the righteous man shall live by faith. So in this outline what I liked is that He titled that the first 17 verses the righteousness of God revealed and that's revealed in the gospel message and But their blessings that Paul's gonna talk about that he received personally in verse 1 blessings to Paul the blessings of the gospel of the gospel itself in two and three and then the blessings of of who Christ is of who the Son of God is and three and four and And then next week I'm going to cover 5 through 7 which talks about who we are in Christ, who Paul is, and then who the ordinary believer is. And then in the following weeks we'll cover the blessings to the Roman believers, and then 16 and 17 which will be covered in much more detail. So let's kind of get started here. So let's look at the structure of the letters of Paul, and you can actually maybe expand that to all the letters in the New Testament.

They had this format, and this is from Macaulay. First was to state the name of the author or the writer. That was the first thing that was given. The second thing was, and actually in that, let me just go back, in that section, It could be long or short.

And today, we're going to say it's going to be six verses long of Paul introducing himself, giving his resume, if you will, and also giving his adoration and praise to God for the gospel. So then that's followed by the person to whom the letter is addressed, the two-part. Then after that is a greeting, a hi there, greetings. And then lastly, the body of the letter. So that's the format.

So to kind of get your feet in the ground here, let's look at the book of Ephesus. The book of the Ephesians, rather. So it starts off, Paul, he's the author of this book as well, and he has a very short description of himself. An apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. And the next part is, it says, to the saints who are at Ephesus who are faithful in Christ Jesus.

So Paul addresses who he is just like saying, I'd be saying, Roger, elder at Holly Hills Bible Church, something like that. That's kind of the idea. He identifies who he is. And apparently that was more common. That was the common way of expressing yourself.

And then who it's to. It's to the saints who are at Ephesus. And then the greeting is, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. And then following that is the body of the letter, and the letter just ends. But Paul always, actually at the end of the letters, we've seen in Corinthians, he'll have some final greetings, some final goodbyes, if you will.

So that's kind of the format. So now let's look at the book of Romans, which we're going to be studying here for probably the next couple of years. So, okay, Romans. So he starts off again. So this part, it's going to be, he has six verses worth of Things to say Paul's pretty gonna be pretty wordy here He's going to talk about some wonderful things. He's going to give his if you will his credentials his calling He's going to talk about our wonderful Savior. He's going to talk about the wonderful gospel He's going to bring in all kinds of wonderful things and some of someone said it's like a rabbit trail And I think it actually is not quite a rabbit trail. It's actually pretty Pretty precise and I've actually tried to outline that which we'll see here very shortly So that's the that's the first part Paul then he has to in verse 7 to all who are beloved of God in Rome called Saints and then we see the greeting in the last part of 7 grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, so that's the Roman introduction if you will that's the beginning of the book of Romans, so we're going to zoom in on the first four verses today and So to do that, I thought, let's just get some justification. Why did Paul spend six verses worth of doing it?

Why would he do that? Did he have a bad day? There must be some rationale. So I looked at several people, and here's kind of what I came up with. Why does Paul have such detail? Well, it seems like there's a clue in verse 10, 110 of chapter 1, It says, always in my prayers, making requests, if perhaps, at last, by the will of God, I may succeed in coming to you.

So, he tells us very early in the book, he actually has not set foot in Rome. He will, in chains, eventually, but at this point in time, he hasn't been there. So he spends a lot of time identifying himself, telling who he is. So he wants to tell them who he is. Also, these are believers he's writing to. He wants to tell them about the wonderful Savior, the wonderful Gospel. So that's why he spends all this time telling the Roman believers about himself and about Christ and the Gospel. And so he hadn't seen them face to face yet.

So I kind of summarized that little section of those first six verses. So Paul was telling them of who he was, and the blessings he had received, and he's going to enumerate those one after the other, the blessings of the gospel, and the blessings of who he is, of who we are in Christ, and who the believer are in him, in Christ as well.

Okay, so to accomplish that, I took a crack, and actually I saw people kind of allude to this, but I hadn't seen it actually done, so I said, well, this is doable. We can do this. We can outline those first six verses. So I took the first six verses, and I looked at the subject, tried to organize it. So here's my crack at that, and actually it's on your handout.

So it starts off, Paul, so the first three points Paul makes, he's a bondservant of Christ Jesus, and we're going to look at the word doulos, He's called us an apostle, and he's set apart for the gospel of God. So that's pretty straightforward. But then, he starts in verse 2, he starts with the word which, which refers back to verse 1, which, the gospel of God, he promised beforehand through the prophets, in the holy scriptures, concerning his son. So he kind of breaks it down. First he talks about himself. Now he talks about the marvelous gospel. Three points he makes. It's through, in, and concerning. So that's actually, if you think about it, that's the... Let me find it here. That's the who. It's through the prophets in the Old Testament. How did we get it? It came by the Holy Scriptures. And it's concerning the Lord Jesus Christ.

So now, typical Paul, he says, well, I'm just not going to talk more about the gospel. I'm going to take a little bit of a rabbit trail. I'm going to go off and talk about our wonderful Savior. So, at the end, at the beginning of verse 3, he starts off talking about his son, who was born of a descendant of David, according to the flesh, who was declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, according to the spirit of holiness Jesus Christ our Lord through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for his namesake among whom you are also the called of Jesus Christ so that's quite a quite a diversion he spends he talks about himself he talks about the gospel then he goes off on this sort of rabbit trail but a wonderful rabbit trail talking about our wonderful Savior and and who he is and what he's accomplished and what that means to us as believers and himself because down in verse we'll cover this next week down in verse 5 I highlighted in blue it says through whom we received grace and apostleship. So he benefited marvelously. He benefited by becoming the grace of God and he would become an apostle for Jesus Christ.

So I'm going to use this as my outline. We're going to go through each of these points. Today we'll just go down to verse 4, through verse 4. Okay, so here we go. So the following verses are the blessings, the following parts of this verse are the blessings that Paul has received. Paul, a bondservant of Christ Jesus. So bond-servant, as Jim pointed out, is this word doulos.

It was one who was born a slave, and one who was bound to his master, and only death could break that bond, could break that bond of slavery. So you know, actually you can look in the Old Testament like in Exodus, and you can see that the Hebrew slave, The Israelites kind of had a very interesting way of looking at slavery. Slavery wasn't really all that bad a deal in many cases for the Hebrew slave.

They only could serve seven years was the max they could serve. And then they could leave within the seven years. But on the seventh year, they were given a choice. And a seventh year, they could choose to stay. And if they chose to stay, they would become, this word doulos, this bond slave. And they would get, it says in Exodus, 21.6 it says they would take an awl and they would put it in their earlobe and they would pound something in their earlobe. I don't think they put rings in there, but they marked their earlobe. So they would then be a bond slave and they'd be a willing bond slave. So the question comes about, what's Paul talking about here? How does one become a bond slave to Jesus Christ? Do I? You come to Mike and I and you say, Roger, I'd like to become a bond slave. Sign me up for a bond slave.

Is that what happens? No, not quite. I think actually the best explanation is given later in Romans. Romans 6, chapter 6, 17 and 18. But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, the sin, the sin nature, so you were already a slave. People think, why come into this world?

I'm free. Roger, I'm free. I don't need a Savior, because I'm a free person. You are? Scripture, the Bible says just the opposite. You're a slave of sin. You became obedient from the heart, you exercise faith, and having been freed from the sin nature, you became slaves of righteousness. So we, the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ has gone from slavery to sin, to the sin nature, to a slavery to our wonderful Savior.

A wonderful thing. So we are All believers are now bondservants of Christ Jesus. And that's a positional statement, because we may not act that way sometimes. We may act contrary to who we are, but we are that. God sees us in that as our position. Okay, so that's the first attribute.

The second attribute, or second calling of Paul, he was called as an apostle. And this word called is the idea to call to an appointment, to an appointment of apostleship. Called is an adjective that modifies. In some places, like in the Ephesians, he didn't use the word called. He just says, I'm an apostle. But here he says, I'm a called apostle, which is interesting. And the word apostle, apostolos, is the idea, is the one who sent or the sent one.

So Hal points out here that it's used here in the narrow sense. Being a called apostle, he was the addition to the twelve, or Paul plus the twelve, or the called apostles, if you will. So the question comes up, you know, one of the key parts of being an apostle, you had to see the risen Christ. So Paul spent some time in various places pointing out, and we know from a ton of scripture, that he saw the Lord Jesus personally.

So one of the verses is, First Corinthians 9.1, am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen our Lord Jesus? Are you not my work in the Lord? And then later in Corinthians it says, and last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared to me also.

And just thinking about it, he saw it on the Damascus road, right? Well, he actually didn't see him. He was blind on the Damascus Road. Then he was called to the third heaven. So he saw the Lord Jesus personally. So he's a called apostle. The Lord Jesus called him personally.

And then the third point is, Paul was set apart for the gospel of God. He had a special ministry, if you will. This is Paul's special ministry, and it was especially to the Gentiles. So set apart is the idea to be separate or to select someone to an office or work. And it's something that happens to you, you're acted upon, passive voice.

God selected Paul as an apostle, and some of these things are from Hal, most of them are. So in Galatians 1.1, Paul an apostle, not sent from men, nor through the agency of man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father. It was not Paul's choice Paul didn't choose the Damascus road. He didn't choose to be an apostle God chose him You know Paul was walking along Maryland Damascus Road and the Lord, you know zapped him there So he didn't Paul didn't get to choose and the Lord said see how much you'll suffer for me. So Paul hadn't he was God performed the action God's selection of Paul as an apostle what it was permanent perfect tense past completed action the binding results and And it was for the purpose of the gospel, or unto the gospel.

Okay, so that's the three points about Paul. So let's just look at a few thoughts about the gospel of God. It's of God, out from God as a source. God is the originator and the source of the gospel. Not Paul, not men. You know, people will sometimes Liberal liberal theologians will say well, you know, it's all it's all it's all Paul's Paul made up the gospel Paul made up this and he wrote these 13 books of The New Testament and he kind of made up that stuff. No, he didn't scriptured Scripture, you know points out over and over again Paul received the gospel from God not man The gospel is a good news Paul's good news was not his own Paul's emphasis was not on himself, but on the good news to man. And then lastly, the gospel is God's good news providing His righteousness to unrighteous man.

Alright, so that's the set-apart aspect of this. So let's move on to verse 2. So here's the word which, and which points back, it's a pronoun which points back to the gospel. The gospel of God, He promised beforehand, Eris stands for past point fact. So God promised beforehand the gospel of God. And because it's Eris, it's a factual event that happened in the past.

So let's kind of zoom in on that and look at where do we find, and the other thing that comes out here which kind of hits you is that the gospel, you think of the gospel, well the gospel is a New Testament concept. Well no, that's not true at all. Paul's going to demonstrate that the gospel was given back in the Old Testament by many, many of the prophets, especially Isaiah. And we're going to look at that closely here. And it's through, literally through the intermediate agency of his prophets.

So Isaiah preached the good news. And you can, most people will say, Isaiah 53, that's what really shows me the gospel. And it is. But there's a cool thing about the beginning of what Isaiah has to say that shows us that really clearly. I'm going to show you that.

So in Isaiah 53.1 it says, Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? So what message is he talking about here? It's really cleared up a lot and really pinned down when we look in the New Testament.

It says in Romans 10.16, However, They did not all heed the good news. And that's our key word here. Gospel or euangelion is the Greek word. It's the same word that we have in our verse here about the gospel of God. It's the good news. And then he goes on.

He quotes Isaiah 53.1. For Isaiah says, the Lord who has believed our report. So you can connect good news with report and connect report back to message. So the message that Isaiah gave was the good news, the gospel message he gave. And I wanted to kind of even magnify it even more, kind of pin it down even more.

And it says in the Holy Scriptures, God's written word, God's written down by the authors of scripture under his inspiration. So we start in verse 4 of Isaiah 53, and this is just a wonderful, wonderful message of how our Savior suffered for us. Surely our grief he himself bore, and our sorrows he carried, yet we ourselves esteemed him stricken and smitten of God and afflicted. But he was pierced through for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities, the chasing for the well-being fell upon him, and by his scourgings we are healed and then it goes on in another chapter in 61 it says even more focus here on the good news the spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has appointed me to bring the good news to the afflicted he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted to proclaim liberty to the captives and freedom to the prisoners. So the gospel was preached very clearly in the Old Testament. So it's not something new, it's actually the fulfillment of what was foretold in the Old Testament.

So let's go on. Now to verse 3. Concerning his son. Concerning his son. The word concerning is peri. It's a word around, it's a perimeter, literally a perimeter. the gospel, the gospel of God concerning his son, the gospel is not only about Jesus Christ, but it surrounds Jesus Christ. Everything about Jesus Christ is about the gospel, the good news. He is a very heart and center of the gospel blessing. So Paul will now elaborate. So now here we're going to take our little Rabbit trail if you will he's gonna go off. He's gonna. He's gonna magnify our Savior.

He's gonna magnify the Lord Jesus Christ First of all who was born a descendant of David according to the flesh Do you see a problem here? I don't know maybe I didn't see it for a while It took me a while to kind of pick out. Do you see a problem with that statement? Who was born a descendant of David? What was Christ? Christ was born, right? Christ came with Mary. I'll buy that.

But what was in a normal human birth? Not at all. So I think actually to get the real flavor here, and in some ways it's too bad they used that word, they could have used other words instead of what's born. So let's see what some of the possibilities.

To do that, the inner linear is a word-for-word translation from the Greek text. So that translation has, having come from the seed of David according to the flesh. So they put in there, having come from, for born. So having come is this Greek word, one of my favorites, ginome, literally to become, to come into a new state of being.

So our Savior, who is God, came into a new state of being, man, right? And we see that very clearly. In this time, in the Gospel of John, in 114a, it says the Word, it doesn't say was born flesh, it says became flesh, came into a new state of being, which is flesh. So that's a better understanding of what Paul is trying to say here.

The Word became flesh. Let's keep going with that idea for a second here. So, became flesh. Let's think about that for a second. God the Son came into a new state of being that never existed before. We never had a God-man that never existed until God became a man and the person of our Savior.

The Virgin Birth gives us information about how that was accomplished, right? And I thought I'd just read. This is the time of year we read this, right? This is when we read about the Virgin Birth. So let's just read a few things here. Of course, I had it in my... I can almost quote it, but I don't mind. Okay, here we go.

So if you go to Luke, the angel appears to Mary, and it says, Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. So she will conceive like every woman has conceived, and she'll bear a son. That's totally natural.

But the part that's totally different later on in that in that in chapter 1 it says and the angels talking to her and said to her the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you and for that reason the Holy Holy Child shall be called the Son of God so it is totally a different a different thing he became flesh he did he didn't it wasn't the normal interaction between a man and a woman it was it was God interacting with with Mary and the person of the Holy Spirit.

So Macaulay kind of nailed it here, I thought. Macaulay says, All other men were born, God the Son became. I'll say it again. All other men were born, God the Son became. He came into a new state of being. There never was and never will be another God-man like that. Alright, so let's move on. That's the first part of that phrase.

So the second part is, a descendant or seed of David according to the flesh. So Paul is going to talk about the humanity, and we're going to see that the humanity of Jesus Christ, or the Son of God, is critically important. Scripture, it is so important that it mentions it in the very first book in the New Testament, in the book of Generations of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham. So right in his genealogy, he's the Son of David, also the Son of Abraham. Then in the last book of the Bible, almost the last verse, It says, I, Jesus, am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star. So from the beginning of the New Testament to the end of the New Testament, the Son of David is critically important to understanding our Lord Jesus Christ. So let's go on. So there are many other verses that talk about Christ being the descendant of David. So here are some.

In Luke 1.68, For he, God, has visited us and accomplished redemption for his people, and raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of David his servant. Then in verse 32 of Luke 1, He, Jesus, will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will have no end. So we see here, so our brother Hal brought up about four points that I liked here.

He kind of connected, he connected up, which I hadn't seen before, he connected up Abraham's seed. He said, well, wait a minute, you know, Lord Jesus is a descendant of David. Abraham was promised this. His seed would be Christ's. So the blessing that God provided by faith to man is the same as Abraham has received. David and Abraham are connected through the seed of Christ. Okay, so let's go on. So verse 4.

Concerning the Son, who was declared to be the Son of God, and this declare is the idea to mark out, to determine, having designated as the idea, the Son of God, And it's with or in power by the resurrection from the dead. So that's a pivotal event in history that nailed it down that this is my son. This is the son of God by his resurrection.

And this word power is like from the word dynamite or dunamis. Mighty, miraculous power. Literally, Christ Jesus was raised out from the dead ones. that only God could do. The Resurrection was the greatest demonstration of God's power. The Resurrection is the fulfillment of the Eternal Covenant. Remember, the Eternal Covenant is where God the Father and God the Son, in Hebrews we see that, the Father said, the Son will lay down His life and the Father will take it up again. That was the Eternal Covenant. The Resurrection is proof that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

And it's according to the Spirit of Holiness. And that's not what it appears at first. So let's just kind of zoom in on it. According to, or Ketah, according to the normal standard of Jesus Christ our Lord's holiness. It's in contrast, we had before, back in verse 3, we had according to the flesh. This is according to the Spirit of Holiness. So Vincent says here, this reference is not to the Holy Spirit, but to the Spirit of Christ as the seed of the divine nature belonging to His person. And it's Jesus Christ our Lord. So next week we're going to delve into the remaining 5, 6, and 7 and look at the blessings we have in our Savior more. But I found this was inconstable.

Actually, this is constable quoting another person which I didn't write down I can get it for you if you're interested, but I thought was really good kind of summed up a really critical point here Jesus was always the Son of God But the father declared or marked him out to be the son by the by resurrecting him Jesus did not change in essence. He always was the son but he changed in his status or function and So what does he mean by that?

He explains that here. God appointed the Son to a new and more powerful position in relation to the world at the resurrection. And he quotes this verse, Matthew 28, 18. Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.

He is now not only the Messiah, Lord of all so hopefully that was enlightening we're working through this Paul's Long introduction to this Book of Romans, so let's close in prayer. We thank you father. We thank you for our time today Thank you for your marvelous word. We we thank you for just your Marvelous working and through Paul and through the gospel your gospel to save men and women in Christ's name Amen