Let's take our Bibles and turn to the book of Romans and chapter 1. Let's read together from verse 16 to 17, Romans chapter 1. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, the just shall live by faith. Let's begin with prayer. We begin our time by seeking your help, oh Lord. Thank you for the holy scriptures, thank you for the gift of the Holy Spirit to be our teacher. And we pray now for help, for illumination. We pray that you would open our eyes to behold wondrous things from your law. Please be our teacher, oh God. Help us and bless us. For Jesus' sake, amen. There was an article that appeared in a London paper some years ago. It was about a growing number of Christians working within the financial district of London, many of them new converts through the outreach of St Helen's Bishopgate Church there in that part of central London. And they interviewed a handful of them and they were, you could see from the article, they were enthusiastic about their newfound faith. And yet at the same time, they were very reluctant to speak about their faith to their friends and co-workers or their bosses. Do your colleagues know you're a Christian? The reporter asked one of them. Are you joking? He said, of course not. It'd make things very difficult. If my boss thought I was relying on prayer to get me through the day, he'd look down on me. When I go to church, I tell him I'm going to the physio instead. And that response was characteristic of a number of those who were interviewed. It was as if they were glad they'd been saved, glad for their newfound faith, and yet at the same time they didn't want to tell anyone about it. And I'm sure if we're honest we can probably all relate to that, probably we don't have to think too hard to remember situations where we've done the same, where we've been reluctant to speak, reluctant to make known our faith in Christ, where we've been, to use the words of the text we have before us this morning, we've been ashamed, ashamed of the gospel. And that's why it's good for us to think about a statement like this that we have here made by the Apostle Paul at the beginning of his letter to the Romans as he explains to them his desire to come to Rome and where as he says here in verse 16, I am not ashamed of the gospel. It's actually a bit of an understatement the way he puts it there because Paul lives for the gospel. And he says that in verse 1, that he's set apart for the Gospel. Verse 9, God whom I serve in my spirit in the Gospel. Verse 15, I am eager to preach the Gospel. That's what Paul was all about. The gospel was the very fire that burned in his bones. The gospel was the spiritual dynamic that energized everything he did. And so when he says here, I am not ashamed, it's actually a deliberate piece of understatement. There's actually a term for this. It's a literary device. It's known as litotes, which means to understate something for deliberate effect. It would be like LeBron James saying, I play a bit of basketball. or Michael Phelps saying, I know how to swim. It's that kind of thing. When Paul says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel, he loves the gospel, he lives for the gospel, he eats, sleeps, breathes the gospel. He's bursting with desire to preach the gospel to whoever he meets and wherever he meets them, even in a place as spiritually dark as Rome. Why is that? Well he tells us in these verses 16 to 17. He gives us here four reasons why he's not ashamed. It's actually really a thesis statement for the whole book if you go to seminary. seminary professor would tell his student when you're writing a sermon in the first paragraph in your introduction want to have something like a thesis statement sum up in one sentence what it is you're going to be saying in that message and that's really what we have in these verses this is the thesis statement for the book of Romans James Montgomery Boyce says verses 16 to 17 are quote the most important in the letter and perhaps in all literature They are the theme of this epistle and the very essence of Christianity. And so that's what we're going to look at today, four reasons why Paul is not ashamed of the Gospel, because of what it is, who it's for, what it does, and how it's received. Let's consider the first point today. Paul is not ashamed of the Gospel because of what it is. It is the power of God unto salvation. This is the first reason why he's not ashamed. It's because the gospel is power. And the Greek word there is dunamis, which is a word from which we get our English word dynamo or dynamic or dynamite you know that explosive substance that the Swedish chemical engineer Alfred Nobel devised and once he created this stuff he was trying to think of a name for it so he asked a friend of his who knew Greek what's the Greek word for power and he said it's dunamis That's what we'll call this. Dynamite. Dynamite. And it's explosive. Explosive power. And that's the word that Paul uses here of the gospel. I'm not ashamed of the gospel because it's dunamis. It's dynamite. Explosive power. The power of God. I mean, think about that. Think about how powerful that must be. The power of God. Almighty God. El Shaddai. The mighty God. The one who created this universe. just with words, he simply spoke this universe into being, let there be light and there was light, let the waters under the heaven be gathered into one place, let the dry land appear and it was so. Phenomenal power was put forth there in creation. And what Paul says here is the Gospel is like that. It's a similar manifestation of divine power breaking into this world and breaking into men and women's lives. But not in a destructive way, of course. Some powers can be very destructive, can't they? Dynamite. destructive, or a missile launched from a fighter jet is destructive, or a virus, like the one that we have going around at the moment, can be devastatingly destructive. These kind of things have a power, but it's a destructive power. This power, though, that Paul is talking about here, this gospel power, is a transforming power. It's the power of God in people's lives to set them free to break apart the bonds of sin and to create new life where before there was none. A similar way to creation isn't it, where God speaks into the darkness. He comes into the darkness of the human soul and says let there be light and let there be life. new creating word that transforms people at the very core of their being and gives them new hearts and new minds and new affections and new ambitions and new desires and causes them to to love things which once they hated and vice versa to hate things which once they loved. It's a totally new orientation to their lives and with that a new destiny as well. Look again at what Paul says, it's the power of God unto salvation. And that word in the original means deliverance. It means to be delivered from a great danger. It means to be rescued from potential ruin, which is what the gospel does. It saves us from the ruin of our own sin and it saves us from the wrath of God upon sin. That's what he's going to say in the next section, verse 18 onwards, about the wrath of God being revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men. That wrath, that righteous wrath and fury of God burns against men for their sin and if we die in that condition it will literally burn against us for all eternity. And so we need to be saved. Now in this life while there's still time to be saved we need to be rescued and delivered from the wrath to come. Now how can that happen? How can we be saved? We who are steeped because of our nature, we are steeped in sin. We who are hurtling towards hell every day like passengers on a runaway train and every day we're getting nearer and nearer to our eternal destruction. How can we be saved? We need power, don't we? We need power to be put forth to save us, to rescue us, to snatch us like brands from the burning. And that's what the gospel is, it's that kind of a power, divine power put forth to save sinners and to make them new creatures in Christ, to take them off that highway, that fast track to hell, to take them off that and put them on the narrow road that leads to life. That's what the Gospel does. It's that kind of saving transformative power. And think about the author of this letter. Paul himself knew that in his own life, didn't he? There he was on the Damascus Road. Why was he going to Damascus? Well, to round up a load of Christians, probably to bring them back to Jerusalem so they could be put to death the same way Stephen was put to death. He hated Jesus Christ and he hated his people and yet something happened to him there, didn't it? On that road he was confronted by power. the power of the gospel. The risen Lord Jesus Christ stops him in his tracks on the Damascus road and takes him off his hell-bound course, turns him around and he's transformed. The persecutor becomes a preacher. The murderer becomes a missionary. The slanderer of Jesus Christ becomes a servant of Jesus Christ. Behold, they said, but behold, look at him, he preaches now the faith which once he sought to destroy. How can that be? What produces a change like that? Power. Gospel power transforming individuals at the very core of their being and turning their lives around. Remember when we lived in London a few years ago, we met a group of Filipinos there and they were telling us one evening about a man they'd known when they were living in Saudi Arabia. And this man had at one time been a member of an Islamic terrorist group, but then somebody had shared with him the Gospel. and the power of the gospel had been unleashed in his life and he'd been dramatically converted and he became a very zealous evangelist and apparently one night he was speaking to a group of Christians sharing his testimony and he said this phrase, he said, once my life was about AK-47, now it's about John 3 16. That's how he summed up what God had done in his life. He'd gone from AK-47 to John 3, 16. From being a man of murder and violence to a man of love and peace and evangelical witness. I mean, what does that? How can you go from being a man who lives for his automatic weapon to being a man who lives for the Christian message? That man was, he was on a train, wasn't he? He was hurtling fast towards hell. What was it that intervened? What was it that pulled him off that train? It was power. Gospel power that produced a change like that. And that's why Paul says here, I'm not ashamed. I'm not ashamed of the gospel. The first thing is because of what it does. But then secondly, consider who it's for. Paul's not ashamed of the gospel for its salvation, the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. So, this is a Gospel for everyone, which was, of course, Paul's passion in life, to show that the Gospel was for both Jew and for Gentile. That's the way that, historically, the Gospel went forward, wasn't it? The Gospel went to the Jews, first of all, when Jesus began His public ministry, He went forth preaching the Word of God, and He went to His own people first. He said, I've come for the lost sheep of the house of Israel. So the Gospel went to the Jews first, but then after that it would eventually go to the Gentiles. Jesus said that, didn't he? After Pentecost, you shall remain here, you shall be my witnesses, and the Gospel will go forth from Jerusalem to Judea, to Samaria, to the uttermost parts of the earth. That's what happened, it was like dropping a pebble into a pond, and you see the ripples start to radiate outwards from the centre out to the perimeter. And so the gospel goes from the Jews, salvation is of the Jews, and it goes from the Jews out into the Gentile world. You know, think about Paul's ministry. The pattern for it was really, it was based on that, wasn't it? That kind of template when he went on his missionary travels, broadly speaking Acts 9 through 19, you think about what he did, his modus operandi at that time was to go to the synagogue or the place where he knew the Jews would gather, where the God-fearers came together. He would go to them and then he would tell them, Messiah has come. But then after that he would go to the Gentiles, to the Greeks, as he says here, and that simply is another way of saying non-Jews. This is a message for both, for Jew and Gentile alike, because there is only one way of salvation. There isn't a different way of salvation for Jews and a different way of salvation for the Gentiles. All are saved in exactly the same way, and it's through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. There is no other name given amongst men whereby we must be saved. Jesus says, no man comes to the Father but by me. And so we see here the exclusivity of the Gospel in the one that it points us to, but then also the universality of the Gospel in terms of who this message is designed for. It's for everyone. It's the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. And Paul had seen that in his own ministry, in his missionary travels. You know, think about the first three European converts, Gentiles, Greeks in fact, weren't they? When he went to Philippi in Greece, the first one was a slave girl possessed with an evil spirit, and then there was Lydia, it was a businesswoman who traded in purple cloth, and then there's also the prison governor as well, This is a message for everyone. Some messages aren't for everyone. Some messages are good messages, but they just don't apply to everyone. Think about a wonderful investment opportunity, for example. A financial company is offering to help you build a super strong stock market portfolio. Wonderful opportunity. As long as you've got $50,000 to spare that you can give to them. I mean, it's a great offer, but it's not going to apply to everyone that, is it? or think about a scholarship opportunity to go to a top Ivy League school, you know, Yale down the road, they do this kind of thing, don't they? A full ride all the way through four years, fully paid up, board lodging and tuition. Wow, that's an awesome opportunity. As long as you've got the qualifications, as long as you've got a stellar academic record, It's good news, but it's not for everyone. It's only a select few who can apply. That's not the case with the Gospel. The Gospel is for everyone. And we should offer it to everyone. There's a box of chocolates that you can buy in England and it's called Quality Street. And they used to have an ad campaign a few years ago, and they would show all these people in different sort of situations, family gatherings and office parties and birthdays and so on. And in each one of these situations, someone would pull out this box of chocolates, pull out the Quality Street, and they would pass them around, and then would come the tagline, Quality Street made for sharing. Made for sharing. They were saying you can pull this out and you can offer this to anyone. Your co-worker or your teacher or your auntie Brenda. Whoever it is, you can give this to anyone. And that's the gospel. The gospel is like that. The gospel is made for sharing. It's the power of God to salvation for everyone. No matter who they are, no matter what age they are, whether they're rich or poor, highly educated, not so well educated, very talented, less talented, doesn't matter. You can sit next to somebody on a plane and you can know the gospel is for that person sitting next to you. You can go out into New Haven on a Saturday afternoon, as some of us do, and hand out tracts, and you can know the gospel in that tract is for everyone that comes by. Sometimes I have to remind myself of that. Sometimes I stand there and I see somebody coming towards me down the street and I sort of size them up a little bit and sometimes I shrink back and I think, oh, this person really isn't going to like this. This person really, I know they're not going to want to read this. They're not going to like me for giving this to them. But then I have to sort of grab myself by the lapels and I have to preach to myself this text. I am not ashamed of the gospel because it's the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes. This is a message for them. They need this message. In fact, this is the most loving, this is the most neighborly thing I can do for them is to give them this message. Excuse me, would you be interested to read about this gospel? And that's what Paul is saying, I'm not ashamed of the gospel because of what it does, it's the power of God unto salvation, and because of who it's for, it's for everyone, for Jew and the Greek. And then thirdly, because of how it works. I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed. From faith to faith, as it is written, the just shall live by faith. So Paul is telling us here that the gospel reveals something. It communicates something to us which otherwise we couldn't know. Something that we couldn't possibly have imagined or thought up with our own minds. And what is that? What is it the gospel reveals to us? He tells us here it's righteousness. It's the righteousness of God. What does that term mean? The righteousness of God. How do we understand that? Primarily it's a reference to the character of God. Who and what He is in His essential being. He is supremely righteous, ineffably, inestimably righteous in all His ways, in all His works, everything He does. He's infinitely just and holy. Abraham said, Shall not the judge of all the earth do right? He's the supremely righteous judge. For the Lord is righteous, Psalm 11, verse 7. He loves righteousness. His countenance beholds the upright. Psalm 119, verse 37. Righteous are you, O Lord, and upright are your judgments. Jehovah is righteous in all his ways. So everything about God is righteous. It's one of his attributes, we could say, like his goodness and mercy and wisdom and power. It's one of the glories that belongs essentially to God, the unutterable righteousness about all that he is and does. And so that's one of the ways that we are to understand this term then, the righteousness of God. But if that's all it is, if that's all that is meant that this revelation brings to us, then That's not good news for us, is it? If that's all the Gospel is, a revelation of the justice, the holiness, the righteousness of God, that's not good news for us sinners. Actually, that's something that really would unnerve and unsettle us as sinners. Listen to Dr Lloyd-Jones, he makes this point in his sermon on this text, he says, if the gospel of Jesus Christ were merely a revelation of the holiness and the justice and the righteousness of God and no more, far from being good news, far from being a gospel, it would be the most terrifying and the most alarming that we could ever discover. That was actually Martin Luther's reaction, wasn't it? Luther, you remember, was that German monk who becomes the professor of theology and he lectures regularly, every day goes through the Bible with his students working consecutively through books of the Bible and thinking upon the scriptures all the time and he confessed there was one scripture text which just kept him awake at night. One text which gave him real trouble of soul. it was this one, it was Romans 1 verse 17, I am not ashamed of the gospel for in it the righteousness of God is revealed. And Luther would think upon this text and think, how can this be good news? How can a revelation of the righteousness of God be good news for me? Because such is the supremely righteous character of God that surely that righteousness will only condemn me and damn me. I have nothing that I can offer this God, nothing which I can appease this God. What good news is there for me in this revelation of the righteousness of God? All it did was crush him. and fill him with dread. That was the way that Luther thought, until, by grace, he came to understand what Paul means here, and that is that the Apostle Paul, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is describing a righteousness from God. There's no definite article in the original and so the phrase can be translated as a righteousness for I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for in it a righteousness of God is revealed. A righteousness given by God to the sinner as a gift. A free gift given upon faith when we believe the gospel. One commentator says this, the righteousness of God is a righteousness originating in God, prepared by God, revealed in the gospel and therein offered to us. It is an alien righteousness, righteousness which comes from heaven. So this is a righteousness which comes from God as a gift. freely, isn't it? Without money, without price, when we believe the Gospel we're given a righteousness from God, the greatest of all gifts and revealed, Paul says here, in the Gospel. Now how does it work? How is that righteousness bestowed upon us? Well, we need to unpack this a little bit. We need a representative. We need a substitute, someone to come and stand in our place. And for this, Christ Jesus was born into the world. In order, remember he said this, in order that we might fulfill all righteousness, that's why he came, to fulfill the requirements necessary for righteousness to be given. He comes and he lives, or we could call it, a vicarious life. What does that mean? For someone to act vicariously means they act on our behalf. A lawyer, for example, goes into the courtroom and he acts on behalf, he speaks on behalf of his clients. He's acting vicariously. And the Lord Jesus came into this world to live a representative life and to speak and to act on behalf of all those who would trust in Him. How does he do that? In two ways. Firstly, by living a life of perfect obedience. Can you do that? Have I done that? No, that's why we need a substitute. We need someone to come and live that kind of life for us, which he did for 33 years. The Lord Jesus Christ lives a life of unbroken, untrammeled obedience to the law of God, never wandering, never deviating, never transgressing. during those hidden years in Nazareth as he grows as a boy, growing in stature and favor with God and with man, loving his Heavenly Father with all his heart, with all his soul, with all his mind and strength, and during those years of public ministry as well. went around in healing the sick and restoring the demon-possessed and feeding the hungry and being moved with compassion, never striking back, suffering the contradiction of sinners against himself and you're never responding in kind, When they smote him on the cheek, he turned the other. Even on the cross, he's praying for his enemies. Father, forgive them. They know not what they do. His was a life of perfect, impeccable law-keeping. Every aspect of the moral, civil, ceremonial law he kept with unbroken obedience. His was the only ever completely perfect life. tempted in all points as we are and yet without sin. You know, he stood before Pontius Pilate and Pontius Pilate said, I can find no basis for charges against this man. And in that he was exactly right. There were none. He was pure, spotless, holy, harmless, undefiled. And so that's one part of his representative work, his life of active obedience. But then there's another part, and that's his substitutionary atoning death, or what the theologians call his passive obedience. Because having lived a holy life for us, he must needs then take the penalty for sin for us, in our place. So as our representative, he must stand in our room and stead and bear our sin. In fact, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, he's made to be sin. He who knew no sin was made to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. So all of His people's sin, in all its vileness, in all its blackness and foulness, is laid upon Him, in its filthiness and stench, laid upon the Lord Jesus Christ, so that in God's sight He becomes the very blackness of sin itself. The Lord laid upon Him the iniquity of us all. All our sins were posted, as it were, posted to His account. And all their foulness, they are made over to Him and were paid for by Him as God visited judgment there upon Him, there at the cross. All of God's fury, all of His wrath was poured out there upon the head of the Lord Jesus Christ and sin, His people's sin was atoned for, it was paid for there. So it was paid, paid in full. He cried out on the cross, it is finished. And that word there, the Greek word that records that is a word that comes from the marketplace. It's a word that would be uttered at the conclusion of a deal or a transaction as if to say it's done, the debt has been paid. The deal has been done, paid for. All of it, all of our sin, if we're believers, have been paid for. My sin, O the bliss of this glorious thought, my sin, not in part, but the whole, is nailed to His cross, and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul. And so our sins then, in all their vileness, have been taken out of the way, they've been paid for, the debt has been cleared. But not only that, Our sin has been made over to Christ, the debt is covered, but we need more than that to be acceptable to God. Spiritual zeros won't get you into heaven. A zero balance won't get you into heaven. We need positive righteousness to be accepted by God into his holy heaven. And so in the gospel, not only does God wipe out our spiritual debt, but also he puts Christ's righteousness into our account. His infinite credit, we could say, with God the Father is then deposited into our account. His righteousness is imputed, it's made over to us, it's posted to our account as if it's ours. So that not only is the debt wiped out, but also at the same time into a believer's account is deposited $10 billion in cash. As it were, $100 billion in cash. Infinite, limitless amount. Christ's perfect spotless righteousness is made over to us. Or to change the analogy, imagine a student, a failing student with an exam paper in front of them with crossed out answers, with wrong answers all over it. And in comes the perfect student, the A grade student and hands in his perfect paper but puts your name on the top. So that you get his perfect A grade. that He earned, you have that in His place. Perfect righteousness in God's sight so that no longer is God repelled by us, no longer is God antagonized by us, but God embraces us and welcomes us for the sake of His Son. It's a bit like some sheep farmers in the UK do this sometimes at lambing time and a ewe will give birth to a lamb but the lamb will die but maybe another ewe has had three lambs and they all survived and so what a farmer will do sometimes is take one of those live lambs and then he will put the skin of the dead lamb around that live lamb and give that to the ewe that has no lambs and this You will then smell this new lamb and recognize the scent of her lamb and then will embrace and accept that lamb as her own. And in a way that's what God does for us in Christ. He's given us a covering covering of His own Son, a covering of His righteousness. Isaiah says, He's clothed me with the garments of salvation. He's covered me with a robe of His righteousness. And so now when God looks upon us, He sees the righteousness, the beauty, the fragrance of His own beloved Son, and He gladly accepts us and adopts us as His own. Jesus, thy blood and righteousness, my beauty are, my glorious dress. Amidst flaming worlds in these arrayed, with joy shall I lift up my heads. This is why Paul is not ashamed of the gospel. Because of what it is, it's the power of God. Because of who it's for, it's for everyone. Because of how it works, revealing a righteousness from God in the person of His Son. And also one final point today, and that is fourthly, because of how it's received. How do we receive this righteousness? Look at verse 17. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, the just shall live by faith. This is how the gift is received, it's by faith. Faith is the key word in these verses. You can see that word faith or believing is mentioned four times in two verses. And so this is the way we receive the gift of righteousness. It's not of ourselves, not of our works, not of our efforts, nothing we ourselves do or try to do or try to earn. I mean, think about it. Think about it. That's not good news, is it? If we have to earn this ourselves, that's not good news for us because, well for one, how would we ever know if we've done enough? And secondly, everything we do, because we're sinners, it's just shot through and ruined and tainted with our own sin and utterly unacceptable to an infinitely holy God. And that's why Paul says here, I'm not ashamed of the gospel. That's why he says, I'm eager to preach the gospel, because here is the wondrous good news revealed here, and that is it's not about us, and it's not about anything we do. This isn't something that can be earned or merited. The good news of the gospel is that it's all been done for us, and it's something that we simply receive by faith. In it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith, As it is written, the just shall live by faith. It's all about faith. That's what that phrase means, from faith to faith. Really, that just means it's all a matter of faith. It's faith from beginning to end. It's all faith. We begin with faith, we go on through our Christian lives with faith. Paul says this, A number of times in this book, just a couple of texts, Romans 3, 21, the righteousness of God has been manifest through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. God is the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus, for we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. It's faith from first to last. The just shall live by faith, he says there, doesn't he? That's actually a quote from Habakkuk. show that this isn't anything new either, this isn't something that Paul has just dreamed up or something that's just found in the New Testament, it's in the Old Testament as well. Paul quotes many times in the book of Romans from the Old Testament to show this is no new thing, this isn't something novel that you find only in the New Testament, God's method of saving sinners, Jewish and non-Jewish sinners, is exactly the same. It's always been the same. Romans 1, verse 17. Habakkuk 2, verse 4. The just shall live by faith. It's not by what we've done, our own efforts, our striving, our attempts to live a good life, to try and score some credit points up there in heaven. It can't be done that way. There is no righteousness for you that way. The only way you can be righteous in God's sight is by faith, by trusting, simply trusting in Jesus Christ and Him alone. that was Luther's discovery as he was meditating upon these very words. So it was that pure gospel light broke in upon him. His son Paul Luther described this some years afterwards. He said this, In the year 1544, my late dearest father, in the presence of us all, narrated the whole story of his journey to Rome. He acknowledged with great joy that in the city, through the spirit of Jesus Christ, he had come into the knowledge of the truth of the everlasting gospel. It happened this way. As he repeated his prayers on the latrine staircase, the words of the prophet Habakkuk came suddenly to his mind. The just shall live by faith. Thereupon, he ceased his prayers, returned to Wittenberg, and took this as the chief foundation of all his doctrine. It was at that moment, as he was meditating upon this, the just shall live by faith. He himself said, it was as if the gates of paradise swung open. I felt myself reborn. And then is launched, of course, the Protestant Reformation. And faith, fide, sola fide, that becomes the watchword of the Reformation. Salvation by works? No, sola fide. Salvation by human effort? No, sola fide. Salvation by religious observance? No, sola fide. Faith, isn't it? Salvation comes by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone. And when Luther came to see that, he says, I was reborn, born again. And many of you, you've had the same experience, can't you? Can think about when that moment happened in your own life. I remember discovering this for myself. And having sort of a similar struggle with that, trying to work out how to be acceptable to God, how to make myself a Christian, what I needed to do, and becoming very perplexed, not seeming able to do, to understand what I had to do. And then one time I was in the car with my dad, and we were coming back from the funeral, in Wolverhampton, we're in the car, we're driving along the M6 on our way to Norwich, and my father began to explain to me the words of a hymn, Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine, and he began to speak about this assurance he had that Christ was his, and that's what it meant to be a Christian, it's simply to trust in Jesus Christ and in his work alone, that's what a Christian is, and as he explained that to me, something of that new life receiving experience was mine there in the car. It was something I hadn't understood but there in that moment I began to see and I've said this before, I got out of that car in Norwich a different person to the one who got in that car in Wolverhampton. And many of you have had that same experience and this same transformation has happened in the lives of millions and millions of people down through the history of the world, isn't it? Wretched, ruined sinners have been snatched from hell and transformed by this gospel, this good news of righteousness, an alien righteousness, a righteousness not our own but one which God gives as a gift to those who believe in Christ. How? By working, by striving, by passing an exam, by paying money, by making certain, attaining certain qualifications. It's free. Come without money and without price. If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink. The just shall live by faith. Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to thy cross I cling. Just as I am without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me, and that thou bid'st me come to thee. O Lamb of God, I come, I come. Is it any wonder that Paul says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel? It's any wonder Paul says, I'm eager to preach the gospel. Yes, even in Rome, even in the heart of the empire, the heart, the center of the cult of emperor worship, the center of all forms of idolatry and immorality, Paul says, it doesn't matter. I'm eager. I'm ready and eager to come to Rome because of this glorious gospel, which is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes. This is it. This is authentic New Testament Christianity. this burning zeal and willingness and desire to proclaim gospel good news into even the darkest places on the face of this earth, to bring the good news of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. I mentioned earlier how we lived in London some years ago and we moved into a part of East London and we stayed in a parsonage there and it was a home that belonged to a Grace Baptist church there in East London and the reason we were able to move in was because their pastor sadly had died very suddenly. His name was Nigel Lacey and he was a man who at one time had been a missionary in Zambia and he'd felt the call of God to come back to London, to the east end of London, really because this was another mission field. That part of London has people from many different countries there, especially from different parts of Asia, India, and Pakistan and Bangladesh and places like that and Nigel came and moved into the manse there and one of the elders told me one of the first things he did when he moved into the manse was he wrote a letter to all of his neighbours on the street and he went and he personally put it through their letterbox and in this letter he was introducing himself and expressing his desire to be a good neighbour to them to help them in any way he could and to share with them to help them to understand the gospel, the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now why did he do that? Some people might say, well that's a sort of risky thing to do. I mean people from those Eastern religions and some of them might have been extremists or something like that. He didn't think in that way because he had good news. Good news for everyone, that everyone on that street, everyone in that community needed to hear about salvation from hell, about right standing with God, about a perfect righteousness that comes from God and is available to all. How? By striving, by laboring, by working, trying to reach our way up to God, No, simply by reaching out with the hand of faith and taking hold of the gift which comes from God, fully accomplished in the person of God's own Son. What a message! What a gospel! What a saviour! Jesus, and shall it ever be, a mortal man ashamed of thee? Ashamed of thee whom angels praise, whose glories shine through endless days? Ashamed of Jesus, that dear friend on whom my hopes of heaven depend? No, when I blush, be this my shame, that I no more revere his name. What about you, dear friend? Have you believed in this Saviour? Do you have this righteousness which God is offering to you as a gift through Him? Comes by faith, comes by simply confessing your sin, turning from your sin and resting. resting in the personal work of Jesus Christ alone and God will give you the gift of righteousness, a robe of righteousness to cover you through life, through death and throughout eternity. Jesus, thy blood and righteousness, my beauty are, my glorious dress. Ask Him for that today, ask Him to save you today. And if you have, are you making this wondrous good news known? what it is, who it's for, how it's received. It's the greatest message this world has ever heard. For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, the just shall live by faith. Amen.