The Book of Romans, Chapter 1. I want to do an eight-part study, a survey of this very wonderful book in the New Testament for several reasons. I always like to sort of alternate between the Old Testament and the New. I also would like to sort of do this in a hurry. I'm sort of planning that this is what I'll be covering during the summer months. We're going to have some guest speakers in later in the summer, and so I would not be surprised if this would pretty well run through the summer, but it is a very foundational, fundamental study. This morning, I want to begin with looking at the first 17 verses of Romans chapter 1. And only covering 17 verses in the first study means that we've got to cover a lot of verses from here on, but this would constitute the introduction to the Book of Romans. Romans chapter 1, beginning in verse 1. Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, which he had promised to fore by his prophets in the Holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead, by whom we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations for his name. among whom are ye also the called of Jesus Christ. To all that be in Rome beloved of God, call to be saints. Grace to you, and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world. For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers, making request, if by any means, now at length, I might have a prosperous journey by the will of God to come unto you. For I long to see you, that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift, to the end ye may be established. That is, that I may be comforted together with you by the mutual faith, both of you and me. Now, I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes I purposed to come unto you, but was let hitherto, that I might have some fruit among you also, even as among other Gentiles. I am a debtor both to the Greeks and to the barbarians, both to the wise and to the unwise. So as much as is in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believe it, to the Jew first, and also to the Greeks." For in it is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, The just shall live by faith." John Chrysostom, one of the early Church Fathers, had the Book of Romans read to him twice every week. Martin Luther said it is the chief book of the New Testament, the purest gospel. Philip Malathon, Luther's companion, said of him that he had copied it twice in his own handwriting. We who are students of the Protestant Reformation know that the Reformation was rooted in the teachings that are found in this epistle as well as in the Galatian epistle especially. And all Scripture is equally inspired But not all scripture is equally weighty, and if I were stranded on a deserted island somewhere, I believe I would much prefer to have the book of Romans with me than the book of, say, Zephaniah, just between you and me. It's not that Zephaniah is not inspired, not important, but certainly when we think of the important writings of the New Testament, nothing, in my opinion, comes close to the book of Romans. It was written close to the end of Paul's third missionary journey. You say, well, how do you know that? At the end of Romans, in chapter 15, if you'll notice, turn back there with me, sort of getting the cart before the horse here, but to sort of try to lay out this supposition to you. Romans 15, verse 25, he says, But now I go unto Jerusalem to minister unto the saints, for it is pleased them of Macedonia and Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor saint throughout Jerusalem. You do realize that at the end of Paul's third missionary journey, he was collecting a fund of money to take back and minister to the poor there in the area of Jerusalem. It's sort of his pet project, we might say. And we learn here that he is ready now to return, and he mentions those in Macedonia and Achaia. I think all the evidence points to the fact that Paul wrote this from the city of Corinth, which was in Achaia. Notice as well, if you're in Romans 6, if you'll turn there, Romans 6, verse 23, which is not right. I'm not starting off on a good foot today. There is the mention of Gaius. I'm sorry, I put a 6 and it should have been 16. Just one number off. Romans 16 verse 23 reads, Gaius, mine host and of the whole church, saluted This would indicate that Paul is staying in the home of this man, Gaius, who also happens to be the one in whose home the church in Rome meets, or at least this portion of the church. Now, that may not mean anything to you, but if you go back and read 1 Corinthians, the first chapter, and you remember how Paul says that, I didn't come to baptize, I was sent to preach the gospel, and I baptized none of you except Gaius and Crispus, and he couldn't remember who else. In other words, he had baptized this man Gaius in the city of Corinth, and so that now Gaius is the home in whom he is staying during his visit in Corinth. It would appear then that this is definitely talking about Corinth. And then notice in Romans 16, verse 1, I commend unto you Phoebe, our sister, who is a servant, literally deaconess, but I don't think this is referring to office, to a function again, a servant of the church which is at Syncrea. It would appear that Phoebe is the woman who is going to deliver the Roman epistle to the saints in Rome. And so Paul is writing to commend her to the church that they would receive her and receive this epistle from her hands. Notice she is a servant of the church that is in Sincrea. If you remember my description of Corinth, how it's set on the little neck of land that separates the upper part of Greece from the lower part, the Peloponnesian Peninsula, we call it. It's just a little narrow strip about five miles wide, and Corinth sits sort of in the middle, and Sincrea was the little port city down on the Aegean Sea, about three miles away from Corinth, down at the base where you'd catch the ships if you're headed over to Asia, places like that. So again, this is right in the environment of Corinth. So everything is pointing to the fact that Romans was written from Corinth while Paul was there at the tail end of his third missionary journey. It is a unique letter, in my opinion, among the epistles of Paul. First of all, because usually when Paul wrote to churches, and in the old early church used to say that Paul wrote seven letters to seven churches just like John wrote seven letters to seven churches. And, well, what they meant by that, in some cases, Paul wrote more than one letter, like the Corinthian, the person who sent Corinthians to the same church, but said Paul had written to seven churches. You go in and look at them, you'll see that that's true. And usually when he wrote to a church, it was because they were having problems. Usually there is some doctrinal mess that he's trying to straighten out, like writing to the churches in Galatia, or in some cases it's behavioral malfunctions, as the letters to the church in Corinth are filled with trying to correct the moral problems that are going on there in the church. Usually it's something like that. In this case, we find nothing like that. No moral problem, no doctrinal deviation. Instead, It is a very orderly, logical, systematic presentation of the Gospel. If you've ever asked the question, well, why didn't God just give us a book? You know, why do we have to read all these letters and sort of pick our doctrine from here and there and everywhere? Why didn't He just lay it out in a systematic form or fashion? Well, He did. And that's exactly what the book of Romans is. It is a very orderly, systematic presentation of the gospel. It is the closest thing we have to a book of pure theology in the New Testament. Now, it's not all theology. A lot of it is practice from chapter 12 on. As Paul, his custom is to usually take the first part of his letters to address doctrinal issues, the second half of his letters to deal with practical things. We certainly find practical applications in the last chapters of Romans, but much of Romans is the laying out of the plan and the purpose of God in the gospel. Now, why did he do that? Why did he write this letter And why is this letter different from the others? That's the question I want to ask. And I think the answer is, is that in most of the other cases, he is writing to churches that either he himself has founded, the church at Corinth, the church at Ephesus, Philippi, Thessalonica, or was founded by someone who was taught by him, as the Colossian church was founded by men in Ephesus, who apparently had heard Paul in Ephesus. So, in other words, in other cases, Paul has been involved in what we would say the foundational work of forming these churches. But in this case, it's not the same situation. Clearly from the words, especially from verse 8 on, he makes it clear that he has never been to Rome. He has heard of their faith. In fact, he says their faith is spoken of throughout the whole world, and we understand what that means in Paul's day. That means the entire Mediterranean basin have heard about you believers in the gospel there in the city of Rome. We really don't know how the gospel first came to Rome. There are some who say that it may well have been from those Jews who had gathered at Jerusalem on the Feast of Pentecost who went back to Rome with the gospel at that point. That's very possible. What we do know is that when Paul came to Corinth in Acts chapter 18, he ran into a couple, Aquila and Priscilla, and they're a godly couple. They're just wonderful. Again, I think I've preached on this before, Couples for Christ. Aquila and Priscilla are sort of the ideal when I think about that, how useful they were to the Gospel. We see them at Corinth, later at Ephesus, and finally we find that they're back in Rome. But they had been run out of Rome. The reason that they're in Corinth is that the Emperor Claudius had run all the Jews, he had expelled all the Jews out of Rome. There is a Roman historian by the name of Suetonius that speaks of that matter, and he says that there was an agitation among the Jews concerning one Crestus, Crestus, and it was spelled C-H-R-E-S-T-U-S. When you said the name Christ in Latin, it would be Christus, C-H-R-I-S-T-U-S. However, you will find that the Romans constantly were misspelling the name Christ. In fact, some of the early church fathers jump on them and say, this name that you hate so much, you can't even spell it right. And so, a lot of evidence points to the fact that the uproar in the Jewish quarter of Rome was over this one Crestus or Christus, the Christ. That that was what was going on, and that Caesar, Claudius, has expelled all of them from Rome because of whatever was going on, these agitations, these disturbances there among the Jews. And it was for that reason that Aquila and Priscilla come to Corinth, and it appears that Aquila and Priscilla are already Christians when they come to Corinth. We read absolutely nothing of their conversion. We certainly know they understand the gospel, because later when Paul leaves and Apollos shows up, In Ephesus, they're the ones who, what shall we say, declare unto him the way of the Lord more perfectly. He only knowing the baptism of John, they are the ones who are able to fill in his theological gaps, shall we say. So it appears that Aquila and Priscilla are already converted, already Christians. When they meet up with Paul there in Corinth, it's a match made in heaven because they're tent makers, and that happens to be Paul's trade that he was taught as a young man, so he goes to work there as he stays some eighteen months in Corinth. So, in other words, there were already Christians at Rome, but Paul had had no direct contact with them. And as an apostle, his role, his function, was to lay the doctrinal foundations for the church. Now, most of us, shall I say, in this room, we're coming from a Baptist or a Baptistic background, and because of that, we tend to minimize the role of apostles. rightly place a lot of emphasis on the priesthood of the believer. Our Sunday school class emphasized that this morning. But we have the idea that, well, it's just me and Jesus, and I don't really need anybody else. The fact is, is that the apostles played a critical part, a critical role in the history of the New Testament church. They were the ones who laid its doctrinal foundations. In fact, when Paul writes to Corinth, he talks about other foundations can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Christ Jesus. He was the foundation layer. Now, what does that mean when you lay the foundation of the church? Well, literally we know what that would mean if we were going to be building a building, which we hope to be doing back here. The foundation is going to go down first. Number one, it's the fundamental things, it's the elementary things, it's the thing on which everything else is to be built. But the second thing about a foundation is that it defines the in and out of the building. What's in and what's out? You don't build a little old postage stamp foundation and then build you a great old big building to sit on. You don't pour a great old big slab and then put just a little old hut right in the middle of it, do you? You can look at the foundation and get an idea of the circumference, the perimeters of the building. Foundation determines what's in and out of the building. The foundational teaching, the foundational, fundamental teaching of the apostles determined what's in and out doctrinally for the New Testament church. You want to know what we're supposed to be doing? Read the apostles. They're the ones who have the authority to teach us what goes, what does not go. how we're to do it, how we're not supposed to do it. Behavior that's accepted, behavior that's not accepted. Do you understand what I'm saying? They have that fundamental role, and that is Paul's calling. He's been called, he says, as an apostle in verse 1, separated to the gospel of God. He was certainly unique in his calling, but nevertheless, He has been given that job, that function, to lay the foundation of the churches. Now, he's done that just about wherever he goes. He has not done that in Rome, you see. And so the reason that I think the book of Romans is so peculiar compared to the other letters of Paul is because Paul is doing by a letter what he would normally do in person. that here is the fundamental foundational teaching concerning the gospel of Jesus Christ. We have it written out long here in the Book of Romans. This would be the same teaching that he normally would do in person. when he would show up first to lay the foundation of the New Testament church in whatever locale he happened to be in. In this case, because he is not seeing these people face-to-face, he is doing in a letter what he would normally do in person. Do you understand where I'm coming from? That here is the basic core teaching that Paul would usually preach and teach wherever he goes. In this case, he's having to do it by a letter, and thank God that he did, because that means we got a copy of it, and we can see this fundamental core teaching of the Apostle Paul. Let's look at this first section here as it relates to an introduction to the gospel of Jesus Christ. And first of all, Paul introduces himself as a minister of the gospel. In verse 1, he's called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God. We call preachers gospel ministers. Minister is a servant. They are servants of the gospel. I remember when I began to do any thinking whatsoever about what I'd been taught as a Christian growing up in a Christian home and in a Bible-teaching church, I remember questioning this whole thing. Why would you call a preacher a gospel minister? Why do we call them ministers of the gospel? Wouldn't they be better described as ministers of Christ? Well, certainly that's what Paul is here. He's a servant, a bondservant of Jesus Christ. Or wouldn't they be better described as a minister of the church? After all, it is the church that they are serving, right? Why would you call them a minister of the gospel? Well, let me remind you that a minister is like somebody that serves food, a waitress in a restaurant. And you can think of a waitress's job being threefold. Number one, she serves the boss. Who does she serve? Number one, she serves the boss. Number two, she serves the public. Number three, she serves food. You see? You can look at her service in any one of those three ways, in the same sense that Paul is a servant of the boss, Jesus Christ. He's a servant of the church. In Colossians, at the end of chapter one of Colossians, he describes himself as a servant of the church. But if we think about the commodity that he is serving to God's people, how is he serving Christ? He is a servant of the gospel. The gospel is the food, as it were, that he is dishing out to the people of God. He's been called in a special way not only to be an apostle, but to be an apostle to the Gentiles. We don't have time to look up all the references, but I would remind you in Acts 9, when he was first converted on the road to Damascus and Ananias was told to go lay his hands on Paul so he could receive his sight, God told him that he was a special vessel chosen to take the gospel to the Gentiles. He was Christ's, I call him his number one draft pick. called, picked, handpicked to be the point man to take the gospel into the Gentile world. We see that constantly every time Paul talks about his ministry, his calling. It is always in reference to that, that Christ is sending him to the Gentiles. When he met with Peter and John in the book of Galatians, he talks about a little powwow they had 14 years after his conversion, that they sit down and they compared notes and they said, yeah, you're teaching the same gospel we're teaching. You take it to the uncircumcision, we'll take it to the circumcision. We'll minister to the Jews, you go to the Gentiles." So, there was a division of labor among the apostles, and Paul was the man to take the gospel into the Gentile world. So, for that reason, he writes to these people And if I could liken this to something, some of you are salesmen, or we have salesmen in our church at least, and typically you have a sales territory that goes along with your job as a salesman. And generally, there are already established accounts in your territory. Let's say you are newly hired as a new salesman, and let's suppose that you're taking over a particular territory. Well, you might show up at one of your clients and say, Hi, I'm the new guy. The company has assigned me as your salesman. I've dropped in to get to know you. You're in my sales territory. You understand? What Paul is doing is writing to the church at Rome and basically saying, you're in my territory. I have been set apart to the gospel of Christ, to take that gospel to the Gentile world, to the very place where you are. Let me introduce myself to you. I am the Christ-assigned apostle for you. You see? And for that reason, he describes himself as praying constantly for them in verse 9, praying always, making mention in his prayers. He is already interceding on their behalf. And now he speaks of the fact that he desires to come see them, that he might encourage them, that they might be mutually edified by each other's faith. So he's a minister of the gospel, and he's their minister, their apostle. of the gospel through the Gentiles. But that raises another question. What exactly is this thing called the gospel? What is it? The word, Greek word, means good news or glad tidings or good tidings translated in different ways. It speaks of a message. It is a proclamation. Now, the best example I can give you is a biblical one back in Isaiah 52. where you have the captives who have been carried away captive into the land of Babylon, having a runner coming over the mountains. It talks about how beautiful the feet are of this one who is bearing these glad tidings. And the glad tidings is that Cyrus, king of Persia, has issued a decree. He has published a pronouncement that you Jews are now free from your bondage, from your captivity. You can return to your homeland. Okay, that's the context of Isaiah 52. It talks about their feet, these runners, whoever's coming with that message, how beautiful the sound of their feet are upon the mountains. Alright, you got the picture? A king has made a pronouncement. How does he disseminate the information? Does he get on the radio? Does he get on TV? Does he get on email? No, not in the days of Persia. How do you get the message out to the people that need to hear it? Well, you send a herald. You send a crier, someone who comes into the center of town and makes a pronouncement that the king has decreed something, he's made an announcement, and it's gospel. It's good news. It's glad tidings if you have been a captive there in the land of Babylon for all of your life, that now the king has declared you are free to leave. All right? Now, that's the picture of the gospel, and the reason that that picture is important is because Paul quotes that exact passage over in Romans 10. Turn there just a minute. Romans 10. You're familiar with it, I'm sure. Romans 10, 13. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him in whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? You've got to have a herald. You've got to have somebody to deliver the news. And how shall they preach except they be sent as it is written, and here's the quote out of Isaiah 52, how beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things. Now, I've seen a lot of preachers' feet in my days. They don't look too beautiful. The beauty of those feet is not in the feet themselves, it is in the message that those feet are bringing to you, you see. And so it is that Paul lifts that passage out of Isaiah and applies it to the gospel preacher, that just like Cyrus has issued a proclamation, you're free, your bondage is over, you're saved, you're delivered, believe it and go home. So, another king, King Jesus, has issued a proclamation of peace and salvation to all who will receive it, to all who will believe it, and just as one took a messenger bringing the pronouncement of the king to them, so now messengers go out from the king of kings to make this pronouncement. Now, that's the first point I want to make. The gospel is not a good deal, it's good news. I grew up in a church that when they said, well, the preacher didn't preach the gospel today, what they meant is he didn't give an invitation. Because the invitation at the end of the message was the same thing as preaching the gospel in the context that I was raised in. And if you didn't give an invitation, you didn't preach the gospel. Most certainly, I don't want to deny that there's an invitation that goes along and is inherent with the gospel. But at its heart, the gospel's not a good deal. It's good news. It is an announcement. You see the difference? This is not good advice, what you ought to do. This is a declaration from the throne of the king. This is not telling you and I what we ought to do. It is telling us what the king has proclaimed. See the difference? Now, I realize maybe I'm making a mountain out of a molehill, but I don't think so, because I think it is that distinction exactly that is being lost in our day and time, that we don't understand that the whole nature of the gospel message is that this is the word of the King coming to us through a messenger, through a crier, through a herald, if you will, a telegraph boy, a letter carrier, Someone is delivering to us the message that is coming from our King. It is a message, a proclamation, just like Cyrus's was, of deliverance. They were being delivered from a physical captivity and bondage. This message is from the King. It involves a message of deliverance from sin, the real bondage of our soul. And so the good news is not that you're freed from your financial debt and worries. The good news is not that you're freed from your physical illnesses. The good news is not that you're now free from the problems of life. The good news is that you're free from bondage to your sin, that the king has proclaimed that to all who will believe and receive it, they are now free. And then notice that Paul goes on to say that this gospel didn't just drop out of thin air. And I'm not going in order, because this is chapter 1, verse 2, and you say, well, if we've gone this far and we're only on verse 2, you're not going to catch that plane. Well, I'm not trying to necessarily go in the order of our text, so don't panic. But I just want you to know the fact that he speaks of the gospel as something that had been promised by the prophets. The gospel didn't just drop out of thin air. It didn't come out of a vacuum. It came out of a context, the context of the Old Testament. That the Old Testament is preliminary to our understanding of the New Testament. And boy, didn't we see that in Sunday School class this morning. It is foundational and fundamental. If we want to know what the gospel is, we're sort of cheating if we start in Matthew. Yes, that's the beginning of the gospel. Remember how Mark's gospel begins? The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It begins with the ministry of John the Baptist. The gospel age unfolds, beginning with John. But if we really want to understand what the gospel is all about, we have to understand the context out of which it comes, and that's what's being pointed out here. It had been promised to the patriarchs. It had been prophesied by the prophets. It had been prefigured in the rites and the ceremonies of the Mosaic law, even as we have been studying in Sunday school. But now what is predicted, what had been promised, is now fulfilled. Look in Acts chapter 13. how Paul states this so explicitly. Acts 13. He is in a synagogue in Antioch, the city up in modern-day Turkey. Acts 13, verse 32. He just told them about the crucifixion of Christ, about His resurrection, and now in verse 32 he says, We declare unto you glad tidings. Here's the gospel, how the promise which was made unto the fathers, God hath fulfilled the same unto us, their children, in that he hath raised up Jesus again, as it is written in the second psalm, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee. What was promised in the old is now fulfilled in the new. In other words, this gospel has a pedigree. It has ancestry, if you will. It was promised, it was predicted, it has now come to pass in this New Testament age. In that sense, the faith of the Old Testament saint is very similar to our faith. It's like if you're in financial trouble, and I walk up to you and I say, here's an envelope, And when the day that the creditor comes around, just open this envelope, and everything will be alright. Just trust me. Just trust me. But I don't let you see what's in the envelope. That's the faith of the Old Testament, say. God is saying, basically, this problem that you have, this thing of sin, I will deal with it, I will take care of it. Trust me. But the exact particulars, they did not know. They knew the general idea. They saw it in the types and shadows of the Old Testament law. But you and I are like in the New Testament day. The envelope has been opened, and we see there's a check in there for a million dollars. I'm just using that as my illustration, but you understand, we know what the provision is. God has promised the provision to them, but has not made absolutely clear what it is. To us, it has been revealed, it has been made manifest, what exactly, how exactly God has dealt with this matter of our sin. Both faiths are very similar in the sense that both of us have to trust God. The difference is the content of our faith. You and I, in the New Testament day, see the full picture. We understand the mechanics of it all. The man in the Old Testament was trusting God, but he did not see nor understand all the details as you and I now see them. And then notice the subject of this thing called the gospel. In verse 3, it tells us that this gospel concerns God's Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. It's all about Christ. It involves Him. The Old Testament told us that His name would be called Emmanuel. God with us, and as we have pointed out on numerous occasions in the Old Testament prophecy, sometimes it's hard to tell if we're talking about a man or we're talking about God. Isaiah 40, John the Baptist is shown as this voice in the wilderness preparing a way for the Lord, Jehovah, the glory of the Lord, Jehovah is going to come down this road. So is this a man? Well, he's going to be of the seed of David, isn't he? He's going to be Abraham's seed, so yes, he must be human, but at the same time, there's this ambiguity that we see in the Old Testament prophecies, that not only is he a man, he's something more than a man. In fact, in the coming of this person, God is said to come to them. Remember our study in Malachi? We had exactly the same thing, that God would come to them in this messenger of the covenant, as he's described there. Here we see both natures of Christ. In verse 3, He is a man, He is made of the seed of David according to the flesh, but He's declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness. In other words, there you see the duality of Christ's nature. He is fully human, He is the seed of the woman, He's Abraham's promisee, He's the seed that will reign on the throne of David forever and ever, He's the physical descendant of David, and yet, at the same time, he is declared to be the Son of God by the Spirit of Holiness in that God has raised him from the dead. He didn't become the Son of God after resurrection. He was declared to be the Son of God after resurrection. That's an important distinction. There is one school of thought that it is in the resurrection of Christ that he becomes the Son of God. That is not what Paul is stating here. It's like getting your receipt authenticated or stamped that's going to get you out of the parking lot free. So it is that the resurrection of Christ is God's authenticating stamp upon the divinity of his Son. Oh yes, there were other things that pointed to it, but it's the resurrection in particular that shows that he is indeed the divine, eternal Son of God. And therefore, we can generally define the gospel like this. It concerns the person and the work of Jesus Christ. The person, who he is, and the work, what he's done. Listen to Paul when he comes to Corinth. Chapter 2, verse 1, When I came to you, I determined to know nothing save Jesus Christ, the person, and him crucified. That's the work. Who he is and what he's done. That is what the gospel. is all about. That's the glad tidings. That's the good news, what God has done for us in sending His Son into this world. The gospel has many, many aspects. It goes by different names. We see them here. Look in verse 1. It's the gospel of God there in verse 1. God is the source of this gospel. However, a little later in verse 16, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. It's called the gospel of Christ in that Christ is, as we have said, the subject matter of this gospel. A little later, we will see that the gospel is called the gospel of grace over in Acts 20, verse 24. It is called the gospel of the kingdom in Matthew 24, verse 14, and many other places in the New Testament. But let me remind you that there is but one gospel. This is just different ways of describing. It's like taking a gem and turning it in this direction or that, looking at it from different angles. It's the gospel of God if you want to talk about where it came from. It's the gospel of Christ if you want to talk about what it involves or who its subject is. It's the gospel of grace if you want to talk about the mechanism behind it. It's the gospel of the kingdom if you think about the destination of where it puts us and places those who receive it. It's all just the same gospel, just looking at it from a different point of view. Sometimes it's called the Word of God. Now, realize the Word of God is phrase that we would speak of the entire Bible, but nine times out of ten, when you find that expression, the Word of God in the New Testament, it's not referring to the whole Bible, it's talking about the gospel of Jesus Christ. First Peter, chapter one, verse twenty-five, just being one example of that. Or sometimes, as in our text, verse five, by whom we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith. Especially when you see the definite article before the word faith. We're not talking about subjective faith, the act of believing. We're talking about objective faith, the things we believe. And so it's another way of describing that the faith is simply a synonym for the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's shorthand. Every profession, I've discovered has its little shorthand ways of talking about whatever you do. My mind is absolutely blank on this at the moment, but even in every profession, you don't spell everything out, do you? You've got your little shortcuts. If you're the government or the military, you've got your acronyms, you know, IRS. It's the easy way of talking about this tax-collecting revenue bunch, you know. It's the easy way of it. The FBI or, you know, things like that. We have shorthand ways of saying things. And remember that the gospel, the word gospel, is actually a shorthand way of saying this message that involves the person and work of Christ. The word gospel is the condensed way of saying it. The book of Romans is it written out long. This is it laid out in an orderly, precise and comprehensive fashion. OK, so it lets us easily talk about it to call it gospel good news. Well, let me close. I feel like my voice is about half gone, but I feel for you having listened to me. I don't know what it is about preaching, and when your voice is not working right, you're about a half step out of sync, your mind is at one speed, your voice is at another. And you can't quite, sort of like watching a movie, and their mouths talk and then the words come out, you know? And so that's what's going on in my head this morning. And I hope you're getting something out of this. I hope you sense a little excitement that I have for the Book of Romans. If nothing else, if you don't get much out of this, oh, sense the importance of this portion of the Word of God. There's nothing quite like it anywhere else in Scripture. Here, if you want this full understanding of what Christ has done for us, here's where you're going to find it, in the book of Romans. Let me close with the last two verses of our text, 16 and 17, because these are the ones that sort of jump out at me. And here it is that Paul is talking about the supremacy of the gospel. He says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel. Usually when we hear those words, to be ashamed of the gospel, we think somebody's talking about, well, being ashamed to be connected with the gospel. Sort of ashamed to go to work and carry my Bible, or have my little cross pin on my lapel, or have a God Loves You sticker on my bumper. I'm ashamed to be identified with something. But that is not what Paul is saying here. What he means is, is that I am not ashamed in any form or fashion concerning the supremacy of the gospel of Jesus Christ, its uniqueness, its excellency. I am ready to come to Rome and do intellectual battle with anybody. You just name the place, name the time, I'll be there. And I guarantee you that the message that I have will blow you away. I preached a few Sundays ago, and I'll repeat some of what I said then now in talking about the uniqueness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. But that's what Paul is talking about, that he is absolutely certain and convinced that this thing has the answers. And it's the only thing that has the answers for which man truly has been created to ask. What man is truly searching for. All of the religions are going to come up short. I had an email from the hunters, John and Kathy, a pastor over in Anniston, Alabama for a number of years, down in Guyana, down in South America now. And they said they have to deal with Hindus and Muslims every day. And John was just saying, well, in his opinion, Hinduism was nothing but a collection of superstitions. that was used to line the pockets of their leaders and of their temples. He said, the Islam's nothing but a collection of moral duties that's difficult, but certainly not unattainable. It's a hard road to hoe, but you can hoe it if you get after it. He said, that's all it is. There's nothing out there in the world, in the marketplace of ideas that are going to come close to what we find in the gospel of Jesus Christ. First of all, it is because that it is in this gospel that the power of God is revealed. And that is a wonderful... Dunamis is the Greek word for power. It's like our word for dynamite, or dynamo, or dynamic. It's not authority, but it's might. That this message is a mighty message, able to do something inside us. Again, I think our words, I struggle for how do I define this? This is not just any message. This is the message. This is a message from God. This is God's Word. And that there is a power in the message itself to all who believe it, to all who will receive it. That the message itself is a transforming message. You cannot possibly believe this without having your life turned upside down and inside out. I come back to that figure of parable that Jesus used about the seeds falling on different kinds of soil, and the one that intrigues me the most is the seed that fell on the packed soil, made no penetration whatsoever. Far as we can tell, it doesn't stand a ghost of a chance of ever sprouting. Right? You know the parable. And yet, what does Satan do? The birds come and scoop that seed up. You know the parable. Well, why is Satan so concerned about seed on packed soil that is highly unlikely to ever sprout? And I'm convinced it is because, whether we know it or not, Satan knows this thing's too powerful to let lay around. Who knows what's going to happen? Somebody might walk along and squish it down in the ground a little bit. The wind might blow it over there to the side of the road. This thing's too powerful. It's sort of like back in the anthrax era of 9-11, when the anthrax, you know, up in the ductwork of the Capitol building. Well, what's the big deal? It's not going to hurt you up there. Why don't you just go on to work? Well, Brother Mark, do you know what anthrax can do to you? If one of those things got dislodged and just happened, there's just too great a chance, knowing how powerful it is, to leave it there. And so they shut the whole place down and go through and clean out the whole system because it's just too deadly. And if I'm looking at this from Satan's point of view, the gospel is too deadly to let it lie around. You understand? We have the very testimony of Satan that the gospel is a powerful thing. And it's not the power of the preacher, the persuader. The power is in the message itself. It's a life-transforming thing. And secondly, it is because of its universality. Notice. It doesn't matter whether it's a Jew, it doesn't matter whether it's a Greek, it doesn't matter whether it's a wise man, a foolish man, a rich man, a poor man, a good man in the eyes of the world, or a bad man in the eyes of the world. This gospel is one size fits all. It is exactly what you need, whoever you are. You see, down in Mexico, during the chapel services, I've brought a series I have brought here on amazing conversions, and the thing that struck me again was the variety of people that you see as you go through the New Testament, the people that were converted during the ministry of Christ and the apostles. They range everywhere from just outright scoundrels like Zacchaeus, or that thief on the cross, to relatively good people like the Ethiopian eunuch or Cornelius. or a Christ-hater and church-persecutor like Saul, but it didn't really matter what their background was, it's the one gospel was the thing they needed. You understand? So, I can proclaim to you on the authority of God's Word, I don't know what your background is, I don't know where you're coming from, I know what the answer is. I know what you need. And it is exactly what you need, whether you're the worst person in this room or whether you're the best person in this room. Whether you're the richest person in this room or the poorest person, whether you're the wisest or the stupidest, it really doesn't matter. And then thirdly, it's because of its subject matter. That's verse 17. It reveals the righteousness of God from faith to faith. It deals with the core. problem facing man. It's that question Job asked long, long ago in Job 9, verse 2. How can a man be just before his Creator? How can I be right with God? This gospel tells you the answer to that question. It tells us that rather than you and I being able to produce a righteousness that will make us right in the sight of God, God himself has produced a righteousness and communicates it to us by faith. It deals with the fundamental question, no other religion on earth addresses or solves these issues. Other religions say, do it. The gospel says, believe it. They say, perform it. The gospel says, receive it. They say, the just shall live by good works. The gospel says, the just shall live by faith. They say, just reach up for God. The gospel says, God has reached down to man. And they leave man boasting with his works, his achievements, his merit. The gospel leaves us boasting in the grace and in the power and the goodness of our God. And they leave us hoping and wishing. I read this morning on the Internet a woman in India, a rich lady, very old, about close to death, she threw a feast to feed a hundred thousand people. Don't know how much it cost her, thousands and thousands of dollars, in the hopes that this would cause the gods to look favorably upon her, that she would have somebody then who would remember her when she died and pray for her, that the gods would admit her into heaven. Do you realize how utterly in the dark other religions leave you, just hoping? It's not like playing pin the tail on the donkey. We're just making a stab in the dark, hoping for the best. Do you realize that's what opened Luther's eyes to the gospel of Jesus Christ, the utter hopelessness with which Roman Catholicism left him? Because it says, work and work and work, and Luther, being an honest monk, said, how much must I work? How hard? How long? Oh, you must be sincere. How sincere is sincere? How sincere is sincere enough? What Luther, and you read his writings to Erasmus, he makes this very clear, that if it worked from the gospel, there would be no possibility of having any assurance of salvation whatsoever. That we would just hope we've done enough, and we would hope that whatever sincerity we have, that it was sincere enough, and we would never come to any firm resting place for our soul. That it's only if my salvation is not wrapped up in my doing, but in the doing of another, in the doing of God's Son who has taken my place. And I don't have to question whether He's done enough. I don't have to question whether He was sincere enough. I have God's stamp, His validation, His resurrecting His Son from the dead as proof that whatever He did was enough. And so when I rest my hope, not in me, but in His Son, I then can come to a firm standing of assurance of salvation, and I'll find it nowhere else. So you say, well, preacher, okay, so you say God does the work and not us. That's right. And you say, well, then God publishes this declaration that's brought to us by his messengers. That's right. And then all I've got to do is just believe it. That's right. Just believe it. Oh, I say, just believe it. Because do you realize that the real obstacle to your believing it is the moral problem that stands in your way of just believing it? Jesus said to the Pharisees, how can you believe who want the praise that come from man and not from God? Notice he's saying there's a prerequisite to believing. You want man's approval rather than God's approval. How then can you believe? Because, you see, this message is going to require you to put God's approval in first place. He says in another place, in Luke 18, that everyone that exalts themselves shall be abased, and he said abases themselves shall be exalted. There's a prerequisite. There's a humility that is required to believe this thing. Oh, I'm not talking about nodding your head to a few facts on a piece of paper, but I'm talking about truly receiving this message from the King of Kings, truly embracing it by faith. You can't do it, proud and haughty, because this message teaches you that God is God. He's sovereign. He's not trying to be God. He's not hoping you'll let him be God. He is the sovereign of the universe. This message teaches you and me that we are sinners, creatures who have rebelled against the sovereignty of God, shaking our face when we sin in his face. That we are absolutely vile, filthy, hopeless, and helpless in our sins. And this message tells us that not because of us, but in spite of us, God made a pronouncement. He sent His Son to do for man what man could not do for himself, and now He publishes it. Do you understand what I'm saying? You just can't believe this and be the same person you've been. Just believe. Oh, do you see your need of grace to believe it? Oh, I need God. Or else I will reject this testimony. That's what it's called, this testimony, John 3. But they who receive, he says, no man receives this testimony. Nobody wants to hear this thing. But they who do set their seal to this, they got a stamp too. God has authenticated his son in the resurrection from the dead. I set my seal to this, that God is true. That's all I can do. I can simply acknowledge that he's true. How about you? Where are you today? Let's pray. Father, as we approach this wonderful book, we thank you for it. Thank you for the blessing that has been to ourselves personally and to your people down through the centuries. Thank you for the wonderful laying out of your wondrous purpose in Christ Jesus, to redeem for yourself a people, to transform their lives, to forgive their sin, to set them on the road to glory. Help us to grasp it. Father, we struggle as Christians with unbelief, not because we don't want to believe it, but because it's too good. But it is true. Help us as Christians to embrace it. And Lord, if they are lost here today, may they hear this wonderful pronouncement of salvation in Christ. May they come and may they lay hold of it. Do that work. through your spirit, empowering your word, work that changes and transforms men's lives. Do it for Christ's sake, we pray. Amen.