Just notice before I came out here that farewell sermon and funeral service both have the same letters beginning each word. I'm not sure what that means at all, but Neil said I should open with that. So this is a farewell sermon. Our text tonight is Romans chapter 15 verses 14 through 21, which can be found on page 949 in your pew Bibles. Paul writing to the Romans says this, I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that is brothers and sisters, of course, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another. But on some points I have written to you very boldly by way of reminder, because of the grace given me by God, to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. In Christ Jesus, then, I have reason to be proud of my work for God. For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders. by the power of the Spirit of God, so that from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum, I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ. And thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, night where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else's foundation. But as it is written, those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand. As we begin tonight, there are many things I could say to you about this unique relationship. And this is a very unique relationship. If I'm not mistaken, the relationship is the only one of its kind in the 216 year history of this church. I was born here, baptized somewhere down here near these palms and flowers. I grew up among you, joined the church, went off to college and seminary and came back to be one of your ministers. There are many things I could say about our 37 year relationship and what you've meant to me and my family. But I just wanna say very simply, thank you. In a way, you are my parents. I have parents. They're here tonight. They're members of the church. I have my own family from which I grew in. But I see you all as my parents as well. And I am your child. To be quite honest, I have a hard time using the technical language as we did a couple of weeks ago to request that you as a congregation release us and dissolve the pastoral relationship. I'd much rather think of the next step in our lives more like a son leaving home to take a job in a different city. And that's exactly what's taking place here. You've trained me. You've nurtured me, you've put up with me, you've corrected me and supported me, and all in ways that are impossible to recount tonight, or even to fully know at this point. It's why I really mean it when I say that I want you all to view our leaving and future ministry in Asheville as an extension of the ministry of this church. I am your resources at work. I am your wisdom at work. I am your training at work. I am your son at work in Asheville. You've trained me in ministry and now you're sending me out. One of my colleagues prayed for me and for Christie and Olivia this week and prayed these words. We want to release Christie and Duff for future ministry, bound together with them by our affection for them. I would only add one other thing. We're bound by a mutual affection for one another. In fact, I'm reminded of Paul's words in Philippians chapter one. I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all, making my prayer with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. So I want us to see this as a partnership in the gospel, and one in which you're sending us out. And sending is a very biblical and gospel thing to do. As I've been reflecting on what I might say tonight in this farewell sermon, I've thought a great deal about our passage before us and how it speaks into what we're about to go and do in Asheville. There are plenty of things that are differences in what Paul is describing here. He's going to Spain. At least that's his plan to go to Spain. He hasn't yet visited Rome. He doesn't know them in a face-to-face kind of pulpit ministry. He's written to them. And that's very different from what we've experienced together. You have trained me and I've stood in this pulpit and tried to train you from the scriptures. There are things that are different about what's going on here with Paul, but in other ways, there are some insights into ministry and ministry experience that are universal. And Paul's life is cause for amazement and reflection as we think about some of these things together tonight. Paul's situation must have appeared absurd to many in his day. On one side, there was Rome, the metropolis, the heart of the Roman Empire. On the other side, this little Jew, Paul, scarred face and feeble body, seemingly impotent against such power and only armed with something he called the good news. That simple good news. That's what Paul is going to the Roman Empire with as he writes here to the Roman Christians, as he seeks to go there eventually. He's going with the good news, the simple news that Jesus came in the flesh to reconcile us. to make us right with God, to open up the way to know God and have fellowship with Him, to have a living relationship with the God of the universe. As I think about Asheville and taking my little family to that place, it's not Rome, but it is much more impressive and influential than my little family. And when I think about that, what Paul faced, I can relate. I'm not going armed with intellect or creativity or new approaches to church planting or evangelism as helpful as those things might be. I'm going like Paul, armed with the good news. And God, through this one man, Paul changed the history of Rome, even Western civilization and indeed our own lives. Because of Paul's work among the Gentiles, the gospel went out. And as far as I know, I can tell most of us in this room are Gentiles. And God working through Paul was the one who expanded his kingdom. God was greater than that Roman Empire. And this is what makes our text so interesting. Paul, after completing the main argument in this letter to the Romans, now tells us why he wrote it and how he views his mission. As one commentator put it, this part of chapter 15 of Romans is an exposition of the anatomy of the greatest missionary heart ever. And the glimpse we get into Paul's heart reveals to us an awe-inspiring example of the Holy Spirit working through this one man, persecutor turned apostle. I want us to see three things tonight as we look at Paul's heart and examine what anyone's heart whose goal it is to take the good news to the world should look like. So I want us to examine what it is to be, what is to be our mission, Our passion and our vision. Our mission and our passion and our vision. First, our mission. Paul saw all of his life as sacred. There were no distinctions or categories for Paul in his life. He didn't cut up his life into little pieces and parceled them out under differing categories. You know, over here is the sacred stuff I do for God, and over here is all the secular stuff I do. For Paul, there was no attributing to some action or thought as, this is sacred thought or action, and this over here is secular thought. or action. Now for Paul, everything was sacred and part of a sacred mission. Look in verses 15 and 16 at what he says there. But on some points, as he's talking about instructing the Roman Christians, I have written to you very boldly by way of reminder because of the grace given me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles. And that word translated minister in our text is actually the same root word from which we get the word liturgy. So what does that tell us? Well, Paul could have used several other words to talk about simply being a minister. He could have said, in words to describe himself, I'm a doulos, meaning a bond servant, or I am a diakonos, meaning servant, or perhaps even minister. Instead, Paul uses the Greek word here, laetourgon, and you can hear the word liturgy in there. Now think about our worship services. We have a liturgy, a particular form of public worship, an order of service. And that order and form helps us as we come to praise God together. As we come seeing him for who he is and giving back to him all that he's worth, we come glorifying him and thanking him for what he's done through Jesus Christ on our behalf. And the liturgy in our worship is there to point us to the work of Jesus Christ. It's there as we come together to worship to point us to what God has done. So you see what Paul is saying here to us. All of this liturgy and worship is to aid us towards our view and gaze upon the work of God in Christ Jesus. And he's saying in a sense, I'm a liturgy to Jesus Christ. All of my life points to him. I'm a walking liturgy. Is your life like that? Do you view your life as a physical, in-the-flesh liturgy as you live your life before a watching world? You seek to point to Him and all the work He's done in your life through Jesus Christ. Are you laid out like the liturgy before us in worship? Always seeking to point to God and to Christ Jesus to say, it's not me and my work, but the work of God in Christ Jesus. That's what Paul is saying. I'm a liturgy. I'm seeking to point to God. But look what else he says in verse 16. Paul holds up to us a different kind of image. He says, not only to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles, but in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. So he holds up this image of an Old Testament Levitical priest. It's an extraordinarily powerful image that Paul is using here. He doesn't anywhere else, to my knowledge, talk about Christians being priests. So he uses a sort of surprising image to say, look, I'm not only viewing myself as a liturgy, but I'm also viewing myself in priestly service and sacrifice to God. His view of his own life is something like this. I'm a priest dressed in priestly robes, ministering in the great temple. Just like in the Old Testament, they would go into the temple and bring their sacrifices, dressed in the holy robes. And as he ministers, our text says he offers up the souls of Gentile converts. You remember who the Gentiles are to the ancient people of God, don't you? The Gentiles were the non-Israelites, the pagans, those people. That's how they viewed the Gentiles in Jesus' day. In fact, if you wanted to use a term of derision to scorn or stigmatize a fellow Jew, you'd call him a Gentile. Get away from me, you Gentile. You see, they were never to have been scorned, the Gentiles. God had a plan for them since the beginning. They were included in the Messiah's mission described to us in Isaiah 42 and 49, as God calls the Israelites to be a blessing and light to the nations. And it was Jesus who came in this tradition, Luke tells us in chapter two and verse 32 of his gospel, that Jesus came to be a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people, Israel. Paul is saying that he pictures these souls, these Gentile souls, as he seeks to do ministry among them, as flowing up to God as an aroma and a sacrifice. Just as the ancient priest in the temple would have taken the animals and placed them on the fire of the altar and the smell of the sacrifice would go up to God as a pleasing aroma. Paul sees himself offering up the souls of men which ascend as a sweet smelling fragrance to Christ. And he's willing to do it to the people that nobody else wants to talk to, that nobody else wants to minister to. Paul's saying, I'm called by God to go into this place that's seen as the heartbeat of paganism. And I'm called to minister there like a priest going out seeking to serve God. And that's how Paul sees himself, though he was involved in the nitty-gritty work of literally walking around the ancient world in sandals, on foot, suffering from exposure and threats and beatings and rejection. In his heart of hearts, he saw himself in priestly garb in the temple, lifting up the souls of men and women and boys and girls. That's the work before us in Asheville. That's your work before you in Pontiac as you seek to plant Grace Presbyterian Church. That's your work as members of this church on the corner of Lady and Marian. To not only go out into all the many different spheres in which the Lord has put you and act as if you're a liturgy poured out before God, but also see yourself dressed in priestly garb. looking to lift up the souls of men and women who do not yet know him as they come to know the grace and love of God in the face of Jesus Christ, that you might be able to say these are a pleasing aroma in the nostrils of Jesus Christ. That's our calling. That's our mission as Christians. And don't think, because Paul uses the word minister here, that you're off the hook, because you're not ordained, you don't wear a robe on Sunday morning, you don't have these fancy microphones and standing in a marble pulpit, so therefore Paul's not talking to you. Remember what Peter says in 1 Peter 2, verses 9 and 10? He says, you are a chosen race, a royal race, priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. And the degree to which you understand that your influence and mission in this life is to be like a priest, The more you see your service as such, your life will be transformed. In all the little nooks and cranny of your life, if you're viewing your life that way, your life will be transformed. Kent Hughes put it this way. A pie baked for a neighbor becomes an offering to God. A child held in love is a liturgy, an employee treated with dignity of beatitude. The gospel shared is a song in heaven's courts, a Sunday school class well taught, a fragrance to God. These are beautiful thoughts. Even better, he says, they're true. This sacred view of life was a primary characteristic of the missionary heart of the apostle Paul. That's our gospel ambition. All of us, that's what it ought to be in the million different spheres in which the Lord has placed us corporately and individually. All of life is entirely sacred. As Christie and I leave here in the next few weeks, that's our ambition in our ministry, to have a priestly mission. To be a minister of Jesus Christ, proclaiming the gospel of God so that hearts and lives are changed by Him. And to present men and women who have been introduced to Jesus Christ and who place their faith and trust in Him, to present those people as a fragrant offering to God. And that's what the Christian's mission is to be. But not only are we to see our mission as entirely sacred, but notice what else is to be. Our passion for Jesus Christ. Notice what Paul says here in verses 17 through 19. In Christ Jesus then I have reason to be proud of my work for God, for I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience by word and deed. by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God, so that from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum, I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ." He says three things have happened in his life and ministry. Gentiles have come to faith, signs and miracles. have accompanied his ministry. And third, he preached the entire way from Jerusalem to Illyricum, which is modern day Albania, which used to be Yugoslavia. That's a long way. That's over a thousand miles. Now, if you or I were Paul, what would be our temptation? If we are honest, wouldn't our temptation to look at all that we've done and say, how great I am. How wonderful has been this trip. I mean, look at all that's taken place. Gentiles have come to faith. I've traveled over a thousand miles for God. I've done a lot of work here. There've been miracles accompanying my ministry. You see, to do that, one commentator actually told this story, which I think he's dead on. It's like the little leaguer who gets up to bat and the pitch is thrown. And with all his might, he swings, but he only barely tips the ball. It dribbles back to the pitcher's mound. He takes off for first base. The pitcher picks up the ball and he throws it over to first base, only about 10 feet over the first baseman's head. So the batter turns around first base heading for second. The first baseman finally gathers the ball and he throws it to the second baseman. Only again, it's 15 feet to the left out in the left field. So the Little Leaguer is running with all he has to third base and his coach is waving him on as the left fielder finally gets the ball and throws it into the third baseman and the third baseman turns around and hurls it home into the stands. And the Little Leaguer goes into the dugout giving high fives and saying, did you see that? That's my first home run. Wasn't that great? Wasn't that spectacular? You see, Paul will have none of that. You see what he does here? He takes no credit. Instead, he says that Christ did it through him. He wants to give glory to God in everything. He's boasting to be sure, but he's boasting about what God has done in his frail and feeble frame. He's boasting that the praise and the honor and the glory go up to Jesus. And isn't that what Paul said to the Galatians when he said in chapter six, may I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ and to the Colossians that Christ is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead so that in everything he might have the supremacy. God was everything to Paul. That's to be our passion as well. Raymond Lowell, the great missionary to the Muslims, lived by this refrain, I have one passion, it is he, it is he. Charles Wesley saying, Thou, O Christ, are all I want, more than all in Thee I find. Martin Luther said, We preach always hymn. This may seem a limited and monotonous subject, but we are never at the end of it. So it is with Paul. Christ is at the center. The Lord chooses to plant a church in Asheville. It will not be because of me or the gifts he's given to me. It will be because the Lord Jesus himself plants the church. That's his word to us. I will plant my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. That's our only hope in Asheville. That's your only hope in Pontiac. That's the only hope for safety as you sit here on Lady and Marian, is that God protects his church and Jesus Christ is the head. Not only are we to see our mission as entirely sacred and our passion to be the glory of God, but notice what is to be our vision as well. Notice what he says in verses 20 and 21, and thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel. Not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else's foundation, but as it is written, those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand. Paul had what we might be calling an obsession. He wanted to preach where the gospel had not been preached, wherever that may be. He voiced this in 2 Corinthians 10 when he said, Paul isn't saying there's no need for watering. I mean, he says some plant the seeds and water the seed, but God gives the increase. He's not saying that everyone is called to go church plant, but what he is saying is I am called. And Paul wanted to go to Spain and preach the gospel. We learned that from verse 24. Perhaps it was because Spain was the birthplace of many intellectuals and authors like Lucan or Marshall or Seneca. So the draw was to go to a place of intellectual influence and to have an impact on the intellectuals and authors of his day. Perhaps it was to go to Spain because Spain produced many grains for the Roman Empire, significant crops, and was seen as a key city. Therefore, it would have been a good place to plant a church and let the gospel radiate out from the center. Perhaps it was because Spain was seen as the end of the earth for Paul and his contemporaries. Spain and Britain were seen as the farthest edge of the world in which they knew. So he heard the words of Jesus and he took them to heart when Jesus said, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth. Why did Paul go to Spain? Perhaps it was because of all of these reasons. I don't know. But what I do know is that whatever Paul's reason for going, his vision was to preach the gospel to non-Christians. Paul's philosophy of church planting is not that we plant churches because we need a different kind of church and style and form and music from other churches in a surrounding area. But Paul's philosophy for church planting is because there are people out there who have yet to be introduced to Jesus Christ. That's why you plant churches. Not to have an identical little pink church in Pontiac. Not for me to go to Asheville and try to recreate the 216 year history of First Presbyterian Church. But you go and you plant churches because people need to know about Jesus Christ. And that is Paul's vision in what he's seeking to do. There's not an ARP church in Asheville. There are, however, other Bible-believing, gospel-preaching churches, some of them Presbyterians. But what we want to go and do is not build on the foundations of others, but to look for the non-Christians. We want to go there with the vision of Paul and seek to see people introduced to Jesus Christ, to see them changed spiritually and socially and culturally, believing that the answer is the gospel itself. I was having a conversation with a friend of mine before the service tonight, and we were talking about another friend of ours who's experiencing some mental and emotional difficulties. And he was telling me about at the university he works, there's a new president. The new president came and he spoke, actually she spoke and she said, look, the thing that's wrong with everybody, the thing that's going to fix everybody is education. People just need to be more educated. If we were more educated, we'd be nicer to each other. We'd be kinder to one another. It would solve all the world's problems. You see the false answer to the problem of humanity. It's the gospel of Jesus Christ. The only thing that's going to pull us out of our mental and emotional spiral is the gospel itself. The only thing that's going to solve the problems of the world is the gospel itself. The only thing that's going to solve the problem of your loneliness is the gospel of Jesus Christ. The only thing that's going to solve the problem of the weight and guilt of your sin and the power of sin in your life is the gospel of Jesus Christ. And that's what we go with that vision to see men and women come to know Jesus Christ and their lives changed. in the deepest ways. That was Paul's vision for Spain. That's our vision for Asheville. But I want you to notice that we can learn one last thing here from what happened to Paul. Our text tells us later on that Paul had hoped to visit Rome before going to Spain to have some fellowship with the church he had never seen. So from Rome, he was hoping to catch a ship to Iberia and then go on to his campaign in Spain. That was Paul's dream. That was his vision. But that's not what happened to Paul. He had to first go to Jerusalem to drop off money collected from the Philippians and Thessalonians and Corinthians to support the poorer Christians in Jerusalem. And the book of Acts tells us that he actually did deliver that gift, but then things fell apart. He was almost killed in the process by an unruly mob and escaped by night with Caesar's soldiers. Then he was shipwrecked and experienced deprivation before arriving in Rome in chains. Paul's plan to arrive in Rome was realized, but not in the way he had originally dreamed and intended. He arrived in Rome as a prisoner. As to his vision to go to Spain, we really can't say for sure whether he ever got there. Modern scholarship says he didn't. Church history, tradition rather, believes he did. I'm not sure it really matters, actually. To us, arrival is everything. But to God, the journey is important too. It's in the journey where God perfects us, and it's in hardships that he is glorified as we trust in him. And knowing Paul, I think it's safe to say that he didn't view his detour to Jerusalem in the unplanned way in which he came to Rome. as a reason to deduce that God was mocking him, or neglecting him, or being cruel to him, or somehow was not good to him, or that if he had never reached Spain, his dream was misspent. We have no idea what the Lord has planned for us in Asheville. Our ambition is to take the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ there with a vision that God will do his work in his way, but we have no idea what God will do with us there. I do, however, know that we are called to go. And I know that our job in all of this is to be faithful and that through the hardships, and I fully expect hardships to come because the evil one is working pressing against the gates of the kingdom of God, seeking to devour those who might take the gospel of Jesus Christ to the world. I fully anticipate hardships along the way. But in those hardships, our vision is that God would be glorified. That's not to say that we don't have great hopes and dreams for our work in Asheville. We have great visions of what God can do with us, just like Paul's great vision to reach Spain for Christ. We need to dream of victories and accomplishments for God. But God's promise as we go is not that we will be the most successful church planters that the world has ever seen. The promise of God is not that we, in our efforts for His glory, would establish a strong and vibrant church there. His promise is that He'll be with us. His promise is that He will be just right there with us and will use our efforts for His glory and all our experiences for our good. Not all of us meet our dreams ends, but that's okay because God is more interested sometimes in the process than in the prize. We need to learn to travel as Paul did. Someday we may stand before God as one commentator imagines and say to God, God, this is the dream you gave me. I didn't make it. I'm sorry. And he will say, yes, but that was in my hands. You are a magnificent traveler. Enter the joy that I have prepared for you before the foundation of the world. As Christie and I have been thinking about our new call and move, we've adopted a hymn which has spoken volumes to us, both of the comfort and trials and of God's strength to work in our weaknesses. There are unknowns in what we're about to do, huge unknowns. There are great challenges which are exhilarating to think about. It's exhilarating to dream about what the Lord may do. There are great and many challenges before us, but no matter what we face, we sing the words of John Newton in this hymn, The Lord Will Provide. Though troubles assail us and dangers affright, though friends should all fail us and foes all unite, yet one thing secures us, whatever be tied, the scripture assures us, the Lord will provide. The birds without barn or storehouse are fed. From them let us learn to trust for our bread. His saints, what is fitting, shall ne'er be denied. So long it is written, the Lord will provide. His call we obey in verse 4 like Abram of old, not knowing our way, but faith makes us bold. For though we are strangers, we have a good guide, and trust in all dangers the Lord will provide. When Satan appears to stop up our path and fill us with fears, we triumph by faith. He cannot take from us, though oft he has tried, this heart-cheering promise the Lord will provide. No strength of our own or goodness we claim, yet since we have known the Savior's great name, in this our strong tower for safety we hide, the Lord is our power, the Lord will provide. When life sinks apace and death is in view, the word of his grace shall comfort us through, no fearing or doubting with Christ on our side. We hope to die shouting, the Lord will provide. Can you sing this? Can you sing this in life? Can you sing in the midst of your loneliness, the Lord will provide? As you're weighed down by the guilt and the power of sin in your life, can you sing the Lord has provided in Jesus Christ for me? And then can you like John Newton face the world and say, no, whatever happens, whatever comes my way, the Lord will provide. My prayer, all I've striven to do, striven, is that a word? What all I've strived to do in life, in this place, in this ministry, is to point us to Jesus Christ and say, God has provided for you. No longer look to God as this ogre in the sky that's seeking to put you down. But look to the God of the universe, the Father of all heaven, who has provided Christ for you, for you to have a living relationship with the God of the universe, not throwing him tokens of prayer or tokens of coming to church, tokens of good deeds. but the real and personal God of the Bible that through Christ we have relationship with Him to give us all hope in life in this one and the next, singing all the while the Lord will provide. My friends, pray for us. Pray for us as we head to Asheville. Pray like Paul prays here, starting in verse 30. I appeal to you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to strive together with me in your prayers to God on my behalf, that I may be delivered from the unbelievers in Judea, and that my service for Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints, so that by God's will I may come to you with joy and be refreshed in your company. May the God of peace be with you all. Amen.