Sustaining the Ministry: Introduction to the Book of ROMANS
Rom 1:1 “Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God 2 which He promised before through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures, 3 concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, 4 and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.
5 Through Him we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations for His name, 6 among whom you also are the called of Jesus Christ…”
Introduction
Rev John Piper writes in his introduction to a series on the letter of the Apostle Paul to the Romans (I am reading from a paragraph he calls: Sustaining the Ministry)
“And though I have never preached through Romans, it has been the great truths of Romans 8:28 and 8:32 that have sustained the ministry here these 18 years. And I can say with John Stott that I have heralded the final triumphant verses of Romans 8 at innumerable funerals and "never lost the thrill of them" (Romans: God’s Good News for the World [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994], p. 10).
"For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38-39).
So I have a personal history with this book. And so do many, many people. I will be telling you some of their stories in the weeks - and years - to come (for instance, Augustine, Martin Luther, John Wesley, Karl Barth and some of you in this congregation).”
JOHN PIPER, The Author of the Greatest Letter Ever Written, Sermon in Romans series:
(http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Sermons/BySeries/2/1035_The_Author_of_the_Greatest_Letter_Ever_Written/ )
This book is the bedrock of the Christian faith.
Bedrock..it is the place builders like to build on where possible. Why bedrock? What is bedrock?
Builders know that it is important to set down solid foundations and when looking for a place to build there is nothing better than bedrock.
Bedrock does not move. Bedrock is therefore a reliable and good place to build a valuable asset on.
But we are not building a house or any physical building. We are building a life together. A life together with God…
First, you have to have a good solid foundation for life to begin and be sustained.
Then you need new life, you need new spiritual life to come into being; what Jesus calls being ‘born again’ or ‘born from above’ or ‘born from heaven.’
Then you can start to build a life.
There is absolutely no use in starting to train people for ministry until you have evidence that they are spiritually alive.
I am not talking about training ministers and elders. I am talking about making the everyday Christian a useful person for God.
This is where the Bible comes in. Particularly the Book of Romans because it is the one book you can find all you need as a Christian in an understandable and well set out fashion.
Romans is like Mount Everest. It begins with a fabulous footing, broad based, unflinching. It soars up through the skies and beyond into the clouds well above everything else.
As John Piper says: “there is no greater exposition of the Gospel of God than the book of Romans.”
I say there is no greater EXPEDITION than a study of the Book of Romans.
As I get older I see things differently and know that to answer the questions the world sets us every day is important but the more important questions are those God asks.
What are you doing with your life?
Do you have life?
Where are you going when you die?
What are you doing about sharing the gospel with others?
The book we are beginning to study deals with all these questions and much more.
Once again I agree with John Piper when he says:
“I have a deep confidence that the best way to be lastingly relevant is to stand on rock-solid, durable old truths, rather than jumping from one pragmatic bandwagon to another. Romans is as solid and durable and reliable and unshakable and thorough as the truth can get.”
http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Sermons/BySeries/2/1035_The_Author_of_the_Greatest_Letter_Ever_Written/
So it will not matter if during this year disaster strikes you or your loved ones or that because it’s election year your circumstances change, or you lose your job or your income or both.
A Point of Inspiration
Cutting lawns has little to do with sermon preparation, Buzzzz !!! Wrong!!
While I was cutting the lawns I thought about the picture Martin Luther had of God, and what he thought can be sustained from Romans, but he got it from the book of Psalms. It was a picture of an angry master about to punish his servants…
So I was thinking, if you think of God as a Father (revolutionary thought coming up!) then the warnings about sin’s consequences that you get so sternly set down in the first three chapters of Romans does not mean God does not love us, but as part of His character He is wrathful about human sin so He warns us about its consequences for our good! This is true for Christians but is not true for those who reject God’s gospel in Christ.
Our Father is always looking out for us. He wants the best for us. He works out our lives for our good.
It is in here (Romans) that God says:
“And we know that all things work together for good, to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” (ROM 8:28)
Now we need to unpack that, but you get my drift…I hope.
This promise is to those who “love God.”
They are of course, believers in the Lord Jesus Christ and cling to Him for their lives like drowning men and women clinging to what they know will keep them afloat as their boat sinks beneath them without trace...
So the gruff warning of chapters 1-3 are for Christians to see as God looking out for them and they are to avoid those things that displease their heavenly Father.
Those things, the same things are to warn unbelievers in Jesus Christ that God will punish them unless they repent.
It’s not popular, it’s not topical, but this teaching has HUGE implications.
Reports of 11 deaths by murder in New Zealand during the month of January this year are not exaggerated.
Whether or not they are par for the course, above average or lower than average as the year goes on is irrelevant.
What causes people to have murderous thoughts and to commit these acts?
Why are young people, oh so young, committing these horrific crimes?
The Book we are studying tells us why. But unlike the moralists of this world, it goes much, much further and gives us the solution from an impeccable Source:
The Perfect Source of all Goodness, God our heavenly Father. “Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God which He promised before through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures..” (Rom 1:1-2)
It is the very gospel of God. The Good News that sin and its consequences are now dealt with and that Jesus Christ has died to pay our debts before God, to absolve us before the Holy God and take all our sins and their consequences from us.
This is the great re-discovery of the reformers of 16th Century Europe, especially in Germany. I say re-discovery because this message was always the gospel of God even though men in their wisdom chose to twist it and to derail its passage and to water it down to no gospel at all. Today the modern version of the gospel has become useless in the purpose of God so far as salvation is concerned. We need a new Reformation.
Paul warned about this when he wrote to the Galatians at chapter 1:6 “I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you in the grace of Christ, to a different gospel, which is not another; but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed.” (Gal 1:6-9)
His words could not be stronger.
“From 1510 to 1520, Luther lectured on the Psalms, the books of Hebrews, Romans and Galatians.” (Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther#Monastic_and_academic_life )
While Martin Luther was embarrassed to report that he once cringed before the Holy God, and having taught his students from the Psalms and seeing God as a hard and vicious taskmaster, he writes the following as a result of reading in the first chapter of the Book of Romans:
“I greatly longed to understand Paul’s Epistle to the Romans and nothing stood in the way but that one expression, "the justice of God," because I took it to mean that justice whereby God is just and deals justly in punishing the unjust. My situation was that, although an impeccable monk, (he claimed to be the monkiest monk that ever lived!) I stood before God as a sinner troubled in conscience, and I had no confidence that my merit would assuage him. Therefore I did not love a just and angry God, but rather hated and murmured against him. Yet I clung to the dear Paul and had a great yearning to know what he meant.
Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that "the just shall live by his faith." Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith.
Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before the "justice of God" had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul became to me a gate to heaven . . .
If you have a true faith that Christ is your Savior, then at once you have a gracious God, for faith leads you in and opens up God’s heart and will, that you should see pure grace and overflowing love. This it is to behold God in faith that you should look upon his fatherly, friendly heart, in which there is no anger nor ungraciousness. He who sees God as angry does not see him rightly but looks only on a curtain, as if a dark cloud had been drawn across his face.”
http://www.inchristalone.org/LuthersDiscovery.htm
Quoted from Roland Bainton’s: “Here I Stand,” a life of Martin Luther, p.49-50 in New American Library of World Literature, 1950, 1960.
Rom 1:1 “Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God which He promised before through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures, concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born 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. Through Him we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations for His name, among whom you also are the called of Jesus Christ…” (Rom 1:1-6)
Have you been called?
Are you among the called?
Who? The called…
Are you one of them?
Paul says he was called to be an Apostle but then he goes on to say that the Christians of Rome are “the called.” “Through Him (the Son of God) we (the Apostles) have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations for His name, 6 among whom you also are the called of Jesus Christ…”
Are you part of “the called?”
Frances Ross, our neighbour, was home early on Wednesday afternoon and she called to me from her balcony to offer me some of her garden vegetables.
This gave me quite a start…
For an instant, since all I heard was my name in a female voice, I thought the feminists must have it right; God was a woman after all!
Francis was calling me and I turned around to answer her…and she gave me vegetables which we ate that night.
God may not call you with an audible voice, but I trust that as we go through this book together He will indeed speak to you in your heart through His word and that you may respond in faith to His beloved Son whom He has sent to you…
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16) Amen.
