Fruit Sharing
Romans 1:8-15 · Mike Doyle · Dec 18, 2022
Romans (2022-25), No. 04
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261929422013

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

Good morning everybody. I'm going to do a couple of things this morning. The first thing I want to mention is the handout. And the handout has to do with the first part of the sermon I'm going to talk about today. You know a few weeks ago I did a bit of an overview of Romans. And I stopped about halfway through it. And this is the handout. And what I'm first going to talk about is the second half of the overview. And I think you'll see why I think it's important.

And when you look at the overview that you have, I recommend you stick it in your Bible. And as we go through Romans, I've divided it up into six major headings, and I think those headings are appropriate for how we're going to study the Book of Romans going forward. So from an overview standpoint, The very first one on your handout is called Introduction, Apostleship, Greetings, and Theme. And that's the first 17 verses. And so when Roger picks up in two weeks down through verse 17, you'll see why that's really important. Ron Merriman says that the theme of the book of Romans is the righteousness of God, the quality of righteousness, which he is the source. Now, I think to make this clear, everybody know what righteousness is? You know what it is?

If I said God is totally and absolutely righteous, It means he's right in everything he is and everything he's done and everything he will do. He is absolutely right. He cannot make a mistake. And so the biblical term that God is righteous. And I think it's important to keep it in mind as we go through studying the book of Romans, that we're dealing with a God who's going to lay out for us in the book of Romans all that He's done for salvation, conformity to the image of Christ, but He really has done it for His righteousness. It fits with His righteousness. And there is no other righteousness in the universe, and there never will be.

He's it. So that's why I've divided this up into six categories that all have to do with God's righteousness. So I hope you'll see that as we go through it. So the second point is God's righteousness is revealed in condemnation. So we're going to see when we get to chapter starting in verse 18, all the way through chapter 3, verse 20, God is going to be condemning.

And when you see His condemnation, He's going to be absolutely righteous to do it. If He didn't do it, He wouldn't be righteous. So all of these warm, fuzzy, sort of, oh, God is too severe, kind of view of the Lord Himself, God's righteousness demands that anything that's not of Him be condemned. Anything. So it's a heck of an absolute to have to deal with.

Condemnation against pagan humanity, He's righteous in doing that. Condemnation according to a divine standard, God's standard to man, which we'll take a look at in chapter 2. Condemnation against unfaithful but responsible Jews. Unfaithful but responsible Jews who lived under the law. He would not be righteous if he didn't condemn unfaithfulness and responsibility. Condemnation because of hypocrisy. Or because of the trust in rights. In other words, if we trust in rights or traditions, those things need to be condemned from God's perspective of righteousness.

That's what He's doing. And then lastly, He condemns because of unbelief. He's perfectly right in doing all of that. So, you're going to hear me talk a lot about this word righteousness, but I've come to the conclusion that if God is anything, He's righteous. He's righteous.

And then condemnation against all human beings by God. Other than Christ, can you name one that shouldn't be condemned? We're all from Adam. 3.9-18 will say we're all under sin. Man's allegiance is to sin, not to the righteousness of God. Man's got an attitude about sin. He likes it. And he's actively participating in sin. And he's totally conscious of this thing, sin. Well, does God in his righteousness have a right to condemn such? Yeah, he does. And again, if he didn't do it, he wouldn't be the God we think he is.

Then the third big category starts in chapter 321 and goes through 521. And it's entitled, The Righteousness of God Provided or Revealed in Justification. Now we're going to see that God has justified, in other words, He has satisfied His righteousness.

So now under certain conditions that He lays down, namely faith in the person and work of Christ, He's totally righteous in justifying you and me. He's totally righteous in doing that. He didn't go outside of righteousness to do it. He provided righteousness and He explains it in 321-31. He provided righteousness by faith and He'll illustrate it in all of chapter 4.

That's what we'll be looking at. And when we get to chapter 5, He provided righteousness calculated and enjoyed. Righteousness is to be enjoyed. Maybe I could say it this way. If God is totally righteous and right and that's what He is, then how am I going to spend eternity with Him if I'm not righteous on His level? Point is, I'm not. Unless somehow through His work I become the righteousness of God in Christ. I'm in. I'm in.

So, provided righteousness contrasted with the doctrine of the two federal heads, and most of us know what the two federal heads are, but we'll be pretty expansive about the two federal heads. Do you know who they are? Who are they? Who are the two federal heads of races? Adam and Christ. These are the two most important men in history. I know you thought the quarterback of the Broncos was really important, but he's not. The president is important. No, he's not. Adam and Christ.

That's it. And then, category number four. God's righteousness is produced or revealed in sanctification. And that's chapters six through eight. Now, a little explanation here. The Reformers, Reformed theology people, when they get to chapter 6 of Romans 6, 7, and 8, they're still talking about sanctification or salvation. They don't make the jump, and it's not a jump, to the idea of sanctification. What does sanctification mean? It means to be set apart by God for His own use. He took you and me when we believed And He set us apart for His own use.

So we find out that we were set apart by Him. We find out that we have two natures. That we have the nature of Adam, and we have the nature of the resurrected Christ. But then we start to learn these really cool things called positional truth. That I'm in Christ, and that's a position, whether I know it or not, whether I believe it or not, But as I believe in the personal work of Christ and I'm one of His, I have a position in union with the glorified Christ.

And then from 611 to 614, there are certain attitudes that go with this set-apartness, this sanctification. And then from 615 to 623, I almost changed one word here, but deliverance through yieldedness illustrated. The sentence from Merriman sounds like that yieldedness is the thing that triggers deliverance.

I don't think it is. I think it's one understanding the truth. And truth, too, is believing the truth and resting by faith in what He tells us. Is yieldedness part of that? Yeah, it is. But it isn't. There are believers that go around and say, well, if I yield, all this good stuff is going to happen to me. No, I yield because I know and I trust God about what He has told me. I believe Him.

And then when we get to good old chapter 7, which we talk a lot about, we have conflict. Number one is the law and the believer. The first six verses. What is the believer's relationship to the law that God gave to Moses and the Jews? Does he have a relationship? And then the next part from 7-7-13, It tells us that the very principle or impetus of sin is, guess what?

It's the law. So if you want to be under the law, what are you doing? It's like you're putting yourself in a situation where there's a guy with a cattle prod with sin and he keeps poking you in the back and you keep sinning. The harder you try, the worse it gets. And then we talk more about the law and the two natures. Was the law given to the old man? Was it given to the new man? Is Christ under the law?

We'll find out about that at the end of chapter 7. Then, in chapter 8, we start to talk about positions and possessions of the believer by the Holy Spirit. And we start to focus in on the work of the Spirit. What's He doing? What is He doing? The contrast of the Holy Spirit and the law, the contrast of the Holy Spirit and our flesh. There's a conflict with the flesh in verse 5. There's a condition of the flesh in 6 and 7. And then in chapter 8, verse 12 through 17, there's a witness. The Spirit persuades us. He witnesses to us things. Category number five is God's righteousness revealed in sovereign choice.

And it's perfect, because as you go through Romans, at some point you're going to say to yourself, well, God made all of these promises to the Jews. He's going to give them land, and He's going to on and on it goes. So what did He do? Just had enough of their nonsense and put them aside? And now he's just going to deal with Christians? Answer no. He made the choice, he made the promise, and he's going to fulfill it because his righteousness demands that he do so. You see that?

So he does have sovereign choice. And he does have administration over Israel. And he is in a position to talk about the abomination of Israel, and talk about their problems, and their, what I would call it, their adulterous behavior. God's choices are applied.

In other words, from 930, and by the way, God's sovereignty over the Jews is 9, 10, and 11. 30 through 1021, there's an admission about Israel stumbling. And he talks about, well, they stumbled, but I'm going to take care of that. And then he starts talking about, in chapter 10, verse 8 through 13, confessions of a working faith.

Does it work? Does it work for the Jew? And then how about the future of Israel? What's going to happen with them? The scope of Israel's rejection as gods through Israel, chapter 11, verse 1. The stubbornness and arrogance of Israel, 7 through 10. The reconciliation of the world to God. The return of Israel after temporary rejection, which is where they are now. And the rewards of the Lord for Israel.

Under righteousness, do you have the right to reward? Yeah, he does. So in the last category, is the righteousness of God propagated or shown out or demonstrated? And that's chapter 12 to the end of the book. And so when we get there, we're going to see the relationship of salvation to living the Christian life. How do those go together? We find out it's not law, that we live under grace. Well, we have to learn about living under grace. We have to learn what grace is. But it's imperative of the sacrifice of the believer. I beseech you by the mercy of God that you present your body a living sacrifice. Who do you belong to? Well, I belong to myself. No, you don't. You belong to Him. So he appeals to us to give ourselves to the Lord for His service and use for our whole life, for every circumstance we're in.

And then 12.3 through 21 talks about, well, what is the service of a believer? What does he do? Chapter 13, the relationship of the believer to the government and others. He spells out, you know, what about the police? And what about the elected officials? And what about that? Then in 14.1 through 15.13, the expression of a faithful minister and relationships. What are they like? And then there's the exhortation of a faithful minister, and it's not necessarily a minister in a church, it's people who are in a position to minister publicly. What's their responsibility? And then he gives an example of a faithful ministry. So that's why I wanted to cover that now, because as we go forward, keep those handouts in your Bible. And you can refer to them anytime.

And you can think, oh, yeah, here's where we are. And this is the basic overall discussion that we're involved in. OK, end of part one, beginning of part two. So we're looking at the verses now from verse eight through 15, and we're going to talk about the great theme of the epistle. the gospel of the power of God.

And Paul is establishing or attempting to establish rapport. And I listened to Chester McCauley about this, and it was interesting what he had to say about a couple of things. He talked about the verbs. Paul is telling the Romans, well, let me tell you what I'm thinking or what I'm doing.

I thank my God for you. I serve God in my spirit. I pray for you always. I want to come and see you. I long to share some gift. I long to share some gift with you so that we might be encouraged together. I am under obligation to you. and I'm eager to preach the gospel to you."

So he wants to do all of those things with them. And so that's how he starts out encouraging them. So in verse 8 he says, First of all, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, because your faith is being proclaimed throughout the whole world. The first point is, that he thanks God for what? For their faith. And when he's talking about proclaiming their faith through the whole world, where are these people?

They are in the center of civilization. They're in the city of Rome. And in this time in history, nothing happens really much that doesn't go through Rome. And so these believers had developed a reputation for their strong faith. And you know, sometimes they were going through persecution, sometimes they weren't. But there's strong faith.

And he always, if you find it, Paul always thanks God for any grace that he found anywhere. Because grace is the kind of thing you're thankful for. He looks at all who are in Christ through Christ's eyes, because your faith is spoken of throughout the world. How cool would it be if somebody wrote us a letter and said, boy, you guys at Holly Hills, I'm so thankful that your faith is spoken of throughout the world or throughout Denver.

You know, you don't hear that much anymore. You don't hear about somebody or some group of believers, their faith is spoken of or it's broadcast or it's announced And in this case, through the whole Roman Empire. It's really kind of cool when you think about it. God sees to it that a real work of His Spirit is published. Now we might see it in individual cases. We might see it under certain circumstances. But the Christians in Rome published through the Roman Empire about their faith.

If you look at 1 Thessalonians 1.8, Paul says to the Thessalonians, hard word to say, For the word of the Lord was sounded forth from you, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith towards God has gone forth, so that we have no need to say anything. If we are walking by faith, living by faith, people see it. It's demonstrable. You don't have to say anything. Just the way you live your life, you're a person of faith. You trust God no matter what the circumstances are, up or down.

Paul was thankful to God for the believers who lived in Rome. And he was especially thankful because of the reputation that they enjoyed about their faith. These people were famous for their faith. Their faith had gained them a worldwide reputation. And when we talk about worldwide in those days, it was the Roman Empire. So he's thankful that in the capital of the pagan world, the Roman Empire, there were those who worship and believe the true and living God and everybody knew it. Some of them had to give their life for that, but their faith was notorious, maybe say that. And then he says, for God whom I serve in my spirit in the preaching of the gospel of his son is my witness. as to how unceasing I make mention of you.

What's brought up in this verse that I wanted to cover, which I thought was really good, there are those that believe that man is only two parts. He's soul slash spirit and then a body. But I think man is really three parts. And I think he's body, soul, and spirit. And I think it's consistent witness of Scripture that man lives in a body that's possessed, I'm sorry, it's a spirit that lives in a body and possesses a soul. Paul's service to God was spiritual, not soulish.

Chester McCauley did it, sort of explained it here in just a few sentences. He said, the body is consciousness of my environment. I think that's pretty good. I have sense. I understand and look around and I can touch. That's my body and I have a sense of the environment that I live in. My soul makes me conscious of myself.

Some people have bigger souls than others. And what does your spirit do? It makes you conscious of God. So in order to be conscious of God, you have to be spiritually alive. So here we are as human beings. We're conscious of the environment we live in. We're conscious of that it's me, it's you, it's I exist. And I also am aware and conscious of God.

If you didn't notice, Paul didn't depend on music or architecture or oratory or rhetoric in his ministry. None of that. There's a lot of churches in Denver you can go to and everything inside that building is designed to appeal to your soul and not your spirit. He didn't hold inspirational meetings. He didn't arouse the emotion by mystic resolves. He didn't do that.

He served God directly in His Spirit. And I think one of the big protections that we have as believers is the fact that we're spiritually alive and we can detect what's of the Spirit of God and what isn't, what's holy. The Holy Spirit ministers to us, and that's how we know which is of the Spirit.

The spirits of the hearers were all born again. You're all born again. Your spirits are alive. The Spirit witnessed to their spirits that they were the born ones of God. Have you ever sat down at some point in your Christian life and the Holy Spirit witnessed to you that you were a born one of God, that you were saved, that you did belong to Him. That's the witness of the Spirit. So Paul was serving not outwardly in forms, as in Judaism, but in intelligent service. Maybe I should say it this way, intelligent spiritual service. That is, knowing the Lord and knowing God, directly by the Holy Spirit.

Verse 10. Always in my prayers making requests, if perhaps now at last by the will of God I may succeed in coming to you. Notice a couple of things here. One is prayer was always subject to God's will. You find yourself in a predicament And you really want to force your will on God to fix whatever is your problem.

I would love nothing better than not to have this backpack. But that's what we're going with now, and we're going to stay with it until God's will goes someplace else. Maybe I get a different color one. I don't know. So was it God's will that Paul go to Rome? Yeah, it was. But how he got there, was something he didn't really know yet. So Paul made a specific prayer request over and over about going to Rome. But notice that when we looked at 2 Corinthians 12, when he had the thorn in the flesh, he went to the Lord three times about a specific thing that was bothering him.

And after the second one, he said, well, I'm going to stop asking for mercy. and I'm going to revel in God's grace, and I'm just going to live in God's grace because I've discovered something by going to God about this, that when I'm weak and I'm strong. I'm going to live in that grace. This is different. He knows he's supposed to go to Rome.

It sounds like he talks to the Lord about it all the time, and he wants the Romans to know, I'm trying to get there, and I'm talking to the Lord about it, so we'll see what happens. There's no detail in your life or my life that's so small that you can't make it a matter of prayer. And I don't care how small it is. If God is concerned about feeding the sparrow, about clothing the lily, then He certainly is concerned about whether Paul is going to get to Rome and how he's going to get there. Now I think this verse in here It's kind of a cool thing because it deals with how we live today.

He says in 11, For I long to see you, so that I may impart some spiritual gift to you, that you may be established. Longing to see them. Longing to see them. So that he could do what? He could convey to them some spiritual gift for their being built up.

It sounds like, well, I'm the guy who knows it all, and I'll come and set you straight. No, that's not what he's saying. He's saying, look, I'm the apostle who has been called by God and has been trained by God, and God has revealed to me things of marvelous grace that you probably don't know and I can't wait to come and tell you about it and we can share.

Some spiritual gift in establishing. When we talk about from a spiritual standpoint and spiritual growth, what do you think establishing? That's a really interesting word, don't you think? If I say to you, the whole reason that we do what we do is so that we might be established. You know what that word means? It's a great word.

It means to just understand who you are, where you are, and what you have in Christ, and you're settled down about it. You're okay with it. You're fine with your position in Christ and all of the blessings, and you expect God to bless you all the time. And you even look at sufferings as blessings from God. You're established. There isn't going to be a whole lot from the world that's going to move you off of that establishment. So Paul knows that if he can get to Rome and spend some time with these Romans, he can help them get established.

So when he says that impart some spiritual gift to you, what do you think he means by that? I can tell you what he doesn't mean. He doesn't mean 1 Corinthians chapter 12 where he's got in his satchel all of the spiritual gifts of the Spirit and he's going to start handing them out. Speaking in tongues, prophecy, that's not what he's talking about.

Those are operations of the Holy Spirit. What he's talking about, a spiritual gift, is to enlarge their faith. By enlarging a believer's faith, what have you done? You've created a bigger, more open capacity for them to contain Christ. That's really what you're doing.

Some spiritual gifts, we see not only that Paul's humility, but an acknowledgement that the Romans were already in the faith, together with a suggestion that there was more to learn. There's more to learn. And Paul knew the secrets. He knew the great secret of the heavenly calling, of the church. He could write to the saints, or when he was with them, he could begin to elaborate on the heavenly position. They're members of Christ's body. I think they probably already knew that, but they're heavenly creatures.

In creation, in calling and character, They didn't know all the facts and Paul was the guy with the facts. This heavenly truth was not fully developed in Romans and we won't see it in the book of Romans because Romans stays on the ground. We have to get to Ephesians before we take off for heaven. It has to do with a righteous man, a righteous human being functioning righteously here on the planet.

That is, that we may be encouraged together with you while among each other, of us by the other's faith, both yours and mine." So Paul will be blessed by observing a strong faith, and he will bless them by expanding their knowledge. Now this is a question that you have to answer for yourself. Do you have at least one person in your life, believer, that you can sit with every once in a while and you know that they are expanding your faith and you're expanding theirs?

Because you're talking about the Lord Jesus and it's not a formal Bible study. Christ is just the center of what you do. and some knowledge you have, you're imparting to them, and some knowledge that they have, they're imparting to you. I think that that is something that, again, we don't talk enough about. It's really an important part of the Christian life that we get together with one another and we share, because none of us have it all. And there are things about the Lord Jesus that you certainly can educate me about. And I know a couple of things about Him that I can relate to you.

And their blessings would be much greater because of the enormous gift and grace God had bestowed on Paul for them. He's got a lot for them. But he's humble about it. He knew that spiritual gifts of the biblical understanding are shared by believers who explore God's Word. J.B. Stoney, and I think it's in one of those None But the Hungry Hearts, talks about how He would get together with people all the time and they would go over and talk about doctrine. But he said that at some point, they would get down to just sharing the wonderful things that the Holy Spirit had shown them that day about Christ. Those are the spiritual gifts that you share. And the Spirit of God is working every day to show us.

Let me give you a personal example. I'm in the hospital, and I'm trying to get out of there, but I've got to get this, what do they call it, a pick put in, and it's right under here. That's what the backpack goes to, the pick. So this guy comes in my room, and he's kind of a 50-year-old nerdy guy. And I'm looking at him thinking, oh boy. So I said to him, you're here to hurt me, aren't you? He said, nope.

So he starts doing his thing, and he's very careful, and he's very precise, and he's got three layers of gloves on, he's got the mask and the gown, and he's got a paper sheet over me. And he just happens to mention the Lord. And I responded. So for 35 minutes while he's putting this pick in, we're sharing the wonders of Christ. So do I know more than he does? Does he know more than I do? That wasn't the point. The point is we were sharing who the Lord Jesus is.

And here's the cool part. Right after it was in and he was done and he's taking all this paper and shoving it in a plastic bag, in my room comes four or five infectious disease people from that department, and they're all talking that kind of thing, and I'm listening to them. But as the guy leaves the room, we make eye contact, and he knows that I know what we just did. We shared, we shared, excuse me, we shared some wonderfulness about Christ. Just him and me, I'll probably never see this guy again. I'm so thankful for this. If I went to the hospital just for that one thing, I'd go again. I had to share that with you.

Verse 13, I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that often I have planned to come to you and was prevented so far so that I may have some fruit among you also. even as among the rest of the Gentiles. So he has this desire because God has called him to teach and exhort and build up as many Gentiles as he can. And of course, the center of the Gentile world is Rome.

The characteristics of a true minister of Christ, he can't wait to do what God has called him to do. In the degree that this desire after fruit prevails, the servant of God is successful. That's what William Newell says. I thought, wow, that's pretty profound because Newell was one of those guys, and we've all known different people in our lives that that's really kind of what they were about. The desire after fruit prevails as the servant of God. Don't you love when you meet one of those people that they're a servant of God, and that's all they do, and that's all they think about. They may have a job, but they don't want to do anything else, to maybe put it that way.

So then he says in 14, I'm under obligation both to the Greeks, barbarians, and to the wise and the foolish, under obligation. He's a trusted bearer of the tidings of the infinite importance directly from heaven, and he's a debtor to all classes of men. Now, let's define who the Greeks are. The Greeks in that society You know, we now have 45 genders and all this other stuff. We classify people in a thousand different ways. He did it in four ways.

If you were a Greek, you were somebody who spoke the Greek language and you were probably cultured. In other words, you had a degree. If you were a barbarian, you didn't know anything. You didn't know the Greek language, you didn't go to school, and you were uncultured.

Here's all the Greeks are there and all of the barbarians are sitting over there. And the wise and the foolish is a more personal meaning, meaning merely whether you're educated or uneducated, whether you're street smart or not, whether you're formally educated or not. Those are the four classes of people that he's talking to. And he doesn't He doesn't necessarily, or he doesn't say, well, any of these groups have an advantage over any other, because they don't. He doesn't mention Jews here.

Notice that? Because although full of longing towards them, what was Paul's mission? He was the apostle to the Gentiles. That's where his focus was. I'm probably running over time a little bit. I was going to give you an example from Numbers 11. I just encourage you to look it up. Numbers 11, verse 11 through 15. And it's a really interesting contrast.

It's about Moses going to the Lord and complaining about those Jews. He's had enough of them, right up to here. And you compare that with Paul's attitude about the Gentiles. He never did a Moses on the Gentiles. Never. Because he was compelled. He was compelled. So he thought of himself as less than the least of all saints. He thought of himself as a servant of God, willing to become all things to all men, to gain some.

He thought of himself, but remember it is not a wonderful man speaking, but Christ in Paul, Galatians 1.16. Even our Lord said of his own ministry, the Father abiding in me does the work. Paul knew that. And so the ministry of the Lord's chief servant is the Father doing the work through him. So he says, for my part, I'm eager to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome.

The readiness, the eagerness of this godly man to pay his debt, to preach the good news to those in Rome. And as we know, it's some years after this, before he gets to Rome, and oh, by the way, he doesn't go on a cruise ship. He's handcuffed. He's shipwrecked. He's a mess. And he's hooked up to a guard. And he gets there and the first place he goes is jail. That's how he arrives in Rome. So he owed the gospel to every member of the human race. The impression that the Spirit of God made on him when he saved him and gave him his ministry was that he owed them. He owed every member of the human race the gospel. I had this question, what obligation or burden do we have?

If you look at 2 Corinthians 5.17, you'll see that, maybe I didn't write it down.

Oh yeah, 2 Corinthians 5.17. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ Jesus, are you in Christ Jesus?

Yep. You're a new creation. Old things have passed away. Behold, new things have come. Now, all things are from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. we've got a ministry every single one of us namely that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself not counting their trespasses against them and he was committed and he has committed to us the word of reconciliation therefore we are ambassadors for Christ as though God were making an appeal through us we beg you on behalf of Christ be reconciled to God He made him a new no sin to become sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. There's that righteousness of God in Him. And from that position, how we live our life maybe are demonstrating the ministry of reconciliation.

It might be verbal or it might not. It very well could not be. It could be just who you are and how you live your life. Trust me, they're watching. And they want to see if you're real, if Christianity is real, and is the Lord Jesus real and is God righteous. So let's close.

Father, how we thank you. We thank you for the grace we live under. We thank you so for the fact that you have found, you found a way I guess you weren't looking, but your way of your righteousness being satisfied has placed us in your dear Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And we're so thankful for that, that we may continue to grow in the knowledge and grace of Him so that through our life others might be drawn to Him. We thank you. We pray in your Son's precious name. Amen.