Revival Brings Forth Godly Missions

And also to you. Yes, good video, good audio. So that's what we're grateful to hear. Hey, before I turn it over to you, we have a moment, matter of fact, I got one minute. So let me ask you, maybe for these that are listening and what you see, where are we at as far as this coming to the Solemn Assembly?

I've expressed if we don't prevail in these weeks, it might be our last window. That's a urgent, desperate view, not accepted by a lot. You have a far greater pulse on the churches and ministries nationwide, worldwide actually, your contacts, far more than mine.

And so maybe you just might, if you would share on that and then just remainder of the time, it's yours. And as the Lord has led you, just want to express my gratitude to you publicly, Doug. You've always been an encouragement to me and a blessing.

And we've done this a couple of times. You came here in West Virginia with me. I don't know if it was you or whether it was Ron Hawk, but he said for me to bring a church of God, assembly of God and the Baptist and put us all together at the same time, I had to be nuts.

But those were blessed days. And of course, brother Ron Hawk passed away, but just thank you so much for joining us last time and then this time, me and you shouldered the double sessions and I couldn't get most of the rest of them to do that.

So I'm very grateful for you to just be willing to do whatever I needed and I thank you for that, okay?

The Solemn Assembly and the Nation’s Spiritual Crisis

Well, hang with me for just a moment. I think you've probably emphasized the return on Saturday, September 26th, the mall area and also the March of Franklin Graham that Sunday from the Lincoln Memorial to the Capitol about two miles.

And Daniel Bernard's 50 days of prayer, Terry Teichel, I think is helping him with that. And I looked at the list the other day of so many national leaders, it's gonna be a 50 day call to prayer leading up to the election every day at noon.

And so they're all kind of prayer initiatives and thank you for what you're doing here and for promoting those others. Let me respond to your question. The short answer is, I don't know, where are we?

I wish I did and I pray for more insight. I will not forget being at the Cove a few years ago and I was leading a prayer session in that beautiful chapel that's there and I was taking it from Josiah's reform and Richard Owen Roberts was there, you know him well.

And I looked at him and his head was bowed and the people were praying and I walked back to him and I said, do you have something to say? And he said, would you allow me? And he wandered up to the front and he took the mic and he made an astounding observation.

He said, the reform of Josiah came too late to save the nation. It seeded, it framed what was necessary in generations that would follow and return after the exile. So I think the question that we have to ask is, are we in time to see a spiritual awakening that would save the nation?

Or is what we're going to see, if we see anything in terms of a national spiritual awakening, only going to seed something after some kind of, sadly, some kind of revolution here? Or will God simply walk away as he seemed to do in Europe and just leave them to become utterly pagan and to see the Crusades take place again, that they turn back September the 11th years and years ago and to see the nation completely transformed, the whole continent as being non-Christian?

I wish I knew a clear, crisp answer. I do feel like we have been for some years on the warning track and we are approaching the point where the brim of iniquity will insist on the judgment of God. And I think we've seen three times in this new century with 9 -1 -1, with the banking crisis of 2008, and God spoke to me just before that happened.

And he said, I'm about to bring the nation into a valley of trouble. I will place there a door of hope. But we didn't go through that door of hope. And now we're in strike three. And I'm reminded of the words of God to Hosea, for three and yet for four.

There's a point at which God will say, no more. I've tried to stop you, I've put the barricades up, you've run the barricades. All right, to your own end, you reap the consequences. And I don't know. I don't know if that's where we're at.

I'll tell you what, I've been so encouraged in the last few days, watching videos that have been produced by James Robinson. One was with the former head of the Assembly of God. And I can see his face and can't think of his name.

I'd say, I'll think of it late tonight and I'll call you in the middle of the night. Another one was with Jensen Franklin. A number of these interviews in which George Wood, one was with George Wood. In which they've talked about about 30 to 40 leaders that are regularly gathered in the White House.

And they did it just recently and prayed for President Trump. And here's what they say. They say, these are unusual. They said the last one, there were words that came forth, there was passionate prayer.

There were people that were speaking to the president and saying, no, no, no. I mean, they were being respectful, but they were being forthright. And he was saying, no, don't stop, keep praying. And there were hands laid on him.

And he was saying, I need this, I need this, I need this. And I was impressed by what James Robinson talked about, by his candor, by what he saw about how his position had shifted completely with regard to the current president and how he had come to see with Ben Carson's urging, you need to get closer, you need to see what's going on here.

He had come to see that this man, despite his flaws, despite whatever, he is searching. And Dan, let me tell you something that God spoke to me this weekend, in fact, yesterday. Since I was on with you Friday, I was praying.

And the Lord said to me, with regard to Trump, and I won't name names, but others that are around him. One of these people around him came to me at a meeting in January. And we met outside a hall where he had just addressed a group of national leaders, 120 leaders or so.

And he stepped out and I stepped out to meet with him. And he said to me, he said, I was a pastor. And he said, I went through a terrible thing in my life. And he said, I learned humility and brokenness.

And he said, I thought I was finished. And then he said, he talked about how God brought him back and elevated him to the place of working, is I don't think his office is in the White House, but he's actually a faked advisor.

Pretty tall grass that he's in. And I, yesterday when I was praying, the Lord said to me, I have chosen broken people to heal this nation. Not the perfect, not the this upright, I've chosen broken people.

Now, and you know, there are times that God will say something to you. And he says more than what he's saying to you. I mean, you get this idea that he's God. He said, what businesses are yours? I've done this.

I have chosen broken people. And I think, you know, there is that moment in which God chooses broken people to whom, and in that moment, they can't get the glory. They can't get the honor. They can't get the praise.

The glory has to go to God. And you stand back absolutely astounded by his grace and even more by the instrument he chooses. And I would just say that to people out there. Maybe there's a pastor who used to be a pastor.

Maybe there's somebody whose life came apart. Maybe there's somebody who started out a date and they had the idea that will never happen to me. And everything that they said would never happen to me has happened to them.

Maybe they've had a profound fall from grace that embarrassed them, that made them want to change their name and identity and go somewhere else. And now God is speaking to you again. Now God is speaking to them again and saying, this is the season in which I've chosen broken people.

You know, we have to remember, it wasn't the Jerusalem elite. It wasn't the educated. It wasn't the degreed. It wasn't the certified. It wasn't the stellar leaders that Jesus chose. It was a rag tag band of disciples who were so divided, they quarreled all the time within themselves.

One is a tax collector and the other is a revolutionary. I mean, this is a diverse group. And he chooses these men as the elders of his mobile synagogue. And Jesus, the rabbi, starts out to change the world.

And I think he's still looking for rag tag, broken people. And so this may be the time just for those people. Where are we? We're somewhere on the warning track.

I don't know where. Well, that's one of those questions. I know that there's a lot of speculation goes into it and there's a lot of other things to consider in that. And I didn't mean to cut into your time, but I had it on my mind and so I wanted to ask you, but brother

Ask Sammy, he will know. Well, again, Bill said it yesterday morning and me and Sammy was in discussion on this when we did the test run. And he was quoting Dave Butts as well. Never has there been a time in the United States where there has been as much prayer from the Christian church as what there is now.

And why would God set us into motion to pray if he wasn't willing to do something? However, even as you said, you brought up Josiah. Manasseh was before him, dead and buried. And God spoke those words in 2 Chronicles 36, which I've preached quite often and taught quite often until there was no remedy.

And how can you murder 60 million babies and not pay a price? Every kingdom and empire that is butchered around, God has brought them to naught. And so there's a lot of things to consider. Brother, I don't wanna take no more of your time.

You have 90 minutes and as the Lord leads you, brother, it's yours. So God bless you for this evening. And when you're finished, just to holler and I will come back and we'll conclude, all right? Dan, thank you for doing this.

Thank you so much. So Father, we just ask you in these next few minutes to meet with us and illuminate our minds and our hearts. In Jesus' name, amen. On Friday during my time, I went through what I call seven elements of the solemn assembly.

Repentance and the Seven Elements of a Solemn Assembly

And I pointed out that we tend to get to about stage two or three. We have a precipitating event. We have a sense of frailty. We're overwhelmed by it. We start in some kind of back to God discernment or whatever, but we never get to the place where we thoroughly reckon with God about any sin that might have created it or whether or not this thing is his judgment or what he is saying to us.

And I think in a sense, that's the question is what is God saying to us? And as a result, we never, not having discerned his voice and not having been broken before him, we don't reconsider the changes to our attitude and our actions that bring an alignment with his purposes and put us back on the course of fulfilling our destiny.

That's the seven elements, the seven steps that God takes a people through when he begins to deal with them in some kind of judgment. And my experience is we get stage three, no further than stage four, and we bail out of the process.

And we think things will be better. They'll be okay. One of the reasons I think God may be after broken people is that they are more sensitive to being broken before him. And professional Christians, we've got it all down.

Our wineskins are hardened and we're not as easy to be broken. The wrenching message of David Wilkerson a few moments ago, which I tuned in and listened to it. I mean, this anguish that he's talking about, this is not common in the pulpits of America.

It's not common in even our prayer closets of intercessors. But I want to do something. I wanna go in a very different place in my attempt to bring some level of balance. There is a sense in which all of this depends upon our response to God in repentance, in righting ourselves with God, in aligning ourselves with his righteousness.

If my people called by my name will humble themselves or repent, one translation says, and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, and seek my face, not just my hand, not just something from me, and cry out to me, if my people for things he lays out, he lays out there, then I will grant them a hearing in my courtroom.

And that's the essence. I will forgive them and I will heal their land. And so if you look at this from the Old Testament, this very much depends upon our response. But I want you to notice that I don't know how to say this without going down into the deep weaves of theology here.

That is very much Old Testament. And it's very much mechanistic thinking. And I'm granting that there's truth there. Otherwise, I wouldn't have shared it with you. But I wanna come over to the New Testament and just make this declaration.

There are some things to which God is committed, whether you and I come along or not. There are certain purposes that God has committed. He gave his son. He is not going to give up on those purposes. The center of prayer has moved from the earth.

God wondered that there was no intercession, therefore his own arm brought salvation. He came to the earth to pray. He wrapped himself in flesh and came to the earth to pray. He started his ministry praying and he ended his ministry praying.

In the morning, he's praying. In the evening, he's praying. He's praying through the night. He dies on the cross praying. We are saved because Jesus died on the cross praying, not simply because he died on the cross, but because he died on the cross praying.

Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. He left the earth to go to heaven to start a prayer meeting in heaven. Now, if you could get your head around this, you see, there was a tabernacle in heaven, not made with hands.

It was the ultimate pattern for the tabernacle of Moses and the tabernacle of David, the temple of Solomon, the temple of Zerubbabel, but it was only a type. It was only a shadow. It was presided over by a priesthood that proceeded from Aaron.

But the New Testament reaches back beyond Moses to Abraham. It reaches back beyond law. It reaches back beyond works and man's righteousness. It reaches back beyond circumcision, the seal of faith. It reaches back to faith itself.

Faith as a response to God, when God calls Abraham to come and follow me and go to a new land. And just before that moment in Genesis 12, you have the Genesis 11 moment. And the Genesis 11 moment is interesting because you've got two princes there and you've got this priest by the name of Melchizedek.

You see, Jesus is not, his priesthood does not stand in the order of Aaron. It stands in the order of Melchizedek. He is not merely a priest, he's a son. And he's not a priest in the house of ordinances and washings and rituals.

He's a priest in the tabernacle, not made with hands in heaven. And he sprinkled there the vessels with his own blood and sat down next to the father and whispered, they will not be able to make it by themselves.

Send the Holy Spirit, not to be with them, but to be in them. And this is the ghost of Jesus. This is the Holy Spirit coming. The Holy Spirit's already been in the earth. He's brooded over the earth. He's been a creative force in the earth.

He's coming to the earth, it's not new in Acts 2. He's coming out of the office of Jesus. He's coming in the name of Jesus. He's coming to complete the work of Jesus. Begun in the incarnation, begun in the redemption, the cross begun, ratified in the resurrection.

Now settled because Christ is enthroned in heaven. Seated next to the father. Jesus went to heaven to pray. The man Jesus, I say the man Jesus, went to heaven to pray. We have a man praying in heaven.

He's leading a prayer meeting in heaven. So the center of prayer has moved from the earth to heaven. Worship has moved from the earth to heaven. The 24 elders with crowns on their head, some level of dominion and authority who sit on thrones and are the custodians of our yes but not yet prayers that ascend before the throne and God affirms them, hears them and grants them but says, no, not at this time later.

And they're accumulating in heaven and there will come a time. And there are times I'm convinced all throughout history when there's certain prayers that are gathered up for this family or this church or this city or this nation and they're cast back into the earth.

I'm wanting to say to you that there is this glorious and wonderful contradiction that you can't resolve. And if you resolve it, you mess it all up. It's a tension. If my people call by my name, we'll do this.

But then on the other hand, there is this, I'm determined to do this, I'm sovereign, I'm God. You wanna come along? Fine, this is what he said to the Jews. Wanna come along? Don't wanna come along? Okay, I'll raise up the Gentiles.

Wanna come along? He says to one denomination. Yeah, and we do for a while and then we don't. And then we don't. And so he says, all right, I'll raise up this group. I'll raise up this group because I am committed to my purposes.

Oh, hallelujah. You see, when you pray and you feel like you're all alone, the only way you pray effectively is with Jesus. You join him in prayer. Heaven is having a prayer meeting and you and I are being invited to join that prayer meeting.

Christ’s Heavenly Intercession and the Mission of the Church

At the end of the book of Romans is one of the most fascinating prayers. I've written a book on Paul's prayer, on prayer and mission out of the book of Colossians. Another one on prayer requests out of the book of Philippians.

And I've gone through and somehow I had missed the power of this prayer until last year. And I began to look at this prayer. It's actually the benediction for the book of Romans. I'm gonna read it and then I wanna come back to it.

If you've got a Bible, you wanna grab a Bible. I'm reading from the New King James and I'm reading from Romans chapter 15. And here's what it says. Here's the prayer. Now, Paul says, may the God of patience and comfort, may the God of patience and comfort grant you, talking to the church, to be like minded towards one another.

According to Christ Jesus, that you may with one mind and one mouth, one voice glorify the Father. This is the great call of the church is that together in unity, we come to this point of agreement. And this is the John 17 moment, that Father, the glory that I had with you before the incarnation, before my glory was veiled, I'm asking you to restore that glory.

And then he says an amazing thing. He says, in this glory, I want you to give to them, the church. I am convinced increasingly that there is an impartation of God's glory, or maybe there's just an unveiling of the glory that's in us, that's obscured by sin, obscured by our lack of unity, obscured by our lack of clarity, obscured, something needs to happen to the church.

Something needs to happen to me. Something needs to happen to you. And here's the good news. On the Old Testament side, I need to humble myself and to repent and to turn from my wicked ways and so forth.

But on the New Testament side, on the New Testament side, there's a dynamic of grace that's working to me, toward me and perhaps through me. If I, again, will yield to this, that God is saying, I am determined to do this.

I am absolutely committed to do this thing. And what is this thing? That there would be glory through the church unto Christ Jesus in the last days. There would be glory, the glory of the latter house will be greater than the former house.

There is coming somehow an impartation or a revelation or an unveiling because of our own clarity, our own unity, our own determination by grace to do what God is asking us to do before a watching world.

I want you to glorify God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, therefore, I want you to do this deliberately. Work on receiving one another. And of course, Paul has nothing to do with denominations like we have today, but we should hear this.

Work on receiving one another, Baptists and Pentecostals and Cessationists and those who believe the gifts continue and Pre-Tribbers and Mid-Tribbers and Calvinists and Armenians. God is calling us together to come together and receive one another in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, just as Christ also received us with the same spirit of openness and the same spirit of reconciliation.

And all of that to the glory of God. Somehow our unity, and you see this in John 17, somehow our unity, our humility, and the glory of God dance together. Joe Aldrich, who is arguably the father of the Pastor's Prayer Summit movement that touched 50 ,000 pastors in the 90s and into the 2000s, still continues, but not with the same oomph that it had.

God called the pastors, I think, to a place of unity in cities that we never experienced. These prayer summits became wonderful prayer retreats, but we didn't follow through with the plan of God. You see, I keep saying all over the place, there are civil elders in every city, town councils, but they're not secret elders.

And so without this unity of government, without the unity, we don't speak with one voice. We don't reason in the spirit, we don't pray together to come to the place where we have one mind and we have a prophetic word for our city or a prophetic word for our nation.

And this is, I think, what James Robinson was talking about with his evangelical council that's gathered around Trump and they've experienced extraordinary unity. I mean, and you've got extreme diversity of the group, settled non-Pentecostals and Pentecostals praying together in the spirit.

And this is what I saw in the prayer summits. I would see pastors come together and they would be speaking prophetic words over one another, even though they wouldn't have called it that. And I would see others move to humility when an Episcopalian priest led a communion service.

And suddenly we realized that in our diversity, there was a unity, there was a core theology that brought us together around the centrality and supremacy of Jesus Christ. There are things that we argued about and they are important things, but the centrality and supremacy of Jesus Christ, as Dave Bryant so often says, this is the thing that brings us together.

This is the thing that, and this is the thing upon which God wants to put his glory, to emphasize that Christianity is not a mere philosophy, that Jesus Christ is not a mere mortal, that he was God come to the earth.

Now, I say that Jesus Christ has become a servant to the circumcision for the truth of God to confirm the promises made to the fathers and that the nations, the Gentiles, might glorify God. Now, this is the mission.

Jesus Christ came to further what started with the fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but it got stalled, it got stopped. And so this idea of mission to reaching the Gentiles, to reaching the nations, to a global harvest 2 ,000 years after the death, burial, resurrection, ascension, enthronement of Jesus Christ, we've still not finished.

We've still not finished the great commission. And so here's Paul's point. Here's Paul's point, that this is about mission. And I would argue that solemn assembly is about mission, that ultimately it is about the rectifying of things in us, in the church, that those things might be set right, that we might come back to the appropriate center, which is Christ himself, and that we might have credibility in the message that we preach, that the proclamation of the truth that we offer would be partnered with the incarnation of the truth we live.

And that somehow, and that somehow in the middle of all this, God would begin to dance upon the church with the glory of God. So this is not merely a morbid thing. As Richard O. Roberts says, this is a vehicle of grace that God has given us, that we might come together and consider where we've been and where we are and where we must be, where we must go.

What is it that God has called us to do? Well, here it is. Here's what Paul says, I'm reading the prayer of Paul. He says, he says, for this reason, I will confess you, Jesus Christ, among the nations, among the Gentiles, and I will sing your name.

And this is my role, and this is your role. My role is to be a witness. My role is to confess Christ. My role is to carry a song in public, not in the church. I don't do this like I should. And again, I say to you, rejoice, all nations with his people.

The first wave is witness. The second wave is that nations began to come together with the people of God. And our voices are raised together in glorifying and praising God. Step number three, praise the Lord, all ye nations.

We cannot stop. Some of the Gentiles come together and begin to rejoice with us as God begins to move in nations to think about this. See, our idea of revival is a little week meeting, two week meeting.

Well, that's the way it used to be. Now it's a three day meeting. Now it's a Sunday meeting. But he's saying nations will be joined to the Lord. This is the word of Zachariah. Nations will be joined to the Lord.

Whole nations coming under the hand of God. We need to lift our eyes and see the vision that God has. It begins with some Gentiles praising God, but then it ends with praise the Lord, all ye nations. Not until every tongue and every tribe has been reached with the gospel and there is praise rising from every tongue and every tribe and every kindred group on the face of the earth is God satisfied.

And is this prayer of Paul answered? And again, Isaiah says, there will be a root of Jesse. What is his name? His name is Jesus. All of this happens, not around our denominational emblem, not around our special specific theology, not around some experience that we have, not around whether we baptize in running water or frontwards or backwards or triple dunk as the apostolic church used to do.

No, no, no, no, no, no. All of this comes around the simplicity of the person of Jesus Christ. There will be a root out of Jesse and he will bloom. He will bloom in the last days. He will rise to reign over the nations.

This is a reign of a spiritual kingdom. And this will ultimately be a geopolitical kingdom because Christ is going to come back. But we pray even now, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done.

Someone said in earth, in earth, in me, as it is in heaven. And this is the alignment that East Stanley Jones talks about. That in prayer, you align yourself to the purposes of God. And he is then able to do things through you that could not otherwise be done.

See what a solemn assembly does is it begins to realign. It realigns attitudes. It realigns theology. It realigns us with the righteousness of God. It honors the holiness of God. It's this realignment.

And this realignment is what creates agreement between heaven and earth. Oh, how has been said, we're like a satellite dish. We catch the beam of heaven and direct it there. No, there, no, there, no, no, there.

There is this alignment. And in this alignment, while we pray here, God works there. While we pray now, God works then. Just this one point of agreement creates a voice from the earth that's heard around the throne in heaven.

And somehow God is looking, I don't understand this in the mystery of his ways. He's looking for voices from the earth to agree with heaven and say, come Lord, assert yourself, manifest yourself. Do this in the earth, glorify yourself, move in a mighty way.

And if necessary, even though we pray this reluctantly, bring judgment, do what you must do to accomplish your purposes. There will be a root of Jesse and he will rise to reign. And Paul knows this root has manifest.

This root is in the earth. The incarnation has taken place. Jesus Christ, the root of Jesse has bloomed. And though that tree was cut down, Christ was crucified. Nevertheless, that root is in the earth and we are rising as the shoots that rise out of this.

It will reign over the Gentiles in him. The Gentiles will have hope. And this is how he ends his prayer. This is how he ends his prayer. Now may the God, I want you to notice how the prayer begins. Now may the God, now may the God.

This is sovereign. This is what God does. And Paul is urging God to do what you will, to act in the way that will further your purposes, to act in the way that will bring about your will on the earth.

Now may the God of hope fill you and me with joy. That's the noisy fruit and peace. That's the agency of reconciliation out of an inner spirit of peace. I become an agent of peace in faith, in believing.

And may we abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. We're not alone. We're not alone in what we're called to do. The ghost is working with us. The ghost of Jesus is working with us. The Holy Spirit is working with us.

I want to show you this in a little different way. I just want to kind of track with you as we move toward this prayer. The book of Romans is the letter, listen, it's the letter to the church that lives at the center of global power.

And you see, in a sense, America is the church that now lives at the center of global power. And that's why this book becomes important to us. We think about this book in terms of its scope of theology about soteriology or salvation, about redemption.

But this is really the overall, the backdrop is mission. And I would suggest again, that the purpose of solemn assembly is not just an internal kind of thing. It's not just a church thing. It is necessary because something has disrupted the purpose and the mission of the church and has prevented us from accomplishing the mission of the church.

And we have this solemn assembly before God because things are happening around us that are indicators of the judgment of God and his displeasure. Something has gone wrong here. And it is not the world that we would expect, the nation that we would expect to have a solemn assembly.

Sometimes families need to have a solemn assembly. Sometimes Jacob needs to take his family back to Bethel, the place from which he fled, like the place where Abraham built an altar. And he tells them when he goes back there, get rid of all of your earrings.

And he finally says to them, all these years they've had idols. Jacob's family has been riddled with idolatry. And he tells them, you gotta get rid of your idols. And they bury them under the tree at Shechem.

And then they journey up to Bethel. This is a family solemn assembly. There are times that churches are called to solemn assembly. This is really the essence of the letters to the church in the revelation, chapter two and three, when Jesus sends the message to the church and calls them to repent.

Something has gone wrong. Though there may be some righteous people among you, you're about to miss your purposes in Ephesus and Thyatira and Pergamos and Laodicea and Sardis. You're about to miss your purposes.

And so he's calling them back to repent. This is why nations have solemn assemblies and cities have solemn assemblies. It's about God moving in our life in a way that recenters us according to his purposes so that his purposes can be accomplished in us.

And right up front, right up front is this big idea, that we cannot be ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I think for 60 years, we've been increasingly ashamed of the gospel. You can't pray? Okay.

I can't pray in that name? Okay. I can't bring my Bible to work? Okay. I can't wear this pin? Okay. I think increasingly, we've been backed into a corner to be silenced by our faith or to allow our faith to be silenced.

And I think right up front, Paul makes it clear, to fulfill our mission. We cannot be ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And what he's doing here is he's urging the Romans, and I would argue, he's urging us to affirm publicly our identity to Jesus Christ.

This goes back to 2 Chronicles 7, 14. If my people called by my name, we have to openly identify with Christ, with God, with the faith, with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Why? Because this is the power of God and salvation.

There is no other name. There is no other way. This is the only hope of the nation. This is the only hope of the world. And this is the point that he's making in Romans chapter 15. So at the end of the book, we come to mission.

And at the beginning of the book, you see one of the most profound assertions anywhere. The whole world is under wrath. You know, the love message that we preach in the church now, without the backdrop of wrath, without the backdrop of judgment, it means that the love message is meaningless.

I mean, you say to somebody, you know, God loves you and they say to you, oh, certainly he does. Yes, yes, I'm a lovable love. I'm a lovable person. He loves everybody. And it's good news out of context.

It's rich, free of its teleological anchor. I don't understand it because I don't see the backdrop. I don't see the backdrop of wrath. I don't see why I should be and why I am under judgment and why God would, in the final analysis, say to me, no, I'm not going to let you into my heart or my heaven.

No, I'm not gonna do that. I can't see, the whole nation can't see that anymore. And so not being able to see that, we can't see how amazing grace is, how unbelievable the love of God is. And so with wrath as a backdrop, Paul begins his letter to the Romans with bad news, the worst announcement possible.

And as he grow and he goes through Romans, the narrative becomes even, even darker. You meet God's unmitigated anger. You meet a world without hope, without good news. And the bookends of Romans are precisely the opposite.

Wrath, chapter one, hope, chapter 15. My, my, my, my, my. And what's the bridge that transitions us from wrath to hope? It's the gospel. It's the good news. But it's the gospel understood, not as cheap grace as Bonhoeffer said, but it's the transformation, the transformation that comes to us by the power of the Holy Spirit.