Romans 16:1-16 Closing Credits

Of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak preaches his series in the Book of Romans, A Righteousness from God. Let's listen in.

The Church Is Built by God, Not by Contractors

Well, good morning, everybody. Welcome to Recast Church. We're gonna go ahead and get started, so if you can find your seats, that would be awesome. I'm Don Filsak, I'm the lead pastor here, and just wanna say how joyful I am to be gathered together as God's people in this place here this morning.

I hope that you're glad to be here, too. It's really been a privilege over the years to see how God has built this church. It's been amazing, and I don't know if you guys think about it this way, but it's kind of an important thing for us to get in our minds, and that is that churches are not built by contractors, by electricians, by plumbers, by various tradesmen.

Church buildings are built that way, but that's not the way that churches are built. Churches are built by God himself drawing together a variety of people who decide and determine to gather together in one local place for his worship.

And so I hope it's as much your goal this morning as it is mine that we worship him because he has saved us from our sins through his son, Jesus Christ, who died for us. He is our savior, he is our king.

Does everybody agree with that?

Is Jesus Christ your savior and king this morning?

Then let's rejoice together. It's true that God builds his church, but the apostle Paul made it clear in the scripture that we looked at last week that Paul worked hard in the planting of churches, but he gave the credit to Jesus Christ for the success in starting those churches.

And he knew at the end of the day that he was just a tool that God was using in his plan to start so many churches, and he wrote that to the Christians in Rome, a church that he didn't start. But now this morning we're gonna turn our attention to a different kind of text, a text that I have the feeling that if you were reading in your Bible reading and you're going through the Bible in a year, some of you maybe do that or you've read through the book of Romans before, it would be very easy to skip over this section of chapter 16.

As a matter of fact, it might be one that you kind of go, okay, this is a freebie, and your eyes just browse the page because it's just a text that's just full of names. It appears at face value that that's all that it is, just a list of names, and not only that, but a list of names that we barely know anything about.

We barely know anything about many of these people that are listed in chapter 16. And so to some degree, it might be tempting for us to look at this section of scripture and think of it as just the same way, have the same attitude toward it that you might have towards closing credits of a movie.

Now how many of you sit through all of the closing credits of all the movies you attend? Just to give credit where credit is due, right?

You wanna applaud that key grip.

Or the sound boom coordinator or the people who did all of the costuming or the, you don't really do that, do you? Unless you know, and you might ask, hey, was there like a little spoiler at the end of this or is there an Easter egg at the end of this?

And then some of you sit, now some of you know what I'm talking about. So some of you sit through to get to the end of that. But there was a tradition when I was a kid, really, it was kind of when I was in college, and some of you maybe do this, some of you this might be new, maybe it's new to all of you, but we used to, when we were in college, we'd go out to a movie.

You weren't allowed to get up and leave until you saw your name in the closing credits. You had to see your first name in the closing credits. Now, the problem is, Don is not a real common name anymore.

So that ends up being a little bit tough. We kind of do that as a family, just kind of as a joke. It's kind of funny, but we watch sometimes the credits just looking for our first names. Anybody here do that?

Are we the only ones? Maybe me and my college friends invented that. I don't know. I mean, I thought that might be a thing. But I wouldn't hold your breath as we read this list, looking for your name.

Like, it's not likely that your name is here. Now, a couple of you, actually, if I did this right, and I'm willing to go out on a limb, to the best of my knowledge, we have two Marys here, and three Julies.

And you'll find your name in there. Well, Julia, actually, technically, I think we only have one Julia, and we'll see that name is in there. But I could be wrong. Maybe there's an Aristobulus that's visiting us today, or a Phlegon that's here.

I doubt it. But maybe the closest thing that your family would have to the names on this list is a dog named Rufus, because we're seeing the name Rufus in here. So I don't know how we determine what names from the Bible get to be dog names.

Poor Rufus. But we'll see that name. So Paul's gonna mention,.

In this short text,.

He's gonna mention 27 names, 27, not just names, 27 people who impacted the life of the Apostle Paul. 27 people in 16 verses. And he's commending those who have served the church well in his generation.

And so as we read this text that's really full of some strange names, I want you to let your mind consider a fundamental question. Why would the Apostle Paul take up the time to give all of these greetings in writing?

I mean, back in the day, parchment and scroll took up, it was costly. Ink was not common. And so just his application of pen to parchment to write these things took effort and time. And so I'll give you a little hint before we read this.

I think that the answer to the question might have something to do with Paul demonstrating how central personal relationships are to the Christian faith. How vital it is that we conceive and think of ourselves as ministers to people, all of us.

Not me, not the elders, not the leaders, not the people who have volunteered this morning, but all of us ministering to others. That we could actually be an assist and are meant to be an assist to the entire church, which is the people gathered together.

For chapters now, Paul has been highlighting love and care and unity for the church. And it is no accident that he is wrapping up towards the end of this letter a list of names of people who have blessed him.

So let's open our Bibles.

If you're not already there,.

To Romans chapter 16, verses one through 16. And if you have a device, you can navigate over in that device to this text, Romans 16, one through 16, recast the very words of the Almighty God revealed to us this morning.

I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church at Kencraia. That's how they tell me how to pronounce that anyways. That you may welcome her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints and help her in whatever she may need from you, for she has been a patron of many and of myself as well.

Greet Prisca and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, who rest their necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks, but all the churches of the Gentiles give thanks as well. Greet also the church in their house.

Greet my beloved Eponetus, who was the first convert to Christ in Asia. Greet Mary, who has worked hard for you. Greet Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen and my fellow prisoners. They are well-known to the apostles and they were in Christ before me.

Greet Ampliatus, my beloved in the Lord. Greet Urbanus, our fellow worker in Christ, and beloved Stachys. Greet Apples, no, Apelles. I like apples, but. Greet Apelles, who is approved in Christ. Greet those who belong to the family of Aristobulus.

Greet my kinsmen, Herodian. Greet those in the Lord, who belong to the family of Narcissus. Greet those workers in the Lord, Tryphaena and Tryphosa. Greet the beloved Persis, who has worked hard in the Lord.

Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord. Also his mother, who has been a mother to me as well. Greet Asyncretus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobus, Hermas, and the brothers who are with them. Greet Philologus, Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympus, and all the saints who are with them.

Greet one another with a holy kiss. And all the churches of Christ greet you. Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for the richness of the text of scripture. We encounter a text here that would be so easy to just skip over, and some might even be wondering, what in the world is Don gonna do with this?

But Father, all scripture is breathed out by you and is profitable. Reveal to us this morning, through your text, what you desire to communicate to each one of us. And I'm convinced that it is something of unity, something of relationship, something of connectedness.

How well those messages correct us in an age, in a time, in an era where we are so me-focused, we are so individualistic. We're individualistic in our entertainment, in our hobbies, in the way that we work,.

The way that we think.

So Father, I pray that you would correct false notions in us, encourage us where we are ready and able to receive encouragement, challenge us where we're ready, and prepare our hearts to receive challenge.

Father, I thank you for the cross of Christ that holds us in common. That is the unifying and rallying point for your people. The place where we all have come to find hope. And in that hope, Father, I pray that we would rejoice together.

There's something so beautiful in a culture that is so individualistic that we would come together and raise our voices to mingle together in one voice before you in this gathering. So Father, I pray that the reality of the way that we sing on Sunday morning would be a reality of the way that we do life with one another all week long.

That we'd be a people connected, not disconnected, but connected with one another. That we would even use technology, as divided as that can cause us to be, that we would use technology even in a way that is connecting us with one another in better ways.

Father, that we would rejoice now and that you would receive our worship before you. As sweet in your eyes and sweet to your ears. In Jesus' name, amen. And I would ask that you please keep your Bibles open to Romans chapter 16, verses one through 16.

You can see that list of names there and see kind of the things that I'm saying are coming from that text of scripture.

And then if at any time during the message.

You need to get up and get more donuts or juice or coffee to keep your attention on God's word,.

Take advantage of that.

Did anybody in here notice that we have new donuts,.

By the way?

Anybody notice that? They're pretty good, they're pretty good.

If you're into that kind of thing, I don't know.

But yeah, let's keep our focus on God's word.

As much as possible in the remainder of our time. Again, Romans 16, one through 16. I think that Paul had an interest in dispelling any notion that he was a lone ranger. And I think we see that in text like this.

A lot of times he would close his letter with thanks or commendation given to a list of people. He always had a posse with him wherever he traveled. He didn't travel alone.

He networked everywhere.

And as he went traveling around the Roman Empire, he collected people, if you will. I mean, he would share the gospel with people and churches would be built up. And some people even from some of those communities would come to faith in Christ and then they'd follow Paul along in ministry.

And so we see that in the course of his life. He built up a large group of people that he both had ministered to and then in turn had come alongside of him or had ministered to him along the way. But this section of greetings is unique and different when you compare it to all the other letters of Paul.

And it's unique and different.

Because it's so expansive.

It's so big. As a matter of fact, it's so big that some scholars who don't necessarily, by the way, you know there's people who study the Bible that don't necessarily like the Bible. And there's some scholars who are like almost kind of too intelligent to believe that it's true and so they study it and they study it as words but they don't study it as truth.

And how many of you know that that's a bad way to study the Bible? I mean, that's a rough way to study. But there are some scholars who literally believe this doesn't even belong in the Bible. They're like, well, this couldn't be Paul because look at the way he usually ends his letter.

So you have to kind of try to,.

They're trying to explain why would he do this this way and why would this be so different than the ending of all of his other letters. But I think that part of the reason for this is the fact that Paul is writing to a church here.

It's very unique.

And that he's writing to a church he's never visited. How many of you know that if you were, like say you were in Florida right now and you wanted to write a letter to recast your home church, it would look different than if you were in Florida and you're writing a church to Colorado.

That you've never been to. Would it be kind of different?

It'd be a very different way of writing. And so I think that that's part of the reason why, now he knows a lot of people that are there, but he's never visited Rome yet as of the writing of this. He did not start that church.

But despite the fact that he didn't start the church in Rome he's encountered a lot of people during his travels. As I mentioned, he surrounded himself with people, he ministered to people, he sent out people.

And so he's encountered a lot of people in his travels who now have settled in Rome and are a part of the church there. So he would minister to people and in that time and in that era people were moving around for business, just like we do today, that was common in the Roman Empire.

And so obviously people who were more wealthy were more mobile back then, but there was, because of the Mediterranean Sea there was a lot of transportation routes and things like that, so people could jump on a cargo ship and head to Rome.

There's more business there, there's more work there, there's more stuff going on there, whatever it might be, going to visit families, relatives, all that kind of stuff. So it seems likely that Paul is actually, is asking them to greet everyone, everyone that he knows in Rome.

It's a comprehensive list,.

Because he wants to make sure that the leadership there at the church in Rome knows that he knows a lot of people in common with them. And how many of you have ever done that? You find out that somebody works for a company and you're like, oh, by the way, do you know so-and-so?

Do you know so-and-so? I know them, they work at Stryker, I know them, they work at Stryker. Well, how many of you ever have done that, and it's like the big joke, I've talked with a couple of guys who work for UPS and they said they would get like,.

Oh, hey, do you know when so-and-so,.

He works in Fort Worth, Texas? How many of you know that UPS is a pretty mess? It's probably just because you work at UPS in Kalamazoo, doesn't mean you know somebody who works in Texas for UPS, right?

It's kind of a little bit of a joke, or really, I have played that game with people often when I find out that they work at Stryker, that's a big company. There's a lot of different divisions, even here in this community, so is it instruments, is it medical, or whatever?

But we, so we play that game commonly now, and I think that's exactly what, that's the game that Paul is playing here to some degree. By the way, church, I know these people that are in your midst. I've worked with them, I know them personally, so he's going through that list intentionally.

And in doing this, I think he's killing two birds with one stone. He's commending those he knows to the church. See, these are good people. These are good folks, these are good men and women who have worked alongside of me, who I can commend and recommend to you.

I mean, they are people who have blessed me, and he wants them to be thanked publicly. How many of you would love that if you were thanked publicly in the words of scripture? Like, that's a pretty big deal, isn't it?

That's pretty powerful, and so he's thanking them, but he's also letting the church in Rome know that he has a lot of friends there who could vouch for him. He's on his way, his hope is to visit them someday, and so he's establishing some kind of rapport with the local church there.

He knows many of them before he even goes to visit them. And so in verses one and two, we're gonna just kind of jump in and see this list of people and kind of walk through a little bit of who they are and how they impacted Paul, and then we'll kind of wrap it up at the end with a way that we can apply this list of names.

Like, how in the world do we apply a list of names? Well, I think there's some practical things that God has intended to bring you here to hear this morning so that you might be empowered to go out and do some things that are a little bit different this week as a result of encountering this text.

But in verses one and two, Paul commends to them someone he knows very well. He knows this individual very well. As a matter of fact, it's the last person he handed the letter to Rome to before she went off to jump on a ship and head to Rome to deliver it.

She's the one who's carrying the letter from Paul who writes this from, most scholars believe, in Corinth, which is in modern-day Greece. And he's in Corinth writing this, and he's writing it to the city of Rome, so he needs to get it to the city of Rome.

Now, they didn't have mail service back then. There weren't ships, there wasn't UPS, there was no way to naturally send a letter, and so what it would have entailed in that time would have been Paul waiting until someone was probably already heading to Rome, either to visit family or on business.

They were already on their way, and then he would say, okay, I'll send the letter with them. So the lady's name is Phoebe, and whatever was taking Phoebe to Rome, Paul encourages the church to provide for her needs while she's there.

He says, could you take her in? Could you support her, could you help her out? She's doing this great service to the church. She's bringing you this letter that I've written, so could you take care of her?

And she's identified as a, some translations have deacon, some translations have servant. I like the word deacon in this, and she's a deacon of the church of Cancreia. Deacon is just taking the Greek word diakonos over into English and just kind of bringing it straight over but it just means to serve, it's a servant kind of word.

And so the use of that word throughout the New Testament makes it a little bit hard to exactly understand in what kind of capacity she served the church in Cancreia. It's not exactly clear what her day-to-day week looked like in terms of serving that church, and many people, by their bias, want to have her doing various things in order to support their views or disapprove of a different view or whatever, and I just can't even go there with this because at the end of the day, it's very unclear exactly what her role was, but we know that she was a servant in that church who helped out significantly.

Now, Cancreia is the closest port city to Corinth. Corinth is on an isthmus, which I'm challenging your geographical knowledge of different kinds of, it's a landmass that has two bodies of water really close to it.

So it's a thin body of land between two bodies of water, and Corinth is smack dab in the middle of that, and you would have to travel just a mile or two over to Cancreia, which was a port city, the primary port city for Corinth, and so she is serving in that church while Paul is in Corinth working there, and she obviously has business in Rome or something.

She's gonna carry the letter, and most scholars believe that she did indeed have some kind of formal responsibility in that church in Cancreia, that there's some kind of formalizing that she's designated as this deacon of that church.

I think that it could possibly be that she's like Ginger here at our church, who is a children's director, and she has an area of responsibility, or maybe Aaron Garnott, who is in charge of the hospitality team, and comes in early and sets up the crew that comes in early and makes the coffee and greets at the door and stuff like that.

I don't know exactly what she did, but she had some kind of a formal responsibility in that church, and Paul highlights her service for the church, and then he encouraged the church in Rome to give her some good old-fashioned church hospitality, and I wanna make much of two statements that Paul says in verse two, two statements that he's encouraging the church to do something, and he says, I want you to welcome her first in the Lord.

I wanna highlight that for us. He wants the church to welcome her in the Lord. She's a fellow believer. He reminds them that they have Christ in common. They've never met each other, so in what way would you greet somebody that is a complete stranger, you've never met them, you don't know where they're coming from.

In that ancient time, there was probably a lot of fear in the early church. We're gonna see here in just a moment that in Rome, the Christians had been literally kicked out. This church is recently established.

Within a year or two, it's been okay to be a Christian in Rome at the time of the writing of this, so there was a lot of fear and a lot of persecution during that time, so how many of you would be really eager to have somebody just show up to your church in that context where you don't know where they're coming from, you don't know if they're a Roman person who is trying to infiltrate the church, you don't know what's going on, and so there would have been a lot of fear,.

So he says,.

She is in the Lord, you guys can trust her. She's in the Lord, greet her that way. You have the Lord Jesus Christ in common, but he goes on to add the second phrase, welcome her in a manner that is worthy of the saints.

Welcome her in a manner that is worthy of the saints and help her with whatever she needs, which of course we know what some of the basic needs are. She needs shelter and she needs food at the very least, and so he's at least saying, take her in and meet her needs, help her out.

She's a sister in Christ and help her in a certain way, and I want to point out that what he's getting at here in this phrase is that there is a Christian hospitality. There is supposed to be a Christian hospitality.

There is a hospitality that he's saying is worthy of the saints. He's delineating that from other types of hospitality. Now, people in that day and in that age would have been hospitable to one another.

They would have welcomed other people into their homes, family, friends that were traveling or whatever, but he's saying welcome her in this way. Welcome her in a manner that is worthy of the saints, and this is, by the way, not about breaking out the fine china.

It's not about analyzing your house and making sure that there's ample space.

For large greetings.

Or only people with large houses can have hospitality. Or only people with really nice houses can have hospitality. Or to do hospitality in a Christian way is to make sure that every corner and nook and cranny of your house is completely spotless before.

That's not what this is about. This, folks, is about love. It's about loving others, caring for others, meeting the needs that flow out.

Of being in the Lord together.

It's not about a particular brand or a particular type of, you know, making sure that everything is clean and all prim and proper. We are to be hospitable to all. That is true. But how many of you know that there's a bit more in common between two believers?

And there's a fellowship that is implied in this welcoming other Christians, welcoming them in and being hospitable with one another. Well, it isn't until we get to the end of verse two that we realize exactly some of the details about who this lady is.

Phoebe is actually a wealthy businesswoman, and that probably gives us a little clue maybe why she's traveling to Rome, but the reason we know that she's wealthy is because the word that's used for her is patron or benefactor, depending on your translation.

She's wealthy enough to be able to give and support many others. So she's been a benefactor, a patron of many people, including Paul himself. Paul himself has benefited from the generosity and probably likely the hospitality of this woman, Phoebe.

In other words, she has been a giver of hospitality, and he wants her now to receive hospitality and kind. And I think as we just think about this first name on the list, it would be good for us to even apply just this first one right here, right now, and that is to think and consider who are the Phoebes in your life?

Well, what do I mean by a Phoebe? And I'm not talking about Phoebe from Friends here. Some of us, maybe that's the only Phoebe you know. But people, think about people who have been a blessing to you.

Think about people who have been a blessing, who have helped you out in a time of need, and then they are, in turn, in need of some encouragement or some blessing themselves. Who has given you time, recast?

Who's given you encouragement?

Who's given you care? And I would suggest to you that even just a phone call of thanks or a text this week might be a timely encouragement to someone who has blessed you in the past. You don't know when, how many of you ever had this experience where you just, by God's grace, something just pressed on you, you sent somebody a text and they're like,.

That's exactly what I needed today.

Super down, super discouraged,.

And your message just reminded me to keep going. We don't know when we're gonna be that, but I would just encourage you to think through it and consider who needs a blessing from you that has formerly blessed your life.

Christian Hospitality and Honoring Those Who Have Blessed You

But moving on, we find that Paul has a couple of really close friends that now live in Rome. Surprisingly, I mean, we've encountered this couple before. I preached through the book of Acts and we talked about them then.

It was a long time ago, but Prisca and Aquila are mentioned here. Prisca is short for Priscilla. We see her name, Priscilla and Aquila, in the book of Acts. I think that Prisca is probably a little better than Prissy.

I don't know. So, but they call her Prisca. And they're a couple that Paul first met in the city of Corinth a long time ago, but they traveled with him. So he connected with them. They were already in Christ.

They were already ministering alongside of Paul in Corinth. And then when he traveled to Ephesus, they jumped on the ship with him and went to Ephesus and helped start the church in Ephesus alongside of Paul.

So they have done ministry together. He knows Prisca and Aquila very well. And then he left Ephesus to head back to his church in Antioch. And he left Prisca and Aquila there ministering to the church in Ephesus during that time.

A young and growing church that they helped to establish and helped to grow. So the book of Acts gives us some details about their life in just a few short verses. It really does zero in on this couple.

So it gives us a little bit more of a rich background than many of the other names on this list. But it's a fair assumption that they're a married couple. The text tells us some detail about them, but not even as much as to say, yes, this is a married couple, but the fact that they're put together in this way could possibly be brother and sister, though I believe that they were married.

We'll find out someday. But they fled from Rome under the reign of Claudius. The book of Acts tells us the reason that he encountered them in Corinth was because under the emperor Claudius, he had booted, he had given the kick to all the Christians in Rome.

He said, Christians, get out of here. So the city of Rome had been vacated of Christian presence as much as possible. Of course, there were probably some people who rejected that and stayed there underground.

But by and large, Christians fled the persecution under Claudius there. And so during his reign, they skipped town. So there was a period of time of a lull in the city of Rome where there was no church, overt church presence.

And so we find out also in the book of Acts that Prisca and Aquila were tent makers by trade.

So that means that they were fabric workers.

Sewing tents and making tents, like literal physical tents. And so they hit it off with Paul because that was Paul's trade too. We find that out in the book of Acts that he was trained to build and make tents and to sew them together.

And so they worked together in Ephesus, both making tents and planting a church there. But by the time that Paul wrote this letter, they've obviously made it back into Rome. At the end of the reign of Claudius, his reign ended in 54 AD.

And that actually helps us to date some of the letters, including the book of Romans. And so we know that the writing of the letter to the Romans was after 54 AD. And many of the things in the timeline indicate that it's probably about a year after that return to Rome that the book of Romans was written.

And so Rome was Prisca and Aquila's hometown. And he credits this couple with risking their lives in the text here, commending them to the church in Rome. He says, they stuck their necks out for me. Well, I don't know if you ever have used that phrase.

Or do you know what the phrase stuck your neck out is for somebody? It means to risk yourself. Well, it literally comes from Roman times, where literally the risk was the sword on your neck. And that's an image from this text.

Like, that's where it comes over into English, is out of this. But there's a reality. At some point in their history, Prisca and Aquila risked their life and put themselves on the line for the apostle Paul.

We don't know exactly when that was or what that context was. And he doesn't spell it out here. But when they first came into Ephesus, there was a riot that rose up. Prisca and Aquila would have been there.

Paul was there.

Paul's life was threatened. And it very well may be in the process of that riot in Ephesus that Prisca and Aquila had an opportunity to put their lives on the line and save Paul. But he wants to be sure that all of the churches who would read, including our church, that all of the churches would know that he is very grateful to Prisca and Aquila and all the Gentile churches are grateful to Prisca and Aquila for saving Paul's life.

So everybody needs friends like Prisca and Aquila. I hope you have some friends like that. Friends who have been to battle with you. Friends who have gone to bat for you. It's good that Paul publicly thanks this couple.

Think about this, these are real people.

These are real people who in the heat of the battle risked significantly for their friend Paul. And he publicly thanks them. And it's so good. It is so good and so rich, Recast, that we would know their names and see his commendation to them centuries later as they faithfully serve the church alongside of the apostle Paul.

And what a model they are, even as we know so little about this dynamic duo because they ministered in Corinth for Jesus, we know as much. They ministered alongside Paul in Ephesus for Jesus, we know that much.

And now they are, as of the writing of this, the last time we see them mentioned in scripture, they are leading a house church in Rome for Jesus.

Like Paul.

Apparently they caught,.

I think they probably caught it from Paul.

But they model the never done with ministry, always have a next step kind of mindset. I see this couple as another example of what we talked about last week, that everyone has a next step in ministry.

And they're an example of a couple who wherever God planted them, wherever God called them, they ministered for Jesus there. Wherever that was, they ministered for Jesus. Now it's a bit of a speculation, but as we move through this list, it seems likely that Eponetus, who is mentioned in verse five, probably went to Rome with Prisca and Aquila.