All right, I invite you to turn your Bibles to Romans chapter 15. Romans chapter 15 this afternoon. It's a privilege to be here with you and open up God's word today for you. I appreciate the fact that I was given the prime spot in speaking when Dave and I speak at different conferences. For some reason, it seems like he and I always get like the last sessions. And we've made the joke a few times, either he's batting eighth and I'm batting ninth or reverse it. So everyone knows you put your most strategic hitter in the ninth spot. And so looking forward to that. And then we had, was that Detroit style pizza that we had? No, but it was good pizza. And some of you had far too much. We've got that going. I know some of you are thinking about your trip back and the traffic and all of this as well. So, just praying that God will really use it. I also know that... Whenever you are at a conference like this and your topic has to do with preaching, then you're set up for failure when you actually preach. And so if you have any problems with my preaching, just know that Dave taught my preaching class in undergrad. It was all you. Anyway, I'll tell you a quick story about that. I think I've told Dave before, but he would fly up, I think, every Tuesday to Northland and teach that class. And so I had him about 14 different Tuesdays. And he was teaching methods, but then at the end of the semester, we all had to preach. And so for those, he didn't come up for all those, but he actually videoed them on, you know, VCR tapes, VHS tapes back in the day. I'll never forget when it came time for my group, we kind of broke us up into little groups, and I was with one other, well, actually two other guys, and we had to preach to the other two guys in the room and the camera. And the classroom they gave us was, you know, it was about like this big. It's pretty small. And one of my classmates was in there and he went to preach. And he was a guy who was all fervor and, you know, all heat and very little light. in his preaching. And so I'll never forget in this small little room, it was like a closet, room 212 in the Founder Center at Northland. He stood up and when he got up to preach, I mean, he yelled the entire sermon. me and my friend were in the back, it's like our ears are pinned to the back wall, you know, we're just, and so I always wondered if you picked up on the volume and offered suggestions to him about that. But anyway, I'm looking forward to getting into Romans 15 with you this afternoon. I thought for our final session, it'd be time to learn from one of the greatest pastor theologians the church has ever seen. And that would be the Apostle Paul. Apostle Paul. Paul had been called by God as an apostle to the Gentiles before his birth. He'd been trained before his conversion in the law of Moses. He'd been converted through a supernatural vision of Christ on the road to Damascus and then trained by God in the wilderness for three years. His credentials as a pastor theologian are well established. And if there's one letter in which Paul lays out his clear vision for a local church as a theologian, as a pastor theologian, I would suggest it might be Romans. As a matter of fact, as you think of Romans, it's full of theology. I've had the privilege of teaching it in different classroom settings 15 plus times. And now, by God's grace, I am working through it in a local church setting for the very first time in my life. It took me eight years to build up enough confidence or stupidity, whichever, to preach Romans. to our local church in Colonial Baptist Church in Virginia Beach, Virginia. I've been working through Romans for some time with them. It's been just over 60 sermons, and I'm through Romans 14. What we're gonna look at today is Romans 15. This isn't what I'm preaching Sunday. I'm not even to 15 yet. It's just the way I felt like the Lord led me for our time together here today. But as we come to this section of the book, I think this book is laid out as a section of theology. The way I outline the book is threefold. I think first thing you come across in the book is Paul lays out a theological issue that he wants the church to discover. And that is his theological issue goes from Romans 1.18 through the end of chapter 11. And that is that they must understand the gospel. Paul wants this church in Rome or the churches of Rome to understand the nature and the power of the gospel. He wants them to understand the history of it as well. Regarding the nature, perhaps just a quick review of the first few chapters of Romans would be edifying for us today. Regarding the gospel's nature, he starts by showing that all men and women are condemned in their sins. God has plainly revealed himself to human beings so that they are without excuse. They do not honor God or thank him, but exchange the truths of God for a lie and worship and serve creatures instead. So ultimately, what we learn in Romans 3 is that all men and women are sinners, none is righteous, no, not one, no one understands, no one seeks after God, all have turned aside, together they become worthless, no one does good, not even one. And the effect of Paul stringing together all these quotes from the Old Testament in Romans 3 is that every mouth is stopped and the whole world is held accountable to God. Romans 3.19, you see all are under sin, but we should say, but now, Romans 3.21, but then, man, God's righteousness in Jesus Christ is for all those who believe. Whereas there's no distinction between all sinners falling short of the glory of God, so too there's no distinction as all can call on Jesus to be justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. That's the nature of the gospel, Romans 1-3. It leads to the power of the gospel, Romans 5-8, where we learn that the gospel delivers us from God's wrath. It delivers us from the condemnation of Adam's sin, delivers us from sin's reign and from the law's captivity. delivers us through the Spirit's power so that Paul can conclude Romans 8 by saying, who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? Verse 37, he says, no, and all these things were more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor power, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all of creation will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus. Romans 5-8 undoubtedly are about the nature of the gospel and its power. And it kind of ends on this high note. And it only leaves us with one question, what then about Israel? What then about the people of Israel? And that's where in Romans 9-11, you get a history of salvation and how God has worked. And by the end of the section, you find out that God's not done with Israel, there's a future for Israel. And Paul concludes that section about Jew and Gentile and how they're related in Christ and the future of Israel by saying, oh, the depths of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments, how inscrutable his ways. So as I think of the book of Romans, I think of three movements within the book. You have first Paul's theological issue for writing the letter. He'd never been to Rome, but what's he trying to accomplish? The theological issue is they must understand the gospel. It's nature, it's power, it's history. Then you get to Romans 12, and everyone knows there's a major transition that occurs in Romans chapter 12, right? We come to what I call the pastoral issue. So you have the theological issue, the pastoral issue. What better book could you study? Paul's theologian pastor. What's his pastoral issue? Well, it goes from Romans 12, one through 15, 13. And his point in these chapters will be, you must be conformed to the gospel. It's not enough just to know it, just to understand it, just to get the theology of the gospel right. You must be conformed to it. After those opening verses, of course, that many of us know and have memorized in verses one and two, he gets into a discussion of how we should be using our gifts in the church. And then he gives, as I preach to our church, there's a ministry that is well-known in evangelical circles called, well, we won't get into it, but they emphasize the nine marks of a healthy church, right? I said, you get to the end of Romans 12, and if you look at that chapter, you look at the end, there are, I think, 29 different commands. I called it the 29 marks of a healthy church. Even better. And all they heard was 29-point sermon. This is going to take forever, right? But Paul lays out both his general expectations for the church, and then he gets specific in certain ways, so that even in chapter 13, he'll talk about the obligation of believers in Rome to be submitting to governing authorities, even in a place like Rome. Governing authorities like theirs. You see Paul's getting more specific. He lays out these general exhortations. And then he says, you must submit to governing authorities. And then he says, you need to love one another and you need to live with eschatological zeal. At the end of chapter 13. And then he gets even more specific in the chapters we see. In chapters 14 and 15, when he deals with a pastoral concern, his concern for their obedience extends to a major area of dispute in the church about how to handle liberty issues. Romans 14 and 15. And as he closes that section, that's the one we'll be looking at in some detail today, he gets to the third movement in the book, and that's what I call the missiological purpose. So when I think of Romans, I think of these three things. I think Paul's a theological issue. You must understand the gospel. He has a pastoral issue. You must be conformed to it. And then he's got a missiological purpose for these things. And that is you must understand the gospel and be conformed to it so that you can participate together in reaching unbelievers with it. And you get to Romans 15 verses 14 through 33, where Paul tells them that he desires to be helped on a journey that he is making, verse 24 and 28, to Spain. And Paul explains that his evangelistic ministry, his gospel ministry in other places has ended. And now he's got a vision to go to the West, to unexplored territory for the gospel. He wants to go to Spain and he says, you need to be conformed to the gospel. You need to be unified together, brother, so that you can help me on my way. Okay, that's how I think of Romans. And so we hope to learn from Paul, one of the greatest pastor theologians in history, in the book of Romans, one of the clearest, most significant expressions of the theology in the pastoral heart of Paul. And we hope to do so in Romans 15, verses seven through 13. An important passage where he appeals to believers and we can see his pastoral concerns come to a climax. And by the way, a Trinitarian text. Look for Father, Son, and Spirit as we go through this. So as we start into this, it's my goal for you as men who are pastors in ministry to learn from the pastor theologian, Paul. I specifically will call you to learn two lessons. First, I want you to learn how the apostle Paul appealed to the Roman believers to obey. See, if he has pastoral concerns for them and he appeals in a certain way, it would be good for us to pay attention and learn so that we might follow his methods. And so in verses seven through 12 of our passage, chapter 15, we'll look at Paul's call or command to the church at Rome and how he goes about doing that so that we might learn how we can minister well. Then the second lesson we'll learn is from verse 13, where Paul prays, he offers a prayer wish for the Romans. And as we get to verse 13, it's my desire that we would learn how we could pray for our local churches as well. So let's begin by looking at verse seven. Paul says, therefore, welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you for the glory of God. He says, for I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs. And in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy, as it is written, quote, therefore, I will praise you among the Gentiles and sing to your name. And again, it said, rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people. And again, praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples extol him. And again, Isaiah says, the root of Jesse will come, even he who arises to rule the Gentiles. In him will the Gentiles hope. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing so that by the power of the Holy Spirit, you, may abound in hope. All right, so let me just point out to you, first of all, how this text is arranged. It's fascinating. When you get to Romans chapter 15, the early part of the chapter, you get to twin commands or calls. I'm all about twins, okay, because we have twin daughters. But here at the end of this section on Christian liberty, you know, it starts in chapter 14 about weaker and stronger brothers in a dispute. I believe it's in the church at Rome. Paul ends it with two paragraphs that are arranged the same way. They're twin paragraphs. Okay. And let me just point this out to you. If you look in verse two, I think that the first paragraph is verses two through six. And there's all kind of debate about how you structure these things, but I think this is Paul's structure. Verse two, he gives a command. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good to build him up. He does the same in verse seven. Therefore welcome one another as Christ welcomed you. There's a command. Please your neighbor, not yourself, and welcome, okay? Both commands are followed by or grounded in an example. Look in your Bible. Open Bible quiz here today. Look in verse three. Whose example does he use as motivation for obeying the command of verse 2? Christ, right? So you're just looking for Christ, verse 3 is pretty clear. Look at verse 8, verses 8 and 9, he uses someone's example to tell them that you need to be welcoming one another. Whose example is it there? Christ, right? So this is how these passages are arranged. Command, command, Christ example, Christ example. And after that, in both cases, he follows with scriptural warrant, right? So he's gonna appeal not only on the basis of Christ and his example and how we should treat our brothers in Christ, he appeals on the basis of scripture. Look in the middle verse three. It says, but it is written. Look at middle verse nine. as it is written, okay? So one of our hearts, one of our desires as pastors wanting to grow from the pastor theologian Paul is to see how he reasons and argues for, how he argues that believers should obey commands. And so it'd be good for us to see that he uses the example of Jesus and then he uses his Bible. He uses scripture and he quotes scripture. Those are both followed by the way In these twin paragraphs, look at verse five. May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. What's that? When you come to these passages, pastor, they say, may the God of, it's a prayer wish, right? He's putting forward the way he's praying for the congregations of Rome. May the God of endurance and encouragement. That's how he ends the first of the two twin paragraphs. What does he do in verse 13? You ever see this before in your Bible? May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace and believing so by the power of the Holy Spirit, you may abound in hope. I lamented in one of the workshops I gave yesterday, I said, don't you wish that sermon texts came with certain sermon outlines attached to them? You know, from the Holy Spirit, inspired sermon outlines. We kind of joked around and said, well, we don't have that. But in a sense we do, right? We have the structure, the biblical text, and it should inform our sermonic outline. Okay, so our task is just find it, find it. Okay, so in our paragraph, we'll follow that form, right? So he gives this twin conclusion, a very important part of Romans. Here, the great pastor, theologian, is going to call them to obey, verses seven through 12, and then he's gonna pray. He's gonna pray for them, verse 13. Okay, so as we're working through the text, in verse seven, we can find the command itself. Paul says, therefore, welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you for the glory of God. Here, Paul makes his call or his command clear, welcome one another, and he stresses this need by repeating the word twice. You see that? Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you. You don't have to be very bright. To pick up sometimes the biblical author's emphases, right? The word welcome is used in a sense here of welcoming or receiving others warmly. This word is not used very often in the New Testament. In a few places, I think it's used in ways that can kind of help us understand more of his point here. One of those would be the last chapter of the book of Acts. I love Acts 28 verse two, uses this word for welcome, where the native people of Malta exercised unusual kindness toward Paul and those who were shipwrecked. They took them in, they welcomed them, made a fire for them to keep them warm. They provided for them and cared for them in their own, cared for them as their own. And so that picture kind of helps me a little bit to understand what the word welcome here means. Now, although this word isn't used very much, it is used a few times in Romans 14 and 15. Have you ever picked this up before? You see, as Paul starts this section in Romans 14, verse one, he's got this same challenge. Verse one, as for the one who's weak in faith, do what? I'm gonna have you repeat that answer, because you didn't do very well. As for the one who's weak in the faith, what are we to do? Oh, by the way, I'm reading from the ESV. That might be messing some of us up. Sorry about that. Welcome him. As you keep reading at the beginning of this section on Christian liberty, down in verse three, down in verse three, we see it says, let the one who eats despise Or let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. All right, so as I'm looking in my Bible, I see that Paul frames Romans 14 and 15 with this call twice, that we are to welcome, we are to receive one another warmly. And so Paul's opening command to the believers in Rome is for them to receive each other warmly. Now, I want to stop for a moment and just, I have to paint a little bit of the situation here because you might have questions. And I know, I know I'm in a room full of pastors and you probably have studied Romans 14 and 15 in some way or another, but you might have some questions about what's going on with this weaker and stronger brother here. And there's another passage kind of like this in the Bible. What other passage in the Bible has got a weaker and stronger brother? Can you remember? You can say it out loud. 1 Corinthians 8 through 10, right? So you got these two texts in Paul's writings are written around the same time, but they're actually addressing a little bit of unique situations. Okay, there are two differences as we just briefly consider this situation for a moment, I want you to be aware of. Okay, and this is gonna be helpful as we go through the rest of Romans 14 and 15 here. The first difference between this text is the meat in both situations is different. Okay, in 1 Corinthians, the meat that was controversial was idol meat, and whether or not believers could eat idle meat, but that does not appear to be the situation in Romans. There's no discussion of idolatry here. The meat that is being considered here is whether or not believers can eat non-kosher meats, non-kosher meats, meat that's not killed and blood drained in the proper ceremonial way. And one of the things that can help us understand it, I really believe more of the Roman situation is to know that They're coming through a situation in which whether or not you could eat non-kosher foods became very controversial for the church, okay? Hopefully you've done enough study of this to realize that historically, and Acts 18 helps us see this, there was an edict by a Roman ruler by the name of Claudius. And in Acts 18, we know about this because Aquila and Priscilla are in Corinth. They'd come from Rome. They weren't allowed to stay in Rome anymore because they were Jewish people. And so they've been deported to Corinth. And so what we know historically is Claudius, a Roman ruler, has problems with the Jews in Rome. And so he issues an edict. It's in 49 AD called the Edict of Claudius. And it was because there was controversy about a man by the name of Crestus, which some people might even believe could be a reference to the Christ. And so for some reason, the emperor of Rome deports all Jewish people from the city of Rome in 49 A.D., the whole way up to 56 A.D. for seven years. When did Paul write Romans? About a year later. And so the situation, the historic situation he's addressing is this. Jewish believers had been deported out of the city and within a year of Romans being written, they're coming back into the city and those Jewish believers would be joining back into churches in Rome. And that led to a few controversies. And one is, Could they eat meat that was non-kosher? Let me ask you, what would happen to your church if half of your church fellowship, the most conservative part of your church fellowship, left for seven years and then came back? What do you think would change in the seven years? Think anything would change? You know, the progressives, they're in control of everything. There are no conservatives. The Jews go away for seven years, Jewish believers, and they come back and things have changed. So they show up to the church potluck. I know Baptists, we don't call it potluck, the church fellowship meal, right, in our fellowship hall. They come back to the potluck and they look and they see Gentiles are eating something strange. As my good friend, Sam Horne always says, they're eating ham sandwiches and hot dogs. All right. Can you imagine this? A Jewish believer comes up to a Gentile, what's that? Is that swine's meat? Which by the way, Schreiner says is a delicacy at this time in Gentile cities. Is that pig? Is that swine's meat? It's a ham sandwich. Yes, yes. What's inside of it? It's a hot dog. What's that? What comes from a pig? What part of the pig? No one knows. Don't, don't. Just eat it. They're really good. A little ketchup, a little, right? What were we supposed to do? You imagine the gentleman, what were we supposed to do? You were gone for seven years. All of the Jewish slaughterhouses were shut down. I could hear the Jewish believers say back, have you ever heard of vegetables? Let me tell you a Bible story. Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they would not defile themselves with the king's meat and they only ate vegetables. That's what you should do. Or Jewish believers show up for worship on the Sabbath and Gentile believers have changed it. We're worshiping on the Lord's day. There are these differences, and I want you to be aware of these things. And so in our text in Romans 14 and 15, both kinds of brothers, the weak and the strong, I think the weak are primarily Jewish believers, the strong are primarily Gentile believers, but what Paul tells them here is there to be receiving and accepting one another. and they're to do so in a specific manner according to this text. They're to do so as Jesus received them for God's glory. I think one of the places where it would be most tempting to reject your brother would be over common meal, shared meal. In fact, just flip over to Galatians for a second, I think you'll see a situation here in Galatians described. It pictures a group of Jewish believers who remove themselves from a meal with Gentile believers over concerns related to cleanliness. Galatians 2.11, remember this? It says, but when Cephas came to Antioch, I posed him to his face because he stood condemned for before certain men came from James. Certain men came from James. Well, Acts 15 would help us to see these men are coming likely from the church of Jerusalem. Certain men came from James. He was eating, Cephas was eating, Cephas, by the way, is Peter. He was eating with the Gentiles. But when they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party, and the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him so that even Barnabas was led away by their hypocrisy. But when I saw their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews? Here, even though Peter and Barnabas are led astray in Antioch, Paul confronts them to the face because they have no scriptural basis for their practice. We have learned in the gospels that all food is now clean and that justification comes entirely on the basis of faith. So Paul confronts Peter and Barnabas, their failure to eat with Gentiles. As a matter of fact, the example of Jesus himself should point them in a different direction. Remember, Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinners, but unfortunately, Christ's earthly actions aren't often quite real to us. They're not vivid to us as believers. on a page perhaps, but those actions don't guide or control us or factor into what we do. And so Paul makes it clear what we should do here. We need to welcome each other, welcome our brothers and sisters, whether they're a Jewish believer or a Gentile believer, whether they believe you can eat meat that's not slaughtered in the right way, or they believe you can only eat vegetables. We're to be welcome wanting one another as Jesus. So that's the command in verse seven. Now, what Paul does with that command after in verses eight through 12 is he gives the grounds for it. Reasons why he expects the Roman believers to be receiving one another warmly in the church, even when there are these disputable issues among them. Okay. And I think I could do this pretty quickly. He's got two grounds. The first one is we should receive each other in the church because Jesus did, or Jesus does. Verse eight, look there. It says, for I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. Here, Paul gives a good reason to welcome other brothers and sisters in Christ, regardless of differences they might have with us in liberty issues. He hinted at this in verse seven. Well, he actually said it clearly, welcome them as Christ welcomes them. But here he makes it explicit. We must receive them because Christ had international goals in his sacrificial life and death. See, the Jewish brothers, they cannot just simply reject or hold at distance their Gentile brothers because Christ died so that And you really see this clearly right in the text. Two purposes come out in this, in order that, in order to. Jesus's work was for the Jewish patriarchs, for the fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to fulfill the promises, to show God as being true. He did it for that reason. Yes, for the Jewish patriarchs, but also for the Gentiles that they too might be able to glorify God through Christ. As I said before, Christ had international goals in his ministry. He died for Jewish and Gentile believers, our brothers and sisters. And so the way Paul argues here, and I think the way he argues in other places in this passage, and even in the first Corinthians passages, you need to consider your brother, sister, even when they disagree with you, because Jesus died for that brother. or sister. And the way he'll argue at times is, you know, if Jesus died for your weaker brother or your stronger brother, don't you think you should consider them as well and love them and welcome them? Matter of fact, I'll just show you this. I'm preaching on this one this Sunday. It's in my mind, Romans 14, verse 15, end of the verse. By what you eat, do not destroy the one for whom Christ died. That makes this whole matter of eating and drinking feel quite trivial, doesn't it? In other words, are you really gonna let your freedom get in the way and destroy someone for whom Christ not only, you know, Christ did far more than control is eating for another. He died for this person. First Corinthians, he does the same. And in chapter eight, he says this in verse 11. And so by your knowledge, the weak person is destroyed. The brother for him, Christ died. Thus sinning against your brother and wounding his conscience when it's weak, you are sinning against Christ. So we must all welcome each other in the church, even when there are disputable matters between us, matters of liberty, of course, because Christ died to secure their salvation. If we're going to learn as a pastor how to learn from Paul and how he appealed. So the first thing Paul does when he has a command that he's calling the churches at Rome to obey, he says, welcome them. He appeals to the example of Jesus. So it'd be wise for us as pastors, when we're appealing, when we're issuing an urgent appeal as well to people in our church, to sometimes, many, maybe many times use the example and the words of Jesus. You can't do this. Jesus wouldn't do that. Or don't you remember what Jesus said? Okay. Now the second grounds is he uses scripture. And we're not going to be able to look at all of these passages in close detail. But secondly, we should also receive each other in the church because the scriptures require it. As Paul's reasoning, appealing to Roman believers to welcome one another in matters of liberty, he reminds them of how the scripture foretold that Gentiles would be able to worship and extol God through Jesus. And so I want you to see this. Look at middle of verse nine. I'll read this for you one last time. It says, as it is written, Therefore, I will praise you among the Gentiles and sing to your name. That's a quote from Psalm 1849. But then Paul adds that, and again, it said, rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people. That's Deuteronomy 32, 43. And again, new quote, praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, let all the peoples extol him. Psalm 117, verse one. And as if that's not enough scripture, To add to his argument, at the end he says, and again, Isaiah says, quote, the root of Jesse will come, even he who arises to rule the Gentiles in him, the root of Jesse, will the Gentiles hope, Isaiah 11, verse 10. Now, What he's doing here is he's using his Bible, the Old Testament scripture, to speak into the issue and to declare the fact, especially, I believe, that Jewish believers should be willing to accept Gentile believers despite their practices at common meals. The way he does that is he quotes four different passages of the Old Testament. So if you wanna be a pastor theologian, that's your desire, you can learn from the Apostle Paul. And one of the things you can learn from him is how to use your Bible, how to use your Bible. Matter of fact, in the Doctor of Ministry program that I was in at the very end, I wrote a project that was so rich and edifying for my own ministry. The title of my final project was Paul's Pastoral Use of Scripture in 1 Corinthians. a guide for pastors as they minister scripture to their congregations. And the premise of that project was I went through the 17 quotations of the Old Testament in the book of 1 Corinthians, and I wanted to see how did Paul use his Bible, the Old Testament, with one of the most fleshly churches that I could find. The old word would be carnal, right? And so I tried to learn from that. Matter of fact, years ago, I came and did the William Rice lecture series, I think, and that was the focus of it. Okay, well, one of the things you can do, if you wanna be a good pastor theologian, learn from the pastor theologian, Paul, and how he used his Bible. Okay, now I can't look at all of these quotes, but I will point out just a few things about them as a whole. First, each of the four citations here contain Gentiles praising the Lord. Did you notice that? Each of the four citations have Gentiles pleasing the Lord. The word Gentiles is used five times in this passage. And not to lose sight of what he's doing, he says, you need to welcome your brothers in the Lord. And some of these brothers are stronger believers, perhaps, who are more Gentile in background, and they believe that all food is clean because, well, Jesus said that. The Gospel of Mark, Mark comments, he makes it clear. He was describing the fact that all food is clean. And so Paul quotes some of the clearest texts, I believe, from the Old Testament that describe that God's purposes have always gone beyond Israel to the nations. Right? And so Paul compiles all of these texts and say, you know, God had purposes for the inclusion of Gentiles. Second thing I'd point out is these passages come from every section of scripture, including the law, the writings, and the prophets, okay? Which is a practice, I think, that's more rabbinic in nature. Paul may have learned it as a rabbi. As a formerly trained rabbi, Paul proves his point. He's gonna prove it indisputably. So you all need to welcome one another. You need to receive each other warmly. And let me prove it to you. I'm gonna use the Bible and I'm gonna use every section. Law, writings, and prophets. Here they are, boom. Put them on you so that if you argue with Paul, right? If you're a Roman, you're like, I don't know if I really need to receive them. It's a hot dog. That's so wrong. We can't do that. I don't know if I really need to obey the apostle. If you disagree with him, it's like you're disobeying with God, his word, right? The law, the writings of prophets, they all make this point. And combining all of the citations into a composite citation is only going to increase the rhetorical pressure on you. Finally, I want you to notice about these quotations that the first and the last involve declarations, indicatives about Gentiles worshiping. The ones in the middle are imperatives, but I think the emphasis is placed on the ones in the ends. Paul starts and ends with simple statements about Gentiles praising God to show that the Old Testament predicted a time when Gentiles would be empowered to worship God. For Paul, that time when Gentiles are empowered to worship God is now. Paul understands that the root of Jesse has come, the one who arose to rule the Gentiles, as Isaiah predicted. Paul sees that it is in Jesus that the Gentiles now hope And so Jewish believers must welcome Gentile believers in Jesus as full-fledged worshipers of God, because Jesus died and he arose. He provided the way for everyone to be included. All right, and so Paul's appeal, his urgent appeal comes this way, that the Roman believers would be unified. They would welcome one another, Jew and Gentile, as full brothers in the church of God. Jesus welcomed Gentile believers into God's family, and the Old Testament spoke of a time when that would happen, and Paul believes that time is now. And so to the Roman believers in these first verses, 7 through 12, it has the effect of saying something like this. Get with the program, right? Receive your brothers from different backgrounds who hold different positions on liberty And may I just say, I think it'd be really good for us as pastors to learn from Paul's example. Here his urgent appeals are grounded in the example of Jesus and the words of the Old Testament scripture. And then we should do the same. This isn't the only time Paul does this. Since you're in Romans, just flip over for a second. I just got a few minutes left. You're doing so well fighting fatigue in the pizza. Okay. Well, I just want you to see this. Look at 1 Corinthians 9. You remember in this section, Paul is trying to, well, he's demonstrating that the Corinthians should feel an obligation to financially support their ministers or those who minister the gospel. You can see that clearly in verse 11, 9-11. Ready? If we have sown spiritual things among you, Is it too much if we reap material things from you? Right? So Paul's saying, you know, here we are ministers of the gospel. We have sown spiritual things to you. We have ministered in the spiritual arena. Is it too much to ask for material things? Now, in a sense, after he proves all this, he says, he's not going to take it from the Corinthians, but don't worry about that right now. Okay, so in a chapter where he's trying to prove to the Corinthian church that they should feel the obligation to support Christian ministers financially, and all the pastors who are paid in the room say amen to this, right? In a passage like that, how does he go about proving it? Look at verse seven, who serves as a soldier at his own expense, who plants a vineyard without eating of his fruit, or who tends the flock without getting some of the milk. First thing he does, he appeals to culture. Look around you, look at all these other occupations. Farmers and soldiers, aren't they paid? Aren't they given support off of their livelihood? But he doesn't end there. If you look in verse eight, he says, do I say these things on human authority? Does not the law say the same? And where does he go after that? He says, for it is written in the law of Moses, for it is written. That sounds very familiar, doesn't it? Like Romans 15. He appeals to Scripture. He says, you know, we can look at farmers and shepherds and all these people and make a case that you should be willing to support your labors in the gospel, but doesn't Moses say the same thing in the Scripture? And he quotes it. He quotes the law of Moses. Verse nine, for it is written in the law of Moses, you shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain. And he goes through this whole thing. Do you think Moses wrote that for oxen? No, it's not for oxen. He tells us very clearly it's not for oxen, it's for us, that we might learn the need to support those who minister the gospel, right? So he appeals to culture, but then he goes to more powerful authorities. Scripture tells you that you need to do this, the law of Moses. Well, he also appeals to the sacrifices of the Jewish system, but for the sake of time, go down to verse 14. What is his climactic appeal? Verse 14, in the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living from the gospel. Okay, question, who is the Lord there? Okay, well, I'd have to study it in full context. I don't want to answer too quickly or I'd be slow to speak like we learned this week. Who's the Lord? Who's the Lord who issued commands that we should be willing to support those who minister the gospel to us? And I'm just gonna say, I think it's Jesus. Paul is aware that Jesus said something about this, just like he does in a different chapter of 1 Corinthians where he keeps coming back, the Lord has something to say here. Okay, is that chapter seven, I believe. The reason we go to these other texts is just to show you what Paul's doing in Romans 15. You can flip back there, I'm almost done. What he's doing in Romans 15 and the way he appeals, the way he calls for believers as an apostle to obey the command to welcome or receive their brothers in the Lord is twofold. He goes to the example of Jesus and he goes to the Old Testament scripture to prove it. In 1 Corinthians 9, when he's trying to make an appeal that they'd be willing to support labors of the gospel, how does he prove it? Sure, he uses culture as an example, but he uses the law of Moses. The law of Moses tells us this, our Bibles tell us you have to support Christian ministers. And then at the very end, he says, Jesus also said this, right? So as a pastor, we can learn from the greatest pastor theologian of all time. We can learn how when we go to people in our church and we make urgent appeals for them to obey, perhaps some of the way we should do that. We go to them about the way they're treating their wife. And we can just appeal to them with all kinds of different sources. We could shame them in different ways, say the culture wouldn't be tolerant or accepting of this, or perhaps it'd be more powerful for us to know the scriptures well and to use scripture. Perhaps Jesus said something about this. Perhaps Jesus lived in a certain way that would be relevant and applicable to this situation. Now, there's one other thing I want to address, and I'll do this very quickly. Verse 13, that is the pastoral prayer of Paul. I think we can learn from this too, men. Paul says, may the God of hope, verse 13, may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit, you may abound in hope. Paul wants the Roman church to abound in hope. To make it simple, Paul prays here in this passage, he prays for abundance in the Roman church. Now don't get me wrong here, he has a certain type of abundance in mind. This is not like the prayer of Jabez, like for people. He's not thinking of abundance of, financial abundance. He's not praying that for the churches of Rome. He's not praying for physical resources, maybe not even for numbers necessarily. But he does long for them to abound and to be filled with certain things. So what does he pray for? That they would be filled with joy. He wants them to be an exuberantly joyous assembly. He longs for God to fill them with true and abounding joy, evident joy, genuine joy. I say, man, this would be a great prayer for you to be praying for your church often. I pray this for our church often. I pray that we would be a joyful church. He wants them to be filled with peace. So he prays for it, filled with peace. Filled with all peace. He doesn't want them to experience disharmony and tension in the church. He wants them to know the deep wellbeing we have in God, in Christ. He wants them to be filled with faith. He says in believing. We can read over some of these qualities and not really think of their value for our churches. Faith is a quality of trusting God or trusting Christ. The idea is trust, faith, and conviction regarding Christ. I'm mindful that Timothy was to be an example of the believers. Paul says, let no one despise your youth, but be an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith. and purity, even Timothy, when other people are struggling in the church at Ephesus to have deep confidence that God is at work, that deep conviction that he's real and that he's working. Timothy, you should be an example. You should set the example in faith. Here Paul prays for them to be filled with faith and finally and ultimately he prays that the Holy Spirit would make the Roman churches abound in hope. He starts with it and ends with it. He calls God the God of hope, and he wants them to be filled with hope. He wants it to be overflowing. This future hope that we have in Christ. Now, in my opinion, Paul doesn't just pray for these things. Abounding joy, peace, hope. He's not just praying for these as an end in and of themselves, but as you would keep reading in Romans 15, he wants the church at Rome to be a warm, welcoming church where they're receiving one another despite differences in matters of liberty. And he prays that they would be an over-abounding church filled with these things so that they would be able to help him reach Spain with the gospel of Christ. the missiological purpose in the book. As we close, might I ask you some questions as a pastor first. As a pastor, how do you minister to your church? What are your mornings like in ministry? Do you get up early to diligently seek God in his word, the scriptures. Do you still get up early to read the scriptures, to hear and see the example of Jesus so that you might be used by God to call people to obedience on the basis of scripture and the example of Christ? Do you pray for your church? You get up early to pray for your church? You pray through your church directory? Are you praying for an abundance of joy and peace and faith and hope in your church? It's easy to lose sight of these things, men. I trust that by just considering for a moment one of the greatest pastor theologians of all time, the Apostle Paul. To see how he knew Scripture and used Scripture, we might recommit our hearts to know it so we can use it. And we can see how he prays, the sort of things he's praying for, abounding joy, abounding peace, abounding faith and hope. so that we could be praying these things for our churches. If your experience is anything like mine, I'm sure there are many men in the room that perhaps should focus at least on one of these things. Are you praying for your church? Are you praying these ways? Let's learn from Paul. Let's pray together. Father, thank you for Paul's pastoral call here. He was not willing to let the churches of Rome languish for weaker and stronger brother to hold grudges, to despise one another, and to judge one another over matters of liberty. But he calls them to obey. He challenges them to welcome one another, to receive one another graciously. He uses Jesus as example. He uses scripture. Lord, help us learn from the way he called churches to obedience in our ministry of the word. And thank you for preserving Paul's prayer for the churches of Rome found in these two verses. Thank you for what he prays for. And Lord, may that inform our prayers. May we pray that there would be a super abounding joy and peace and real vibrant faith in our church communities. Would we pray that they would be captured by the hope that we have in Christ? I pray for my brothers here. I pray that you would strengthen them to continue praying for their assemblies in these ways as well. We thank you, Lord, for what you'll do through your spirit. In his name we pray, amen.