Well, good morning. With your copy of God's Word still turned to Romans chapter 15, we have two sermons left in our Roman series together. We'll finish out chapter 15 this week. We'll do all of chapter 16 together next week. And this morning, Paul shows us his passion. Throughout this entire letter, he's been walking us through the picture of the gospel. He's been showing us how all encompassing the gospel is. He's been showing us how necessary it is. He's been showing us how the gospel is rightly applied to us. He's shown us the place of faith and repentance in the work of the gospel. He's shown us how when the gospel is rightly applied to us and we are declared righteous before God. how that brings an internal transformation of life because of the abiding presence of the Spirit, and how that abiding presence of the Spirit then helps us to begin to be conformed to the image of Jesus and to be transformed from the way that we were to the way that we ought to be. He then speaks to why that doesn't take its application on all people the same, and he shows us the great sovereign mystery behind God's salvation. He shows us that God is not a violator of His covenant promises, but that all of his covenant promises find their yes in the person of Jesus. And then he begins walking through the practical real life implications of the gospel. If we truly have the gospel in our lives, it will cause us to be self-sacrificial in the way that we interact with one another. It will cause us to, uh, uh, not rebuild the barricades that Christ himself has torn down in the gospel that exists between races of people and genders of people and levels of education and political distinction and nation state borders. And then it'll cause us to be in submission to the proper authorities that have been set up in our lives. It'll cause us to think more highly of one another than we think of ourselves and It will cause us to then live in this life of of aiding each other in our weaknesses rather than than beating and belittling one another in our strength. And he walks through all of this and then he comes to this section of chapter 15. And he declares for us that this is indeed a global gospel. This is a gospel that should spark a desire for the name of Christ to be made much of in all of the world. And that's the natural outworking of everything that he said to this point. The gospel really is all-encompassing. If people everywhere really do need it, if it is the only way that people can be made right with God, if it is the only way that people can return to their oughtness, their proper image bearing before God, if it's the only way that people can rightly live their lives out in a meaningful way in this world, then people everywhere, everywhere need to be exposed to the truth of this gospel message. It is a global gospel. I do not remember the missionary that said this. This is not original with me and I'm sorry I can't give you proper credit due to who said it. But a great missionary of the past said, it is a terrible thing for any man to have heard the gospel twice before every man has heard it once. That's a powerful statement. We in this room have lived in a great blessed context. Multiple Bibles on each of our shelves. Instant access by way of the Internet to magnificent biblical teaching. The opportunity to come freely in a worship setting like this and attend a Sunday school class and come to a worship service. Many of us having been raised in homes, even if they were nominally Christian, at least were Christian enough, that we heard the name of Jesus spoken from our childhood until now. We've lived in a context where our lives have been inundated by the things of Jesus. We live in a country where we have public dialogues about Jesus and Christmas time and what that looks like even in our stores and our public squares. Not so in other places around the world. Multiple people groups around the world that still don't have access to the gospel at all in their language. Not at all. Places where there's incredible hostility still to the gospel. And you can't go there under the guise of being a Christian missionary. You have to go there as a person who's coming to do some other sort of work in that environment in an attempt to live what they call now missionally in that environment so that you can try to build relationships to share the gospel with people. And Paul here shows us how important he felt the gospel was in a global context. Now, before he lays all of that out for us in verses 14 through 19, we see how Paul associates the boldness of the gospel with the glory of Christ. Paul commends the Romans for the good work that they've been doing. He speaks to them about their goodness. This is one of those verses where you read it, you go that he can't, after everything he said about how bad people are, he can't have meant this. You go back and you read Romans 1, 18 through 320 about how wicked and wretched and no one good and no one's righteous. And then Paul says, and concerning you, my brothers, I myself am convinced that you yourselves are full of goodness. It's like, Paul, do you not remember what you wrote in those first few chapters at the beginning of Romans? But he's speaking to them as believers in Christ. He's speaking to them as those who have the Holy Spirit residing in them and the grace of God is abounding in them. Remember how he began the letter talking about how their faith has become known throughout all of the world, that they themselves love Jesus a great deal. And he's speaking to the reality of Christ in them. That's what makes them full of goodness. Not anything in them except Christ in them. And he says, you know what? I'm convinced. I'm convinced. You're full of goodness, you're filled with knowledge, you're able to teach yourselves, he says, but I have written very boldly to you on some points as to remind you again because of the grace that was given to me from God. In other words, he says, I preach the gospel to you boldly. Says I'm administering next verse ministering as a priest of the gospel of God so that my offering of the Gentiles might be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. Paul. reiterates the boldness of the gospel. Sometimes the gospel is difficult to hear. I don't like hearing the gospel most times, and I know that sounds almost blasphemous coming from a guy who's preaching to you on Sunday morning as his actual life vocation, but I don't like hearing the gospel sometimes. It bothers me. I don't like being told that my life is still not in keeping with the ways of God. that my life is marked by pride and unbelief and selfishness and disobedience and discontentment. That I'm striving and longing for the slavish food of Egypt rather than the free food that comes with being in the kingdom of God. I don't like being called to take up a cross and follow after Christ. I don't like being told that a true Christian's life should be marked by self-sacrifice and self-denial. I don't like being told these things. I don't. The gospel is hard to hear. So sometimes it has to be said boldly so that we'll listen. And Paul has done this. The gospel is very difficult to live out. I in myself cannot live a life of self-denial. I just can't. I can't do it. I can't not be proud. I can't not be full of myself. I can't get over my own unbelief. I cannot do these things in my own strength. The disciples asked Jesus at one point when he presented the gospel quite aggressively and people were leaving. People were abandoning what was being said. They said, Teacher, who then can do these things? And he said, with man, this is impossible. It cannot be done with you. So, but with God, all things are possible. Thank God for his grace, because the gospel is difficult to live out. It's all of the grace of God is what Paul has been saying and is what he's saying here. And sometimes we have to boldly speak the gospel to ourselves and to other people to to be reminded of this great grace of God and this work that he has done. The great shortcoming of the modern evangelical church has nothing to do with musical styles or programs or kinds of worship services or where people meet or what kinds of clothes that they choose to wear or whether it's quote secret friendly or whether it's high church or low church or medium church. These things are all, it's all cliche arguments for people to have something to talk about in books to write. The real problem with Western modern evangelical Christianity is that there is not a connection between the boldness of the gospel and the glory of Jesus Christ. Whenever the gospel is made small, Jesus is made small. And a small Jesus doesn't save people. Small Jesus doesn't change people's lives from the inside out. Small Jesus doesn't deliver people from their addictions and their arrogance and their pride and their greed and their unbelief and their hatred and their racism and all the other things that plague our world. Small Jesus does not deliver from this. But Jesus is small when the gospel is small. And Paul makes a connection here where he says he finds a place of boasting in the person and the work of Jesus Christ and in the person and the work of Jesus Christ alone. Paul could have boasted about himself. He could have. He makes a small reference to it in Romans. He says it elsewhere in other letters. He was a Hebrew of the Hebrews. He was a well-educated man. He was on the political fast track to having all kinds of superpower in the culture that he lived in. He was an upper echelon of the Jewish people and he was a free Roman citizen. Talk about a combination. And he says, you know what, I count all of that as worthlessness, as nothing compared to Jesus. He said, if I'm going to boast in anything, it's not going to be in my ability to preach. It's not going to be in my ability to teach. It's not going to be in my ability to write. It's not going to be my ability to use a logic. It's not going to be in my Roman citizenship. It's not going to be in my Hebrew ancestry. I am going to boast in the glory of Jesus. Why? Because that's the only thing worth boasting in. That's it. And so he talks about that here. Therefore, in Christ Jesus, verse 17, I have found reason for boasting and things pertaining to God. And I will not presume to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me. Paul preaches a bold gospel. Why? Because he has a big Jesus. He says, I'm not going to speak about anything, anything at all, except for what Christ has done. In his preaching, in his action, in the outworking of the power of the Holy Spirit, he runs through all of these things. He talks about miraculous works, word and deed, signs and wonders, all of the things. He gives implication to all the things that have happened along the way before he writes this letter to the Romans. And he takes credit for none of it. He points all of it to the glory of Jesus. And so, friends, there must be an association in the boldness of our gospel and the greatness of our Jesus. And, friend, when my life comes up short, when your life comes up short, and it does, we all feel Paul's struggle from Romans chapter 7. Good that I want to do, I don't do. The evil that I don't want to do, I keep doing. We know what he's talking about. We have all experienced the shortcoming of our own Christian life. We feel like things have come up short in our walk with Jesus. The fault does not lie in Christ. What we have done in those moments is we have preached a small gospel to ourselves. And then we long for a small Jesus to save us. Friends, we must daily preach a large, bold, grace-filled gospel to ourselves so that a great and glorious, almighty, first and last King of Kings, Lord of Lords, second person of the Trinity, Jesus, can be the one who saves us. And this is what Paul is talking about here. He says, I know I wrote some things to you that were quite bold, understatement of the century. Go back and re-read Romans 8 and 9. I know I said some things that were bold to you. I know I said some things that were severe. But I did it so that the grace of God could be abundant in the person of Jesus Christ. And so then Paul makes a shift in verse 19 through the end of the chapter. And he states that the gospel should go everywhere to everyone. Why? If you do a throwback to one of the earlier sermons from Romans and in that necessary gospel section, the title of one of those sermons was everyone, everywhere, a sinner. That is the condition of every person. So Paul's conclusion now is why should, what should be done about that? The gospel should go everywhere to everyone. Why? Because everyone, everywhere is a sinner. Everyone everywhere needs to hear this gospel message of Jesus Christ. God uses his word through the power of the Holy Spirit to bring people from death to life. That is the means that he uses. This is what he does. There must be the bringing of the gospel. And you say, but Philip, what about that story in Acts where Cornelius, you know, was calling out to Peter in a dream for him to come to them. And Peter came to him and said they knew about it ahead of time, didn't they? God may have been doing something very unusual and unexpected there with Cornelius, but it says the Holy Spirit did not fall on him. They did not come to life until Peter showed up and began preaching the bold gospel to them. That's when their lives were transformed from darkness into light. This gospel message must go. It's a global gospel. And so let's see what Paul says about that. In 19, he speaks about these powers, these signs, these wonders, the things that happened in Jerusalem and all the variety of places that they had been and the places that they were trying to go. And notice what he says in verse 20. He says, I aspired to preach the gospel, not where Christ was already named, so as not to build on another man's foundation. But as it's written, they who had no news of him shall see and they who have not heard shall understand. This is the full preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is our message from here to the ends of the earth. Paul's aspiration was to preach the gospel where it had not been preached. Why? He didn't like competition. He didn't want there to be a better preacher than him in town. So if I show up and I'm the only preacher in town, I'm by default the best preacher that's there. No. There's plenty of places that Paul went where the gospel was named or was named for an extended period of time while he was there. This is not what Paul is talking about. Paul had a global understanding of the severity of the sinfulness of humanity. He knew. that God had given a life giving message through Jesus Christ and that by declaring that message in the power of the Holy Spirit, God might in his kind sovereign providence bring people to life through that message. And he knew as long as they were there in their darkness without hearing that message. As best as we can understand as human beings, there was no hope for them. There was no hope. So he said, you know what? I want to go and preach where the gospel has not been preached. Why? Because people need Jesus. People need Jesus. And so what did Paul desire when he walks through this? If you were to walk through the rest of this section, what did Paul desire? Paul desired to preach to them who were at Rome, and to the people in Spain, and to people in a lot of other places along the way. Paul wanted the gospel to go everywhere. Now, why would Paul wait until the very end of the letter to talk this way? Why would he wait until he'd walk through all of the theological difficulties that surround the gospel and all of the practical difficulties that surround the gospel before so strongly emphasizing the global nature of the need of the gospel? Why would he do that? Because if we jump straight into the global reality of the gospel without addressing the real issues that reside in all of our hearts, we'll find every excuse we can to not let the gospel be global. If Paul had not addressed the divide between the Jewish and Gentile believers in the church at Rome that existed where this letter is being read, they would have found a reason not to carry the gospel to the person that wasn't like them. Oh, I understand the global need, but, you know, I'm just stick it out with my Jewish friends, my Gentile friends. We'll let somebody else handle that. If Paul had not begun to address these kinds of issues, well, I don't want to go to that unclean pagan place. Do you know what those people are like in that country over there? I don't want to have anything to do with those people. Surely someone else can go there. It doesn't have to be me. And the reason why there's so many furrowed brows right now in the congregation is because all of us just started thinking about that place or those people or whoever they are in our own lives. It's hitting us where we actually live. I had a dear friend of mine serve some time over in the Middle East shortly after 9-11. He was in some hot spots and some combat zones and he saw some ugly stuff. Loves Jesus. Loves Jesus immensely. understands the global need of the gospel. And he confided in me. He said, you know, he said, after I got over there and I saw what was going on, I saw the religious motivation behind Islam that made some of the people do what they were doing and the hatred that they had, not for America as a kind of a quasi-pagan place like it sort of is, but for the Christian reality behind America. And there was this true almost enemies of God thing going on. He said, he said, I had to really pray and wrestle through. Loving those people in the gospel. He said, I really had to pray and wrestle through having a missional spirit toward those people. He said it was very hard to do. He said, it's still very hard to do. He said, but I know what the word teaches me, that in Christ, there's no other Jew nor Gentile, no free nor slave, male nor female, uneducated, educated, poor. He said that the gospel, it doesn't have nation and state borders and it doesn't have racial lines. And the gospel really is for everybody. It's even for the person who hates it and wants to kill people because of it. By the way, that is the testimony of the Apostle Paul. Let's never forget that the guy who wrote this letter, one of the greatest pieces of literature that exists on earth, the book of Romans. Strong argument can be made for this. Even from a secular position, I've had secular people who don't believe in Jesus say, this is one of the greatest pieces of philosophical literary writing that has ever existed. He was an anti-Christian terrorist. That's what he was. He hated the gospel message of Jesus Christ to the point that he got permission to arrest and kill anyone who was promoting it. The gospel does not care about these things. It is for everyone. Everywhere. And the reason Paul walks through so many difficult things before he gets to the place of saying, you know what, we've got to be willing to take it to anyone anywhere. Because if we don't work through all that difficult stuff on the front end and come to the understanding that it's by the grace of God and only by the grace of God that any of us have been touched by the gospel of Jesus Christ in the first place, it has nothing to do with race, it has nothing to do with gender, it has nothing to do with ancestral background, it has nothing to do with culture, it has nothing to do with nation state, it has nothing to do with personal intelligence, it has nothing to do with any of our own ability at all. It has everything to do with the glory of God and the grace of Jesus Christ by the power of the spirit. That's what the gospel is about. And until we come to embrace that and understand that, we will find ways for the gospel to not be for everyone. That's what we'll do. And Paul knew that. Paul knew that. So Philip, you're stretching that one of the greatest arguments that Paul has in the New Testament with another believer is with Peter. And you know what his argument with Peter was about. Peter went to Cornelius on the call of God to the Gentile people and he preached the gospel to them. And he went to the council at Jerusalem and said, listen, these folks, the God is allowing the Gentile people to come in and have the Holy Spirit just like everybody else. And then Peter began to shift away from that and to try to make the Christian religion and only Jewish religion again and began shunning the Gentile people. And Paul had to call him out to his face for his racism. It can happen to anyone or suddenly the gospel isn't for everyone. even to an apostle who saw Jesus resurrected from the dead. Let us not be so arrogant to think it can't happen to us. And so Paul deals with all of these issues first. Because we don't want the gospel to be global. Because that's hard. But the gospel to be local, because that's easy. They speak the same language, and they look the same way, and they have the same general political views that I have, and they have generally the same socioeconomic status that I've got. That's really easy. It's not that hard. But, you know, if they've been through some stuff I haven't been through, and they come from a place that I'm not used to, and they talk in a way that I don't really understand, and they live a life that I can't quite comprehend, you know, that makes things hard. Paul desires, though, for all these people to hear the gospel. The Synod of Dort, where we get what are known as the quote unquote five points of Calvinism, you know, Calvinism supposedly being the anti missional version of theology. Says that this gospel. Should be preached in all of the world. Promiscuously. Promiscuously. John Calvin himself had a run-in with a guy named Silvestris, a guy who was teaching in a Trinitarian heresy. And he found out that Silvestris had gone into France, a dangerous place at that time. They were killing all kinds of Christians in France. Just read the history of it. It's awful. It's the reason why Calvin was in Geneva, not in France. And so he found out that Silvestris had gone back into France. was teaching his anti-Trinitarian heresy there to risk of his own life because they didn't like any of that sort there in France. And when Calvin heard this, he snuck himself back into France to try and have a face-to-face meeting with Servestis in an effort to help him more clearly understand the truth of the real gospel. Why would anybody do that? Why would you sneak back into a country that's killing people that are like you to go have a conversation with somebody who's not like you, that they're trying to kill him too, so that you might have a shot of more properly explaining the gospel to him? Why would you do that? Because everyone everywhere is a sinner and the grace of God compels us to look with empathy and compassion toward those who are in the state that we once were in and desire that God bring them out of it. Listen, here comes this gospel angle. Even if it means hardship for us. That's the definition of the gospel. Remember, we talked about that. The very definition of self-denial and self-sacrifice that we saw the last two weeks at the end of Romans 14, the beginning of Romans 15, is the definition of what Jesus did in the Gospel. The second person of the Trinity, the Godhead, stepped out of His glory as divine, veiled Himself in flesh, lived a life as a man, and suffered a death that He did not deserve. For what benefit? He was already all-glorious God. For the benefit of the other. That is what the Gospel looks like. And so why do people do this stuff? Why do people go across the street to the neighbor that they don't know? Why do people go to the, quote, rough side of town to try to build relationships with people even though it's hard for them? Why do people take short-term trips and medium-range trips and long-term trips and full-life relocation into other cultures where the gospel needs to be? Why do people of old, great heroes of the faith, sneak into places where they know they might die to try and share the gospel with somebody else who also might die? Why? Because the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. And it's worth it. The gospel is worth dying over. And it's worth every other inconvenience up to dying. It just is. How many times was Paul near beaten to death over the gospel? How many times was Paul prison thrown into prison over the gospel? How many times was his life thrown into shambles through the travels that he tried to do, trying to get other people the gospel? How do we hear from history that Paul's life ended? We don't have a record of his life ending in the scripture. We get it from history. His life ended before Caesar because he preached the gospel. Now, Am I saying that everyone needs to leave next week on a plane and become a transplant global missionary in some foreign country? That's not what I'm saying. If that's what you heard, you did not hear the sermon correctly today. But there must be a heart in every believer. The same heart that was in Isaiah, the great prophet. God asked the question, who will I send to these people? And Isaiah said, here I am, God, send me. And you know what? He sent Isaiah to his own people. Isaiah didn't have to go anywhere. He stayed there among his own people, the nation of Israel. But I must be willing to demonstrate Jesus in the checkout line at Brookshire's in Tyler, Texas, or in the middle of some country someplace else that's hard for me to get into. I have to have the same willingness in both of those environments to speak the name of Jesus where it might not have been spoken. So I don't know where that is, that's why we speak it everywhere we go. So how should we pray about this? Look at what Paul says at the end. He says, Now I urge you, my brethren, by our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the love of the Spirit, to strive together with me in your prayers to God for me. So Paul lays out kind of a map here about praying, about this global reality of the gospel. That I may be rescued from those who are disobedient in Judea, and that my service for Jerusalem may prove acceptable to the saints, so that I may come to you in joy by the will of God and find refreshing rest in your company. Now may the God of peace be with you all. Amen. And remember what he said he wanted to do in between being able to leave where he was and get to where the Romans were. He wanted to stop off at a lot of places and preach the gospel. How should we pray? We should pray that the road is made smooth for the carrying of the gospel. Not that it's easy, not that it's safe, but that there's a smooth pathway to get the gospel into places where it's never been before. That's how we should pray. What did Jesus say? The harvest is plentiful, but what? The laborers are few. And then what did he say to pray about? Pray what? Pray to the Lord of the harvest that what? I know, it's pop quiz time. Come on. Somebody knows the answer to this question. Pray to the Lord of the harvest that what would happen? That there would be plenty of labor. That there would be more laborers. There would be more people willing to go into the harvest. Friends, listen. This is what I love about believing in a sovereign gospel. He didn't say that the work of creating a harvest was going to be difficult or plentiful. He said that the actual harvest is already plentiful. God is actually going to save people from every nation, people, tribe, and tongue. If you can identify a group of people on the planet that falls in that category who don't have a believer in them right now, I can guarantee you that if somebody gets the gospel to them, somebody from that nation, people, tribe, or tongue will be saved. Why? Because God said so. It's a successful gospel. There is a plentiful harvest to be had. All we have to do is go out there and what do we do? We preach the gospel. We plant seed, we water seed, and what does God do? God makes that seed grow. He didn't say he might make it. He makes it grow. There are people everywhere that God is going to save. And Paul knew that. That's why he was so confident to go everywhere with the gospel. That's why he encourages us in that same confidence. And what does he call people to pray for? Call out to God that he will make the pathways of getting the gospel to those places easier. Because all you got to do is get there. God will do the rest of the work. Got to do the rest. All you got to do is get there. Got to do the rest of the work. So where's the there I need to get to? It may be across the street. We live in a global context society now. You don't have to go all over the world to get to the world, all of the world has come to us. I can pull out my phone this afternoon, I can log on to certain social media aspects that I have on it. And I can have intentional conversations with people on just about every continent except Antarctica. I don't have anybody on my friends list from Antarctica. I've got them from almost every other continent though. We live in a very small world now. There just has to be a willingness on our part to do what we've been called to do. So what have we been called to do? We have been called to declare the excellencies of him who has transferred us from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his beloved son. That's what we've been called to do. We have been called to be promoters of the grace of God found in Jesus Christ. That's it. That's it. Now, before we close, It may be that some of you, some of you, God may actually be calling you out to pull up stakes and do a complete life transplant somewhere else. I know I said He's probably not doing that with a lot of you, but He might be doing that with some of you. Some of you are in places of life and stages of life and expertise of life where it's very easy for you to go somewhere else and do the work that you do here with people there and be the only Christian. And be that light. Medical fields and educational fields are prime examples of this. My resume actually restricts me from getting into places. Multiple earned degrees in Christianity and all you've ever done for the past 20 years is worked in churches. You cannot come in. Some of you, huh, early childhood educator and you work with children, you teach them how to read. Can you do that in English as a second language for us? You can't? Oh, well, come on, we'll pay you and we'll relocate you and we'll give you a place to live. Oh, and there's no Christians here, but, you know, be careful and practice your religion cautiously and, you know, who knows what might happen. God really might be setting some of you apart. To do something that you didn't expect. You need to be open to that. Your no does not need to be on the table, your yes needs to be on the table. Amanda and I have talked about it like this for years. Our yes, whatever that looks like, is always on the table. God's yes for us has been stateside, pastoral ministries and local churches. And I say, amen. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord for that. But we know of people who's put their yes on the hey, you know what, God, whatever you want to do with us. And God began moving the pieces around where. find themselves in foreign contexts among difficult, strange environments, learning new languages and being some of the only Christians for miles and miles and miles. Why? Because the gospel is not named in that place and the gospel needs to be named in places. And that really might be some of you. If it is, and I don't do appeals like this often, if it is. Come and talk to me. I want to help you get where it is you think God is trying to get you to. I want to get you in touch with the right people and the right organizations and the right pathway so that you can start walking down the path that God might have for you. And if it's not you, if you feel like you are where God has you, this is where God wants me to be, then you know what? There's a big old fat mission field right here in the middle of Tyler, Texas. There's a lot of people who need to hear about Jesus right here. You're not less of a missionary because you don't travel. We are less of missionaries when we don't share the gospel. It's a global gospel. That includes Tyler, Texas and the ends of the world. Let's pray together. Father God, thank you. Thank you that this gospel is global. Thank you that it's so much bigger than us. Thank you that it reaches out to the ends of the earth. Father, I don't know what you want to do with a message like this today. I know what you did with Paul. I know what you've done to this point with me. I know what you've done in the lives of some other people. But Father, with this crowd today, I don't know what you want to do with this truth of the global nature of the gospel. But Father, I pray by your grace and for your glory that Sylvania Church will be known like the church that Paul was writing to at Rome, that we will be known throughout the world for our faith in Jesus Christ. Not that we might boast, but that like the apostle Paul, we might find all of our boasting in the work that Jesus has done. And father, I thank you in advance for what you will do when your people take seriously the global call of the gospel. And we ask it in Jesus name. Amen. I invite you at this time, if you would please stand as we sing a song of response together. you