Romans 16, I'm going to read from verse 21 to the end of the book. Romans 16, reading from 21 to the end of the book. Please give your attention to the Word of God. Timothy, my fellow worker, greets you. So do Lucius and Jason and Sosopater, my kinsmen. I, Tertius, who wrote this letter, greet you in the Lord. Gaius, who was host to me and to the whole church, greets you. Erastus, the city treasurer, and our brother Quartus greet you. Now to him who is able to strengthen you, according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith Two, the only wise God. Be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ. Amen. There's a rule in public speaking. And students, if you have some presentation to do, here is the rule if you haven't been told it. The rule for a good presentation. Tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them. In other words, have a relevant introduction, make your points, and have a relevant conclusion that reviews the whole. Lo and behold, Paul followed this rule in the Book of Romans. As we read a moment ago, he had an introduction in which he said, I am here to tell you the announcement of the King. His name is Jesus. This is a mystery revealed in the fullness of time. All the world is called to obey this king. That was the opening. And it is pretty much the conclusion as well, that he has an announcement, a gospel, about a king named Jesus. This king was long promised, but has now been revealed. And all nations are to obey this king in faith. He tells them at the beginning, He tells them at the end, and everything in between is why you need this King, and why you need to obey Him. The predicament that we are all in as human beings, and why Jesus is God's answer to that. But all this can be too abstract. We have to love concretely. You have to love when you get up in the morning, the people who are actually in your house. We begin here with greetings from Paul's end. Remember earlier in the chapter, we have him telling them in Rome, I want you to greet each other in Rome. Greet all the people that I know there in Rome. But here, we have the greetings from Paul's side, as he writes from Corinth, or maybe from the port of Corinth in Crete. He says, concretely, my team and my hosts greet you. Please note that Paul always was part of a team. He's such a big figure that we just think about Paul, but he did not go solo through the Roman Empire. At the beginning, the Holy Spirit said to the leaders in Antioch, set apart Barnabas and Saul, that's Paul, to the work that I've sent them. And the two of them went off with John Mark, a third. From the beginning, it was three. And that's the first missionary journey is three, Barnabas, Paul, and John Mark. John Mark bails on them. So when they go for a second journey, Barnabas, being the son of encouragement, said, let's take Mark, my cousin. Paul says, let's not take the guy who bailed on us. And so they split up, but Paul doesn't go alone. He takes Silas. And so again, there's two of them. And he meets a young man named Timothy, and he makes it three. And he meets someone named Luke, and it makes it four. And then they decide that they're going to take up an offering from these Greek churches and take it to Jerusalem to help the poor Jewish church. And so the team grows. He takes somebody from each church, partially as security. You're going to take a lot of money around. You've got to have some guys with you. And partially for reporting purposes. He wanted everybody to know the money went where it was supposed to go. And so that's where he's at at this point. He's gathering the fundraising team. And so he's got these guys all around him. And he gives them a voice. He says, Timothy, my fellow worker. That's the same Timothy to whom he writes the books of the Bible, 1 and 2 Timothy. Timothy becomes his right-hand man. When there's some problem and Paul can't go himself, he sends Timothy. Timothy, my fellow worker, greets you. And so do these other three, Lucius and Jason and Sosaphat. Jason was probably caught up in a riot one time when they wanted to get Paul and they couldn't find Paul and they grabbed Jason and they dragged him into the theater. He's a guy who's really suffered and he's been part of the team. And he's given a voice here. Jason, they are my kinsmen, probably meaning my fellow Jewish Christians. He wants to show that church in Jerusalem, he doesn't just have Gentiles in his churches. He's got Jews and Gentiles in his churches. He's going to bring the Jewish, the unoffensive ones, to bring the gift. There's always a team with Paul. And so when we do ministry, as much as possible, we should try to do it as teams. Jesus sent out the apostles two by two. And whatever we are doing, whether it's going door to door, or whether we're trying to start a new church, whether we're going on a new mission field, we ought to try to have at least two, if not more than two. You'll notice how quick Paul was to try to go from two to three and from three to four. He knew it was good for reasons of safety, good for reasons of witness, good for reasons of being able to do more things when you have more people around you. So the team greets you, he says, and my hosts greet you. Gaius, host to me and the whole church. It is to say, not only was Paul staying at his house, but when the church met, the church met in Gaius' house, or at least some section of it. He was the host. They didn't have church buildings yet. They weren't legal yet. They couldn't have church buildings. And so people with houses would invite you. And Erastus, the city treasurer. They've actually found an inscription in Corinth about Erastus with some other higher rank. Maybe he had a promotion later. But it can be encouraging, right, to know that there are powerful people who've believed in the gospel. And so he's mentioned here, but he's not dwelt on. We go on to Cordus, and we learn nothing about Cordus, except he has sort of a Latinish name, and he's our brother. People around Paul want to send their greetings because they love concretely. And we're to love concretely. We're to love with our names. We're to love other people and learn their names and speak to them this way. And then you have someone that might have made you jump. I, Tertius, who wrote this letter. And what do you mean you wrote the letter? I thought Paul wrote the letter. What was the fashion back then to use a secretary or a scribe? or if you want the technical term, an amanuensis. It's a scribe. That is to say, if you are a sufficiently important person, like Paul was, or if you just want to be able to concentrate on the thinking and let somebody else concentrate on the strange act of writing, someone with better handwriting than you, you'd have this scribe actually hold the pen. And it seems to have varied whether it's exact dictation or whether you just tell the immanuensis, say this and this and go off and do it, as is the fashion with bosses, with secretaries to this day. The boss might dictate to a secretary. The boss might trust the secretary to write the right kind of letter. So although he's simply there as a servant, Paul says, your turn. You're a believer. You have a voice. You greet him. It's your turn. And so I, Tertius, who wrote this letter, greet you in the Lord. Notice how every person is made in the image of God. Paul does not say, well, we don't need to hear from you, little one. No, the servant has a voice. Now, one thing that might have, if you were really paying attention, you might have noticed something. This thing about Gaius is verse 23. And the doxology starts on verse 25. And you might say, I didn't know the Bible didn't know how to count. What happened to 24? And that's one of those textual things. There is a verse in some manuscripts, and you have it in the footnote. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen. That's in some of the texts, including the Byzantine texts and the ones that got the verse numbers stuck in. But it's not in the oldest ones. So it's probably not original. So they pass over it. That's what happened to verse 24. When they were sticking in the verse numbers centuries later, because Paul was not putting these numbers in, Tertius was not sticking these numbers in. This happens centuries later. And the manuscript they were using when they first put in the verses had that verse. David's scholarships dug up older stuff and said, that verse is probably not original. And then we have verses 25 to 27. How do you end your letters? Kids need to be taught how to write a letter. We have it in our American form. You start with the date in the upper right hand. It's a personal letter. You say, dear grandma, thank you for the money. I need to think of a second sentence now. And then how do you end it? You say, sincerely, John. Or yours truly, John. Perhaps best wishes, John. Or as your emails get shorter and shorter, it gets contracted to best. The Romans had their own forms, the Greco-Romans. Their start was like a memo. We saw that. From Paul, and who he is, to the Church in Rome, greetings. Then you write the letter. And how do you end it? Well, Paul often would end with a blessing. And that's what you have back at verse 20. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. He's done the blessing thing. So in this place, he does a doxology. He makes his doxology a summary. But his summary is this doxology. Now, a doxology is a word of praise or a word of glory. And you can imagine some Roman flattering the emperor with some kind of word and praise of the emperor. But what Paul does is he ends with a word of praise of God. It's not the first one. If you look at the end of chapter 11, you have another doxology, where he says, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable his judgments, how inscrutable his ways, Who has known the mind of the Lord, and who has been his counsel? The doxology at the end of the theological part of the letter. Now you have a doxology at the very end of the letter. It ends by saying, praise our great and awesome God. Now, in our tradition, we stress that the point of your life is to glorify God. We put that right at the beginning of our shorter catechism. What is the point of life? The point of life is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. And I've wondered sometimes, that's a very optimistic and wonderful statement, I've sometimes wondered if it really was the best place to start. Is it really from the Bible? Where is the verse that says the point of life is to glorify God? You've got the verse, you know, whatever you do, do all for the glory of God. But where is the verse really that says that's the point of life? And you could think of Jesus and the great commandment. The greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and strength and might. And when you really love someone, you praise them. When you're full of love for that person, it's not a secret. You praise that person. So you could say, if the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God, the greatest commandment is to glorify Him. The greatest thing to do is to glorify Him. You might also get your hands around this. Why is the point of life glorifying God? You could say, well, what is happening in heaven? When you get glimpses of heaven, say, Isaiah, or the Apostle John, they see the angels praising God in heaven. That's what's happening right now. In heaven, the angels are praising God. Now, you might say, well, angels are a different order of being than us. OK, John saw 24 elders, that is, people, and they were praising God. So you could say, all right, if that is our destiny is to praise God, that must be the greatest thing for us to do now. But here in Romans, we have this third bit of evidence. that the greatest point of our life is to glorify God with these two doxologies, the one at the end of chapter 11 and the one here. When it's time to wind up this great letter that tells us about Jesus and why we need Him, the last word is not given to exhort us, the last word is given to the praise of God. That's your broadest purpose. Your broadest purpose is not to live just as long as you possibly can, though you should preserve your life. Your broadest purpose is not to make as much money as you possibly can. It's not to have as many experiences as you can or to cross off as many things from your bucket list as possible. Your broadest purpose is not even exactly to help as many people as you can. Your broadest purpose is to glorify God, in the course of which you will help many people. And to glorify God means to love Him, and to trust Him, and to rejoice in Him, and to worship Him, and to submit to Him, and to obey Him. That's the broadest purpose of human life, because God is both our Creator and our Redeemer. We are His, both by reason of being made by Him, and because He has rescued us from the mess of our own making. And so since that's the broadest purpose of life, it's a great way to end the letter. There's also a hint of that in the phrase, goodbye. Now, nowadays, goodbye simply means farewell. But it's actually a contraction of God be with you. God be with you, contracts to goodbye. You can kind of see it in there. Goodbye, God be with you. You invoke God when you part, because God will still be with the person when you are not. And God will be able to help the person, even after you part and you're not able to help anymore. And so, that's what he's doing here. As he finishes his letter, and there's nothing more he can do for them, he says, God can do something for you. God strengthens. Notice that in the doxology. Now, to him who was able to strengthen you. He doesn't say God for a long time as you go through that doxology. He means God. He gets there. But he doesn't say God for like the first eight lines. Because he wants to draw out something about God. He is him who is able to strengthen you. Many Americans think of God as, oh, he's there, but he's not involved. It's up to me. This is, no, no, no, no, no. God is able to strengthen you. He's not aloof. He's not uninvolved. He's able, and the point of the book is, he does strengthen you. Notice what he's bringing out for your consideration as you think about God. He's not bringing out that God is the judge. No, God is the judge. He's not bringing out that God is a taskmaster. No, he's saying, who is God? God is the one who is able to strengthen you. And for the believer in Jesus, we ought to begin here in our thinking about God. That God is our heavenly Father, who knows what we need and who strengthens us. Yes, He's judge. Yes, He calls to service. Yes, He calls us to suffer. But this is not what is primary. What is primary is that we pray to Him, our Father, who art in heaven. And like a father, He is able to strengthen us. We want to help each other. We want to strengthen each other. Paul wanted to strengthen them. He said back at the beginning, chapter 1, verse 11, I want to come to you and strengthen you. That's really what he wanted to do for them. But you know, you can do your best to encourage someone. You can't control how the person takes your words. You can try your best to encourage the depressed person and that person can just be totally discouraged by what you say. But God is able to strengthen. God is able to strengthen through us. God is able to strengthen in spite of us. God is the one who actually does the strengthening. When you're trying to help someone, don't neglect praying for them. Because God is the one able to strengthen. And if you want them strengthened, you do what you can. You pray that God makes it effective for the person. But pray for God to give you strength. Pray for God to give them strength. For it is God who is able to strengthen. And how does He do it? He goes on to say, able to strengthen you according to according to my Gospel. That is, that which I announce. That is, the preaching of Jesus Christ. God is able to strengthen you. And He does it through His Son, Jesus Christ. Through knowing Him. Through having the correct understanding of Him. Through the Gospel, the announcement, the news about Jesus. Jesus strengthens us. He strengthens us through the true knowledge of Him. He is the way. and the truth and the life. You remember what John the Baptist said about Jesus. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. There's power, there's strength. Jesus is the one through whom the power of God comes to us to strengthen us. And he says, according to the revelation of the mystery that was long kept secret but now has been disclosed. When he says mystery, he tells you here what he means by mystery. He does not mean a murder story that you have to reread to figure out who the guilty guy was. He does not mean a secret that only a few elite people get to be told in secret. He does not mean something that is still a puzzle and we don't get it. All these are possible meanings of mystery. That's not his meaning of mystery. His meaning of mystery is this, something that was kept secret for long ages, but has now been disclosed. He means something that God decided on and that people could not know what God had decided until God made it known. That's the mysteries that you read about in the New Testament. Right at the end of the Torah, God had said, there are secret things that belong to the Lord your God, and I haven't told you yet in this Torah, but there are revealed things for you to do, so get busy with what I've told you. That's the end of the Torah, 2929. But as you go through the Old Testament, there are various things that might bother you, such as, how could the one God who created all people just focus his attention on one chosen people? That's a mystery. And so Paul spends a lot of time saying, the mystery is revealed. Gentiles are fellow heirs. That's one particular thing he calls a mystery. that many Jews would, for a long time, reject Jesus as Messiah. He calls that a mystery, back in chapter 11. It had a purpose, to bring in the Gentiles. It has an end point, when Israel will believe. Husband and wife being one flesh. He said, this is a mystery, and I'm referring to Christ and the Church. That is to say, something like this, that husband and wife are one flesh, is declared right up front in the Bible, on page 2, And yet, how is this true, and what is it true for? And he says at the end, Ephesians 5, and this is to be a picture. This is an echo of Christ in the church. And so he speaks of mysteries, and he's following Jesus, of course. Because when Jesus began to teach in parables, and his apostles said, no, why the parables? He said, to you is given the secret, that's the word mystery. To you is given the mystery of the Kingdom of Heaven, but for them it's in paradise." So Jesus said, I have mysteries, I have secrets I am revealing to you about the Kingdom. And that is what He's talking about here. Various things that God had decided, that had been kept secret for long ages, but were then disclosed in Jesus Christ. God strengthens you according to this mystery revealed. He's saying that in Jesus you have newness and oldness. It is new that God took on flesh and came into the world. It is new that a dead man got up and came out of his tomb. There is newness in Jesus Christ and yet there's oldness. Because it's a long hidden mystery, a long promised mystery, something that is there in the prophetic writings. He always takes care to say It's a new announcement, but it's not a new religion. It's a new announcement of the new, unexpected fulfillment of what God had promised. Now, and this is like a mystery book, you can go back and read the Old Testament and see that in fact, this is the correct ending. That the promise is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. There is a false teaching about the Bible. It's called dispensationalism. It's not my fault. That's the name of it. It's that long. And the dispensationalists take hold of the newness of Jesus, correctly, but then they say, okay, God just has different rules and different sections of time, different dispensations. And the rules kind of go away at the end of one section and you start a new set of rules. Notice here that that's not the best way of putting it together. God strengthens you according to the revelation of the mystery, kept secret for long ages, but now disclosed and through the prophetic writings made known. The prophetic writings, who needs the Old Testament? We still need the Old Testament. They still make Jesus known to us. That's relevant scripture. We're going to start in on it next week. Yes, Jesus is a fulfillment. And it strengthens us to know that God is faithful. It strengthens us to see that God makes promises and then He fulfills them. And we can therefore count on God to be the same yesterday, today, tomorrow. God is able to strengthen you. He strengthens believers from all nations. It's made known to all nations. And so the mystery is revealed. The chosenness of Israel was for a purpose and a time till the Messiah should come. And the promises about Him kept and preserved by that people. Kept and preserved even after He came and they rejected Him. Still, the Jewish people kept the Hebrew Scriptures preserved for us. God strengthens believers now in all nations to obey Him. We have this command, the command of the Eternal God. in accord with the promise made to Abraham to bless all the world. So Jesus then said, go and make disciples of all nations. So a new command, keeping an old promise for an old purpose, to bring about the obedience of faith. In Sunday school this morning, we were talking about differences between Roman Catholicism and biblical Protestantism. And we were talking about how to relate God forgiving us and our faith and the things that we do, how to relate justification and sanctification. And it's this book of Romans, more than any other book, that shows us how to understand these things, how to distinguish them, how to think about them, This book itself shows us how necessary it is to realize that we're saved by Christ alone, whom we lay hold of by faith alone, and that we're brought to do this by God's grace alone. And for understanding of this, we'd better go to the scripture alone. And it's all for God's glory alone. And yet, while we need to distinguish these things so that we can have peace of conscience, we don't fall out of God's favor so easily, as we discussed this morning. And we need to have clarity so that we give God the glory. We don't imagine that we are somehow co-saviors of ourselves, which gives glory to us. We have to be very clear about these things. And yet, let's not lose sight of this, that the purpose is the obedience of faith. Charles Hodge says, justification is in order to sanctification. That is to say, God forgives us by His grace alone, so that we would be changed. So that we would be. We would live a changed life. We would live according to His image. We would walk in love. So there are two things you have to distinguish clearly. The faith part, the obedience part, and then we have to live it together. Because if you really believe Jesus is Lord, you'll do what He says. They're not distinguished in that level. If He's Lord, then do what He says. We say that is hard. It is hard to live as Jesus calls us to live. It would be easier to live as the Pharisees call you to live. It's hard. to love from the heart and forgive from the heart as Jesus calls us to. So how did this doxology begin? To Him who is able to strengthen you. Able to strengthen you. His God strengthens us according to the revelation of the mystery. He strengthens believers in all nations and He strengthens you to glorify Him. Back in chapter 1, verse 6, it spoke of the obedience of faith for the sake of God's name, for the sake of His glory. When we obey, when our good deeds are seen, it's just so that people will glorify our Father in heaven. He is to be glorified. It's for the sake of His name. And so here, he changes it a little bit. He says, the obedience of faith to the only wise God, be glory forever." He doesn't say, for the sake of his name, he just goes on to praise the name. The obedience of faith, so that we would praise the glorious and wise God. God is wise. That's what he says at the end of chapter 11. That's what he says here. God is wise. Paul would have done things differently. He wanted to see more of his fellow Jews believe in Jesus during his lifetime. He would have done it differently. But he could perceive that through Jewish resistance, the gospel was getting sprayed out farther to the Gentiles. When they're persecuted in Jerusalem, they go out everywhere preaching the word. And so he says, yes, but God is wiser. He has a plan. And he is carrying it out. You know, God is wiser than we are. We would like to preserve some merit for ourselves. Why did God bring you to believe? Well, because of His grace. I'm really a good guy. No, God is wiser than us. Read this book. It removes all that from us. There's no boasting left by the end of Romans. We can't be puffed up. God is the wise one. And that's better, because then we accept one another, realizing that he's accepted us with our sins. As we end this book of Romans, I encourage you, beloved, to be full of hope. God strengthens you as you seek to glorify and obey him. God will help you as you pray and as you set out to live according to his calling. Be full of hope. God reigns. God knows. God helps. He's able to help you as you seek to love concretely, personally, the people that you see every day. Not just warm fuzzies about the people far away from you. Those are nice, and they're also fairly meaningless. God helps you to love concretely the people before you. Be full of hope. What fault does some people make of the Gospel? Some people say the trouble of this Gospel is that it is too good to be true. How could God forgive me? And surely I should have to make amends. Surely I should have to earn something. I've heard this here in this building. That this is too good to be true. But be full of hope. This is the grace of God. And He is so gracious so that we would give Him the glory. The one who is worthy of all glory. So be full of hope and obey Him with a new obedience. Present your bodies as living sacrifices, acceptable to God. Present your members before Him as instruments for service. And know that the Kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. And so He's prepared such a wonderful thing for us. And He calls us into it. And He calls us to help work in the vineyard with Him. Let us give glory forevermore to the only wise God. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we glorify and praise and honor You the only wise God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You who promised through the ages and fulfilled in Jesus Christ. We thank you that in Him we have peace with you. We thank you that at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. We thank you that while the wages for our sin was death, in Christ there is eternal life. We thank You that in Christ there is no longer any condemnation for us. And we thank You that You make all things work together for good for those who love God. So help us, Lord, to be convinced that neither death nor life can separate us from Your love. Help us to bring all glory and praise to You, the wise God. Strengthen us to bring ourselves before You in glad obedience to be that willing people in your day of power. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.