Eager to Bring It

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Don Filcek; Romans 1:8-15 Eager to Bring It

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to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsek preaches from his series in the
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Book of Romans, A Righteousness from God. Let's listen in. Well, good morning.
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As Dave said, welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsek, I'm the lead pastor here. And I am really glad that we've had the opportunity to gather together in this place to worship our great
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God together here at Recast Church. A special welcome to those of you who are new here. I just wanna point out that I've noticed a lot of new faces over the last couple of months.
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And so I just wanna point out that there's this thing that happens here where it's possible for you to be sitting there next to the person beside you or just down the row from you and go, why are they so mean?
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They didn't even say hi to me. And you're both wondering the same thing about each other because you're both new. And so I just encourage you that we're gonna have a connection time here in a few minutes.
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And so I just encourage everybody to reach out to somebody that you don't know. And those of you that are introverts just look busy trying to read that worship folder that you got and don't make eye contact.
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I know that's how some of you are feeling right now. But I encourage you to make yourself comfortable if at any time you need more coffee or juice or donuts.
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Those are all free back there. For those of you that aren't here, you might not know that, but there's no cost to that. So take advantage of that this morning.
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And we're gonna be jumping back into Romans after an introduction to the author last week. So last week we got the first few verses of the book of Romans.
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And that's what we're gonna be marching through in this next year. Paul introduced himself last week in three terms, three ways that he introduced himself to us at the start.
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And said, this is what I want you to know about me. I'm a servant or a slave of Jesus Christ. He says,
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I also was called to be an apostle, which is a fancy word for messenger. And then he goes on to say, and by the way, what's important that you need to know about that is that the message that I've been given to bring to you is the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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That is the good news that he came and died for us who by faith trust in him and to take care of our sin problem and our broken relationship with our heavenly father.
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And so now in our text, he's gonna begin the process of explaining the urgency of his calling. And in essence say, why am
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I even writing to you, Rome? Why do I long to visit you? What is all of that about?
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And I say that he's gonna start to share that urgency because in reality, the next three chapters of the book of Romans will highlight the urgent need for humanity to receive a savior.
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So he's gonna be giving us the big picture of why the gospel matters throughout this letter that he writes to Rome.
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And the fundamental thought we are all meant to consider this morning is how well have we grasped the urgency of the calling on each and every one of us to spread the good news of salvation in the name of Jesus?
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Do we see ourselves as ambassadors for Christ? Do we take seriously the role that he has placed on our lives to be change agents in our world, in our neighborhoods, in our workplaces, in our schools, wherever we go and in whatever capacity we serve to do so for the cause of Jesus Christ?
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I've been convicted this week. I think it's a convicting message to all of us. And as I wrestled this week with how much of this text was specifically for Paul and then how much is actually meant to be applied directly to us,
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I came to some convicting conclusions that God is speaking at least to me, and I hope that that passes along to you, that God is speaking to us through the example of the
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Apostle Paul. He was eager, he says, he was eager to proclaim the gospel. He even uses a word that's a little bit of a specter of a word in our culture, a word that might rub against our independence a little bit.
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He uses the word obligation. An obligation for the responsibility that was given to him to bring the good news to those outside of the knowledge of Jesus Christ.
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And my hunch is that everybody in this room right now could come up with, in your mind, someone you know that is outside of the love of Jesus Christ, that you see almost daily, that you see regularly.
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So I hope you come this morning with a humble attitude to God's word and with an attitude of letting him speak to us, let's all plan in our hearts right now to let
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God speak truth into our hearts, correcting us where we have thought incorrectly. But more importantly, let's ask
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God to change us where we have lived incorrectly. Because we could come in here and have our thoughts changed and go out and go, well, that was an interesting endeavor, my mind has changed and mentally
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I feel like there's some things that need to change. Well, yeah, that was an interesting message. I feel like I've grown in knowledge this morning or something like that, but the real goal of every sermon that I preach, what
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I believe is the goal of encountering God's word is that we actually are indeed changed in the way we live in this next week.
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So let's open our Bibles if you're not already there. You can open that Bible journal if you've got one of those. There are,
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I think, a few more of those that are available out there, just at cost, but it just has the text of scripture and then an open page beside it so you can take notes.
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Otherwise, in your own Bible or in your device or grab the Bible that's in a seat in front of you and turn to Romans 1, verses 8 through 15.
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Romans 1, 8 through 15, we're gonna read that together. We're gonna take in God's word recast. A privilege that we have each week is to hear from God in the form of this.
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So when I'm preaching, when I'm speaking, you're not hearing from God, you're hearing my teaching from the word, but the word is what matters most.
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Get into it, study it, and let's take this on this morning. Romans 1, verses 8 through 15.
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First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you because your faith is proclaimed in all the world.
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For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his son, that without ceasing,
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I mention you always in my prayers, asking that somehow by God's will, I may now at last succeed in coming to you.
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For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you. That is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith, both yours and mine.
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I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that I have often intended to come to you, but thus far have been prevented, in order that I may reap some harvest among you, as well as among the rest of the
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Gentiles. I am under obligation, both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish.
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So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also, who are in Rome. Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you so much for your word that guides us, that directs us, that tells us some things that we need to change, some things that we need to do differently in our lives.
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But Father, most importantly, a word that reveals you, that reveals your heart, that you indeed are a mission -oriented
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God who has sent your son, and you are a sending God who sends us out into the world each week,
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Father, we ought not to think of our spiritual journey as bouncing from Sunday morning to Sunday morning, but Father, it ought to have a lot of stops throughout each and every day, in prayer to you, in rendering our service to you, in rendering the work that we offer to our employers for you, in serving our families for you, and in bearing this awesome and glorious, beautiful message of the gospel of Jesus Christ to a lost world desperately in need of you.
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Father, I thank you for that gospel. I thank you so much that you sent your son to fix the broken relationship for anyone who would come to you by faith, and many in this room would testify of the way that you have saved us.
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And so, Father, from a place of resting in your salvation, I pray that you would allow us to open our voices to praise you in song now.
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Father, that this would not just be an exercise of, yeah, we get to sing some songs right now, but at the end of the day, it would be an exercise of worship, because we see you as high and exalted, our
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Savior, our Lord, our King, our Master, who has loved us.
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And Father, from a place of being loved, I pray that we would just delight in you at this time, in Jesus' name, amen.
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I encourage you to get comfortable over the remainder of our time, but keep your Bibles open to Romans chapter one, verses eight through 15.
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If you lost your place, jump back in there so you can see the things that we're talking about are coming from God's word this morning.
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After introducing himself as a person who was owned by Jesus Christ, and introducing himself as a messenger of the gospel in our last text together, the
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Apostle Paul now continues to make a case to the church in Rome to listen to the message in the rest of his letter.
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He's basically saying, here's why I want you to listen, and here's why I want to come and visit you, and here's why
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I want to bring the good news to you. He wants them to all understand why he's writing and why he wants to visit them, and what comes out in this text is a radical commitment to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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The answer to the why is the gospel of Jesus. That's really it.
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How many of you, by the way, you would say you like it when somebody tells you that they're praying for you? How many of you like that?
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Like, it's encouraging to you, isn't it? Well, that's how he starts off, and he says first, and never gets to a second, but I think that's a first of priority.
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The first thing I want you to know about you is I'm praying for you, he says. That's the first thing that he says to them, and I think most of us are grateful to know that somebody else is holding us up, that they're coming before the
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Father on our behalf and stepping before his throne and asking or petitioning or just finding some encouragement, and I would encourage you all that a great part of community is praying for one another.
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One of our things is we want to be growing in faith, growing in community, and growing in service, and I would suggest to you, man, if you're praying for somebody, let them know.
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There's this amazing technology called texting, and some of you use it, some of you that's a new word, and text somebody and just to say during the week, hey,
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I'm praying for you, God brought you to my mind, and how many of you ever had somebody do that for you or you've done that for someone? I mean, that's just crazy encouraging when that happens, but here in our text,
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Paul takes that up a notch. He doesn't just text them, but he's sending them a letter. The closest he can get to a text in that era is sending a letter and letting somebody carry it miles and miles across the ocean to, across the sea, really, across the
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Mediterranean Sea to Rome to actually hand deliver this thing, but he begins in verse eight by encouraging the
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Roman church that he says, not only do I pray for you, I offer thanks to God for you.
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I'm grateful for you, and I don't know about you, I have a hunch, but I want to be the cause for rejoicing for others.
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I want others to be glad for the things that God is doing in my life and in me and through me, and I think that that might be even more encouraging, not to just say
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I'm praying for you, but man, I'm praising God for you. I'm thankful for you. How many of you see that, that steps it up.
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How many of you want to be like that in the lives of others around you? That's encouraging, and the thing that he is most thankful for, he goes on to declare here that the faith of the
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Roman church is proclaimed throughout all the world. He says I'm thankful because your faith, the faith of this church, which is made up of people, the faith of the
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Christians in Rome is being proclaimed all around the world. You see, Rome is the seed of a massive empire, and the reality that the church of Jesus Christ has taken root there is widespread knowledge.
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It's like word on the street in the marketplace is like, oh hey, by the way, did you hear that Christ is being glorified in Rome?
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Like of all places. To us in our day and age, by the way, the way that Rome rolled and the way that it worked, it might be like a combination of Vegas and D .C.,
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right? It might be like saying, did you hear that Christ is, the fame and the glory of Christ is growing in Vegas?
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Like you'd be like, whoa, wait a minute, Vegas? I thought what happened in Vegas stays in Vegas, right? No, what happens in Vegas, God knows, right?
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So there is a billboard that says that just on your way outside of Vegas. When we went out there as a family and visited, it was like, oh, that's a cool billboard.
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But what happens in Vegas, God knows, it said. So there you go.
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But so, I mean, you think about Rome and you think about the combination of kind of like all of the center of all debauchery and prostitution and crazy lifestyles and the political center of the time.
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And that's where he says, I'm glad, I'm thanking God that you're there.
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You're holding the rope, you're holding the faith and you're staying there in Rome as a church and you're growing and you're expanding and the world is knowing that and hearing that.
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And so Paul rejoices. Just knowing that the gospel was spreading made the apostle Paul grateful.
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He's rejoicing in that. And so he continually thanks God for their faith, even if it is, by the way,
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I want to point out, it is just a juvenile faith. The faith of Rome has not been tried yet, it's not been tested to its full extent and it will be very shortly.
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But it's a faith that needs a lot of growth, but it is indeed a faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ nonetheless.
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And so Paul is eager to travel to them, eager to help strengthen them, eager to encourage them because they are such a vital church during this time.
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But Paul goes on to clarify that as often as he prays, he mentions Rome in his prayers.
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Now there's a little bit of hyperbole in this, a little bit of, not exaggeration. Exaggeration sounds like sin, but it's an understood kind of exaggeration.
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As often, basically what you ought to understand that Paul is saying is as often as I pray, I mention Rome. And I think that's true, it's just that it's not like every single word that he ever says is
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Rome, Rome, Rome, Rome, Rome. But when he prays, he mentions Rome in his prayers. In this sense, we see a man who is near the point of obsession about spreading the gospel.
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He is so hungry and desirous of bringing the gospel wherever he goes and even just with a plan in mind for where God might take him next.
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And his goal is Spain, and he's like, maybe I could stop by Rome. My goal is to stop by Rome, encourage that church, strengthen them, and maybe they could continue to send me on towards Spain.
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We'll see that later in the book why I'm even mentioning Spain, it comes later. But he is a man that's near obsession about spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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And so in verse 10, he makes it clear that he's been leaning on God to guide him to this hub of civilization called
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Rome. You see, Rome's influence cannot be overstated during this time, and there's no question why
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Paul wanted to strengthen that church, that centrally and powerfully located church during his time.
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But Paul, in a turn of phrase, says something back in verse nine that I wanna point out. We moved on to 10, but let's go back to nine for a second and get to that real quick.
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He mentions God at the start of verse nine and has another ADD moment where he distracts himself. And oh, by the way, when
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I'm mentioning God, and then he takes a quick side note. God is my witness, he says, and basically he's saying, you don't know,
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I can't prove to you that I pray for you often, but God is my witness that I pray for you often. And by the way, the God that is my witness is the one that I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his son.
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Almost potentially throwaway passage when you're reading the scriptures, it's like, what does that add to it? And you can easily jump over that in your mind, but it's a very significant phrase that Paul uses here in his text.
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He says, God, who is my witness, the one that I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his son.
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And that turn of phrase is a concept that we need to take on and understand. It's worthy of our special attention this morning.
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Because you see, what he's in essence saying is from spirit, little s spirit, in my soul, in my immaterial part, that's where my ministry begins.
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Ministry to others begins in here first. It is an internal to external thing that Paul is saying is happening in his life.
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It is from my spirit that turns into gospel ministry. He serves God with his spirit first.
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You see, he doesn't just merely do the things of gospel ministry. And this, even as a passing concept, is very vital for us.
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It's not a main point in the text, but man, is this something that we could sink our teeth into? Ask yourself, where does the outflow of gospel ministry come from?
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And by the way, when I say gospel ministry, I'm not just talking about sharing the gospel with an unsaved family member at Thanksgiving dinner or something.
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I'm talking about gospel ministry, a ministry that might entail making coffee in the morning or all different kinds of things that really are gospel ministry when it flows from a place where you recognize that I'm unworthy, and therefore,
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I'm giving service back to my community, to my church, to others, out of having been made whole through Christ.
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That's gospel ministry. Now, certainly there is a, we're gonna get down to it here in a little bit, that actually there's a bringing the gospel that all of us are called to as well.
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But where does that kind of ministry come from? Where we can step outside of ourselves and genuinely serve one another?
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And I would say it comes from a heart that serves God with the ministry of the good news.
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It is one that is transformed and changed. And any true gospel ministry flows from a heart or a spirit that has been made new first.
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We need new hearts before we can ever engage in gospel ministry. And this is a good place to take a pause and ask ourselves, what motivates my service to others?
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Why reach out to others? Why help out in Recast Kids, or serve with the teens in the high school ministry in Gravity, or in 180, or why invite neighbors over to establish a relationship with them for the good news?
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Why help out in the food pantry? Why help out at all? And I would go so far, hear me carefully, because this is a pretty radical statement.
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I would go so far as to say that you are doing harm to your own soul if you do ministry with the sole motivation to feel good about yourself.
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If that's the reason that you're serving at the pantry is oh, it makes me feel good, I contend that you're actually doing damage to your soul.
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You see, you draw yourself further from the gospel every time you consider yourself an impressive do -gooder and pat yourself on the back.
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Every time that you do so out of selfish motives or out of just the way that it feels, that is not healthy ministry.
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I would contend that it's drawing you away from the gospel. It's drawing you to a good news that says
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I can do good things, I can fix things myself, I can take care of my community, I can,
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I can, I can, and that is counter to the good news that says you can't, but Christ can through you.
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Lean on him, lean on him. You are needy, you are needy, and because he has saved you, now you are set free to be a cause.
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Why, because Christ in you, because of Christ in you and the Holy Spirit in you, and so true ministry flows out of a lowly spirit that has been transformed by good news.
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I want you to just think in terms of an illustration. Imagine a cell phone that is a busted battery.
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I say cell phone, I was thinking about a specific device. How many of you ever had one of those old iPods that had the click wheel on it?
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Any of you have one of those? We had one of those up until just a couple of years ago, and it was busted, the battery wouldn't work, but as long as you plugged it in, it would work.
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Any of you ever have a device like that? The battery was completely unfunctional. You take, you unplug it, it dies.
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It's dead, no charge whatsoever. So we actually bought one of those docking stations, docked it in there, and put it in my daughter's room, and she could listen to music on it as she went to bed.
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So it served some purpose, but it had to be plugged into a power source. In order to work.
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So imagine a cell phone in that condition, and the cell phone could boast about all it is capable of, but without power, it doesn't really do anything of substance, does it?
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It might be a paperweight. That doesn't do much, right? But you see, that's like us.
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I mean, you think about that, and the cell phone would be like us, and the battery is our heart, and the power source is
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Christ, and we must be plugged in to function. We must be plugged in to do anything that is of benefit to those around us.
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When we're plugged in to the gospel through, or into Christ through the gospel, we are remade into powerful and useful ministers for his glory and for his kingdom.
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The bottom line, true ministry flows from an internal heart transformation. And that heart transformation in Paul made him long to go to Rome with the impact of the gospel.
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To grow the impact of the gospel. Paul had planned to go to Rome often. It was on his heart, it was on his mind.
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He wanted to bring the good news to that church and to that place, but God had prevented him, he says.
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And I think it's in part, many scholars believe that in light of Paul's extremely busy missionary endeavors in the eastern part of the
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Roman Empire that he was so busy with those churches, and his longing was to get to the seat, the center of the
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Roman Empire, but he was so busy with churches on the eastern side that he had planted that that's probably what God used to prevent him from going there for a long period of time.
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When in verses 11 and 12, he's clear that he hoped to visit them, and he's clear that he had one primary intention in visiting them.
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What did he wanna accomplish among them? Mutual encouragement. He believed that the result of his visit to this church in Rome would be an encouragement to their faith and to his.
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And this, I suggest to you from an apostle called to bring the gospel to others, he's demonstrating a humility that's worth our consideration in this.
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You see, Paul didn't wanna come and lord it over the church of Rome as an egghead coming in with all authority and all knowledge and all wisdom, and boy, will you guys be blessed if I show up.
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That's not his attitude, that's not his heart. His heart is very direct. I want to come, and I certainly have a spiritual gift that I would like to bring to you, and that spiritual gift is called mutual encouragement.
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Your encouragement and mine, and I think we both will grow as we come. And think about your attitude in coming to church.
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Think about your attitude on Sunday morning as you're on your way into this place or as you're on your way to community group.
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Do you have an attitude of mutual encouragement centered around the body of Christ like Paul did? Do you have a hunger and a desire to both be used and to also be encouraged?
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I think we can fall off of either side of the table on this one. I go to church because I get something out of it.
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Or I go to church because I've got something to give because I'm awesome. Do you see how you could fall off of either side of the table on that?
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And church is a mutual thing. It's a thing where you have something to provide to the person sitting next to you, and the person sitting next to you has something to provide to you as well.
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And we need to be humble in our reception and humble in our giving. Do you understand that? And all of that for the purpose of mutual encouragement.
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And that's what Paul, that's what's driving him. He's saying, I think I've got something to offer you. And I know you've got something to offer me.
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So I'm just longing to get together with you, hang out with you, spend some time with you, encourage you, build you up, let you encourage me and build me up and send me on my way.
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And so we see that in verses 11 and 12. But when it comes to bringing the good news of salvation,
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I ask yourself, I think we all need to ask ourselves this, would you call yourself eager to share the gospel of Jesus Christ?
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Because that's what this eagerness all comes down to. That is the thing that Paul is going to bring to them for mutual encouragement.
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What does he see that he has to offer to them? The gospel. What is it that he hopes to receive from them?
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Encouragement in the gospel. I'm convinced that Paul was just gospel -saturated because that is the only thing that we have to offer to one another in the church.
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The good news that we are busted -up sinners saved by a glorious salvation by Jesus Christ and his sacrifice for us.
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And so are you eager to share that? Ask yourself that. Am I eager to share the gospel with others around me?
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Further, do you have an appetite for the harvest that the gospel can bring? Third, do you consider yourself under obligation to represent your
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Lord and Master to others? That's a strong word, that's a heavy word. How many of you, like honestly, just being honest, your heart just kind of bristles a little bit at the word obligation.
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I'm alone? Go ahead and raise your hand if, I mean, I think some of us, the word obligation is not necessarily a great word for certain personalities.
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But I want you to consider the three things from the remainder of this text that Paul points out as his motivation for gospel ministry.
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And that's gonna be kind of the remainder of our text is these three things that I would encourage all of us to take on. We're gonna walk through kind of application for it as well.
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But let me just set the stage here. In verse 13, he says his nearly obsessive longing to bring the gospel to them has been fueled by a hunger for harvest among them.
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He believes there's gonna be a harvest when the gospel is brought. The second thing in verse 14, he says his longing has been fueled by an obligation that he is under to the
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Gentiles. Obligation is the second thing. The third thing in verse 15, he says he is compelled by an eagerness to preach the gospel in Rome.
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There's an eagerness about him that he wants to share with others and that motivates him and that he wants to, in turn, motivate others with.
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So let's consider these three motivations in the life of Paul for sharing the good news and consider where our lives fall in regard to these three things that motivated the apostle
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Paul in his gospel ministry. And let me remind you to let God gently draw you into any encouragement or correction that he may have for you this morning.
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Maybe there's points of encouragement that the Holy Spirit would bring to you. Maybe there's points of correction or rebuke that the
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Holy Spirit has for you today. But the first thing, let's look at the first thing together. The first thing that motivated him, first, he is eager for a harvest in verse 13.
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And it's interesting in that this is written to a church. Okay, who's he writing this to?
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A church. You see, the proclamation of the gospel brings about a harvest inside the church as well as outside of the church.
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Many of us have this false dichotomy in our mind that gospel is for them out there, but we handle the meatier things in here.
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We've got heavier stuff in here, but out there, you know, just the gospel, just the beginner stuff.
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That's a terrible thought. That is not at all what scripture indicates. That's not at all how Paul rolled.
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The gospel is the meat. It is the everything about how we live and how we move and how we roll together in community.
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You see, the proclamation of the gospel brings about a harvest within the church as well as outside. And at the end of verse 13,
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Paul declares that he wanted to come to them, and he says, quote, in order to reap some harvest among you.
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The Greek phrase there doesn't mean I wanted to come use your church as a base of operation so that I can go reach out to the lost in Rome.
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I wanted to see a harvest inside the church. I wanted to come there and see God provide gifts and fruit and growth within the body of Christ.
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So he says, I want to see some harvest among you, the church, and then he goes on to say, as well as among the rest of the
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Gentiles. So he says, I want to see harvest and fruit in the church as well as outside of the church.
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You see, folks, we have one mission, and that mission is the same inside these four walls as it is outside of these four walls, and that is to share the gospel with others, to proclaim the good news that we are all broken and busted and we need a savior, and then that lives out its life in the life of the church in powerful ways.
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How can anybody demand their way in a church and be embracing the gospel of Jesus Christ simultaneously?
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Not possible. Do you hear that? It informs the life of the community of the church as we come closer and we continue to proclaim the good news to one another.
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Has an impact inside the church as well as outside the church. See, the good news that God sent his son
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Jesus to die for helpless sinners like us is the main event. It is the message that the church has to offer, and that is why it's so terrible when other messages get mixed into the simple gospel.
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It isn't Jesus plus church attendance equals salvation. It isn't the gospel plus tithing equals salvation.
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It is faith in Jesus crucified and raised as savior and Lord. That is salvation.
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It is putting our trust in him and him alone. See, the reason that the church benefits from the gospel being proclaimed is that it results in a harvest of true ministry.
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How will Recast grow in 2019? What will really be the spark plug?
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What will push us forward? What will help us to grow in faith, grow in community, and grow in service? How will we be stronger at this time next year than we are right now?
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It will be the humility. It will be embracing, trusting, and believing by humility that the gospel of Jesus Christ, that humility that it brings, and that will be what keeps us from getting stuck on ourselves, which stops so many of us from growing.
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It will be the trust that we are okay in Christ that will set us free from trying to save ourselves and instead set us free and set us loose to serve others.
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Here and out there as well. See, Paul had a deep hunger for a harvest inside the church as well as outside of the church.
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We want people at Recast to be growing in faith. And whether someone comes here not knowing who
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Jesus Christ is and just kind of questioning and trying to figure that out, or whether they come here with a seminary degree,
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I believe that the good news of Jesus has the power to grow each and every one of us in our faith and trust in God.
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Has enough for all of us. Wherever you're at in your journey, wherever you're at in your spiritual understanding, you have some way to grow through the gospel.
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So I want us all to ask ourselves, do we trust the gospel is enough? Do you believe that that's enough?
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See, God forbid that we would buy into the notion that we ought to graduate beyond the gospel to deeper and meatier things.
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The harvest of faith here at Recast and the harvest in your life cannot grow past your commitment to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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You'll never grow beyond how firmly you understand and grasp the gospel. So he's motivated by a harvest.
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The second thing he was motivated by, he tells us, is an obligation. An obligation. Paul identified that obligation motivated him to gospel ministry.
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He already told us, by the way, you kind of wonder like the terminology, is this a pretty strong word, a pretty heavily freighted word, obligation?
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I mean, are we going back to the law again, Paul? Are we going back to rules and regulations? Is this a thou shalt share the gospel with thy neighbor?
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Is that where we're going with this? I just want to point out that he's already made clear in our last sermon last week that he was a slave.
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He used the word slave to Jesus Christ. And so the phraseology of obligation is not necessarily a surprising word as he considered
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Jesus Christ his master, the one who called the shots, the one who makes the rules, the one who guides him and directs him in every conversation, in every place, in where he goes, in how he gets there.
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But I believe that the word itself grates on some of our ears, as we pointed out earlier. Some of you don't want to be owned by anyone.
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You don't want to owe anyone anything. And you pride yourself in being a self -made person who can call your own shots and everything's turned out fine in life so far.
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Paul had no reservations about considering himself to be a man under obligation.
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You see, I don't know about you and I don't know how you think of it, but I owe someone something. I do.
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Do you? I owe someone something. And his name is Jesus Christ. And I owe him my allegiance.
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But gladly, gladly because he loves me and he died for me.
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He proved himself trustworthy. He proved himself loving and kind. Now I have no problem saying
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I'm under obligation to serve my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I truly believe that wherever the gospel is preached and where it is truly believed, a humility develops there.
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Somebody who comes to me and says, nobody gonna own me, nobody gonna tell me what to do. Where's the gospel in your life, brother?
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Where's the gospel in your life, sister? Where are you at? Because if the gospel is really taking root in your life, you won't wrestle as much with this word anymore.
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You won't struggle with it because you will have been preaching to yourself and listening to the preaching of the good news.
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I'm loved. I'm set free. I'm no longer a slave to sin, but I'm a slave to Christ and I tell you what, can you compare those two masters?
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Compare what it means to be a slave to sin that leads to death compared to what it means to be a slave to Christ that leads to eternal life and an eternal kingdom forever and ever and ever with his forgiveness and his love and his joy.
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You can't compare those two. You can't contrast them enough. So he is calling each and every one of us to embrace this word obligation today because it is the gospel that tells us we were incapable of saving ourselves and that leads us to this humility and it further informs us that we were purchased by the blood of Jesus Christ.
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We are owned. When we preach the gospel, when we hear the gospel, when we remember the gospel, we must remember that we were bought and that means we are owned.
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And so the word obligation ought not to cause us to bristle when we consider who it is that has placed us under this obligation, our
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Savior who loves us, our Savior who came to suffer for us, our Savior who will come back and bring us to eternity.
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He is the one who is our master. But the obligation given to Paul by Jesus is he goes on to say to the
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Greeks and the barbarians, to the wise and to the foolish. He gives us two sets of people, the
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Greeks and barbarians, one set, wise and foolish, another set. The first two words cover both the civilized and the civilized and cultured
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Greek -speaking world and the various non -Jewish tribes of people in the known world who did not know
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Greek or know Greek well. And actually the word barbarian comes from onomatopoeia.
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Anybody remember that from English class? Can you define it? Probably not many of you. It's where the word sounds like, it sounds like something.
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And to the Greek ear, every foreigner was like bar, bar, bar, bar. That's what it sounded like to them so they'd mock them with that phrase and that became barbarian.
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And so it's actually just the word for people we don't really understand that speak funny. Okay, so that's the word that they're getting there.
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The cultured, great -speaking Greek people and then the foreigners who couldn't quite speak it very well and they said,
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I'm gonna share the gospel. I'm under obligation to share the gospel with every Gentile I see. I don't care whether they speak
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Greek well or not. I'm gonna share the gospel with anyone who will listen and pay attention. And so he has those two groups of people there that he is sharing the gospel with.
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The second set of words shows that Paul was compelled by the Lord to spread the word indiscriminately without regard for how the gospel would receive.
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To the wise and to the foolish. Well, some of us might bristle a little bit at the notion that we are called to share the gospel with foolish people, right?
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How many of you just kind of at a glance that sounds like that's a recipe for trouble? Is that a recipe for trouble in your workplace?
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Is that a recipe for trouble in your neighborhood? Grab a fool and share the gospel with him. Does that sound like danger?
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Paul says, I'm under obligation to share regardless of whether the person is receptive or not. I don't get to decide that and I wanna confess to you guys that I find myself,
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I don't know if you're in the same camp as me, I find myself assessing the receptivity of people before I've ever opened my mouth.
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Anybody with me on that? You're like, I don't think they're gonna respond very well to the gospel, so I think
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I'm gonna keep my mouth shut on this one. I can quickly convince myself that I don't really need to share the gospel with them, they're just gonna respond in a foolish way anyways, and so I dismiss that opportunity.
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But what does it communicate to you? Think about this. What does it communicate to you that Paul was compelled to share the good news with the foolish?
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Or maybe even worse, with the wise? I'm convinced that Paul suffered more than you and I do, and we look at scripture and we go, well, it kinda talks about persecution in there, but not me, and I've even talked with people at times, you know,
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I was going through 1 Peter, I preached a series through 1 Peter, you can jump online and listen to that, but preaching through 1
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Peter all about the suffering that that early church was going through, and we look at it and there's an expectation of suffering, and then we gotta go, how many of you suffered this week for the cause of Christ?
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There's not many of us. Maybe none of us. So we go, what's the difference? What am
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I doing wrong? And I've had conversations with people kinda going, I feel a little guilty that I don't suffer more, like, should I be suffering more?
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But I believe that Paul did indeed suffer, in part because he was indiscriminate in this obligation to share.
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He shared with the wise, who knew better than him, and he shared with fools who obviously knew better than him.
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You get it, right? He shared with everybody. And some of you,
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I would suggest, there's at least one or two of you, but I'll go ahead and share it for everybody. Some of you are playing at the edges of a loophole right now while I'm preaching.
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Am I under the same obligation as the Apostle Paul? Certainly not, I mean, he was called,
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Jesus appeared to him on the Damascus Road in bright light and said, you will be my apostle to the
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Gentiles. Certainly we're not that called, right? I mean,
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Don, don't sling the word obligation too much here. Paul was certainly under obligation, but am
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I? Am I obliged? Am I required? Is this a requisite on my life that I must share the gospel with those around me?
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Well, I'm not a big Bible tour preacher, and so I'm not gonna have you turn to a bunch of passages right now to prove my point from Scripture, but if you doubt what
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I'm saying, I'd love to just privately give you a tour of the many, many, many, many, many passages in the
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New Testament that indicate that this call to share the good news did not rest solely on the shoulders of the apostles, but was passed on to the church from the apostles time and time and time again.
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As a matter of fact, just two, I mean, they have books of the Bible written after them, but they were an example of people who this gospel charge was passed on to.
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Titus and Timothy stand out as two examples of people who encountered the apostle Paul, and Paul passed the torch onto them to be ambassadors as well.
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So everyone who comes into a saving relationship with Jesus comes under this obligation to the lost.
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It looks different in our context. It looks different in your sphere of influence than it does in mine, but all of us called, all of us obliged to bring the good news.
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We are invited into his kingdom and become his ambassadors to a lost world at that invitation to come in contact with the king, to come under his service.
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So when is the last time you considered yourself obligated to bring the good news into your sphere of influence?
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This text, by the way, isn't here to make you feel bad about yourself. It's not a two -by -four to club you upside the head. How many of you ever walked away from a sermon about evangelism and felt guilty, okay?
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Some of us. I know I did a lot as a child, and when I was younger, I just always, I'd beat myself up over this kind of thing, or the biggest thing was
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Bible reading. Every time the pastor would talk about Bible reading, I was like, oh, I suck, I'm terrible, and I didn't change a whole lot.
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I'd just feel bad about myself, but just being honest. I am preaching this because Romans says it.
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We actually need it, and it is putting the force of our king behind our commission.
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Do you hear that? It is putting the force of our king, the one that we say we love, the one we say we serve, the one we say we will follow you anywhere, except don't ask me to share the gospel with that co -worker.
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Don't ask me to engage that neighbor. There's a little bit of guilt in this.
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There's a little bit of feeling in this. He has sent us out, though, to bring the truth and love to a dying world, and over the coming chapters, we will see
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Paul open wide the throttle to even a stronger motivation. Here, he's playing around at the edges of motivating us to share our faith, but you talk about robust motivation when he's gonna spend the next three chapters parsing the wrath of God against the lost world, the world that rejects him, the world that has not yet heard, the world that is without a savior.
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Some who are just waiting for us to open our mouths. Paul was motivated by a harvest.
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He was motivated by obligation. And lastly, we see he's motivated by eagerness, even to share eagerness,
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I would say. You see, technically, eagerness describes, it's a descriptive word for his motivation, and it might not look like a motivation right off the bat, but it's important to understand that Paul has seen the gospel at work on his missionary journeys.
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He's seen the gospel at work. He is a man who comes to us with significant gospel ministry experience, and so his eagerness should be informative to us.
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Do you understand what I'm saying? He's a man who's experienced, and he's excited about it. He's eager for it, because he's seen it work in the past, so he comes recommending it to us, church, and it comes highly recommended.
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It comes from a man who's got plenty of experience, and then he says, and I'm eager, and we ought to be eager, too, because we're watching him.
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It's kind of like, think in terms like a friend taking you to their favorite restaurant, and they're hyping it up, and they're talking it up.
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Why? Because they've been there. They've had the food. They loved it. They thought it was delicious, and they're saying, you know what?
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I am so eager for you to experience this, too. I'm eager for you to engage in this gospel ministry.
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I'm eager for you to see the glory of God, and what he could do here in Matawan, or in your community, in your neighborhood, or among your sphere of influence, among your friends, among your coworkers.
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I'm eager to see what he's gonna do, because I've seen it happen in other communities.
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I saw it happen in the eastern half of the Roman Empire, and I'm eager to see it take over the center, too, he says.
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Do you see that? Eagerness can be contagious, and all the more by those who have already been there and found it amazing.
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I'm convinced that Paul desires to have his eagerness, his passion, his near obsession about proclaiming the gospel to be contagious among others.
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This entire text has been about his intense eagerness to come to Rome with the gospel, but this letter is the best he can muster at this time, the best that he can bring to them, and so he's basically saying this gospel, in this message,
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I'm gonna spell it out here for you, I still have hopes of coming and sharing it with you personally, but he makes a strong case for the power of the gospel that he's gonna continue to share throughout the remainder of this long letter.
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And my hope and prayer this week is that even a fraction of the passion of Paul for the good news for the gospel will rub off on us here at Recast.
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He trusted the gospel to bring about a harvest in the church as well as outside the church. He saw it as a part of his service to Christ to proclaim the gospel to anyone who would hear, and he sought to pass along that eagerness to others.
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So let me encourage all of us to assess our own callings to trust the gospel as the way that God is changing the world.
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The gospel is the only thing we have that can produce a harvest. The gospel is the responsibility of everyone who belongs to Christ.
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It's obligation in gospel ministries to be engaged in with eager anticipation of the fruit it will return, even for each one of us passing along that eagerness to others.
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The good news, we've talked about it, we've talked around the edges of it, but what is the good news? The good news is this, that God broke into our hopeless situation with his own son.
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He came into history, he bled his own blood for us, gave up his body to be whipped and broken for us, and as gruesome as that is, it is good news because his love is expressed and his forgiveness is given in this act of substitution, him taking the just penalty and wrath of the
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Father on himself in our place. What we deserved, he endured for us.
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He is the sinless son of God dying for our sins, and that is what we remember as we come to communion this morning.
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Jesus told his followers to take bread and wine as symbols of his body and his blood, and so we're gonna take a cracker and a cup of juice, and we do that each week to bring us back to the center at the start of our week, to bring us back to the gospel.
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Recast, one of the reasons we do this every week, and we've done it every week from the beginning, is to bring us back each service to the gospel.
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We are modeling, we are demonstrating it as we take the cracker to remember his body broken for us, as we take the cup of juice to remember his blood shed for us.
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We are proclaiming the gospel to ourselves and to everyone around us who watches those lines filter to the back, everyone proclaiming
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I am a needy sinner who Christ died for, plain and simple.
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Church, we need this reminder of the gospel. We are not our own, we are a people under obligation, purchased by the precious blood of our savior
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Jesus Christ. We've been purchased from the slave market of sin and enlisted in the most awesome mission ever begun.
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So do you know your marching orders? Share this gospel message to the Greeks and barbarians in your own neighborhoods.
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Declare the love of Jesus among the wise and the foolish at your kids' basketball games and in your workplace.
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Wherever God takes you this week, be his man or be his woman to bring the beautiful hope of his love expressed through his son.
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God is calling us in the book of Romans to be Jesus people, which means that we will also be gospel people.
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Let's pray. Father, I pray that you would help us in our weakness, we're gonna look next week at not being ashamed of this gospel, a totally tied -in message with this, but one that I think is worthy of mention now because the fact of the matter is many of us might walk away from here feeling some sense of guilt, feeling some sense of, boy,
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I don't do that, and recognizing what the word obligation implies for us.
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And so, Father, I pray that you would motivate us by your love, your love for us that will not give us more than we can handle.
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I pray that you would motivate us with gentleness and genuine love for those around us, that there would be no shred of arrogance that creeps into our relationships with those that are on the outside, but,
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Father, that there would only be love and deep concern to bring your amazing love to them.
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Father, I thank you for the opportunity we have to reflect on the gospel that has saved us, even in communion, as we take the bread, have the cracker to remember his body broken for us, and the juice to reflect on his blood shed for us.
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Father, I pray that this would be a meaningful time of reflection, even for us, that there would be a harvest that would be reaped in this church, that there would be growth because the gospel is proclaimed throughout the
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Book of Romans, and that that might expand and overflow and bubble out to this community and to the places we live and to our neighborhoods and Portage and Pawpaw and Lawton and Matawan and wherever people are coming in from,
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Father, I pray that you would be having a radical transforming power through the gospel, and I pray that you would help us to cling to the gospel, to preach the gospel to ourselves, to trust it, to believe it, and to make it our only message that we have to offer, in Jesus' name, amen.