Sunday Sermon: Not Ashamed of the Gospel (Romans 1:16)

You're listening to the preaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature teaching through a New Testament book, an Old Testament book on Thursday, and our Q &A on Friday.

Each Sunday we are pleased to present our sermon series. Here is Pastor Gabe.

Romans 1:16–20 in Context

In honor of the word of the King, would you please stand? Again, as I read again, Romans 1, 16, and to keep things through context, I'm going to read through verse 20. Hear the word of the Lord. For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith. As it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made.

So they are without excuse. You may be seated as we pray. Heavenly Father, as we come into this passage today, this very simple verse through which Paul declares that he is unashamed of the gospel, knowing that it is the power of God for salvation to all who believe.

I pray, Lord, that we are reminded of the gospel and we come to an even deeper understanding today of its power, not just to save us who first heard it and believed and have come to faith in Jesus Christ, but even to sanctify us through the same gospel that we heard that has justified us.

We are being sanctified through this same gospel message as well. Being reminded continually of the God who saves, who sent his son Jesus into this world to be the propitiation for our sins. We have sung about it in our songs this morning.

We think about it as we celebrate the holiday season, the incarnation of the son of God to mankind to take away the sin of the world. And so, Lord, we are reminded even of these gospel points as we come to this today.

And may it revive our hearts, renew our strength to trust in you and in your word. It is in Jesus' name that we pray, amen. A few years back, there was a Christian rapper who managed to become, at the time, the best-selling independent artist in the country.

He had the best-selling independent album and number eight overall on the Billboard Top 200, which is quite a feat for anybody, let alone for a Christian independent artist. He was an artist as a part of a label that was called 116.

And this was a collection of Christian rappers who took their name from Romans 116, 116. I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to all who believe. From 2008 to 2022, they toured the country and it was called the Unashamed Tour.

Well, this rapper had the opportunity to perform on Fox 5 New York wearing his 116 hat. Before performing his latest chart-topping song, one of the hosts touched his hat and said, 116, what does that mean?

And the rapper said, well, that's my team. And the other host said, your team? Well, what is that? Explain that. The rapper kind of swayed back and forth, laughed nervously, and he said, you know, my team.

There he was on live television with a hat based on a verse that said, I am not ashamed of the gospel. And it kind of sounded like he was a little ashamed of the gospel. And it broke my heart when I watched it, and I will admit that I was appalled by the fact that he couldn't, at the very least, even quote the verse.

But it also put the fear of God in me, seeing that. Because how many of us have worn clothing with something Christian on it, or we have hitched our wagon to some sort of Christian fad, and maybe we thought we were brave or bold for wearing this out in public, or being a part of this Christian trend.

But if you were put in the position to have to explain your faith and what the gospel is, would you stammer nervously, too? No one's holding a gun to your head. No one's threatening to kill you. If you share the gospel, you just find it awkward.

Or maybe you're afraid of what people will think of you or say about you if you were to talk about Jesus. Maybe you begin to feel like Peter, who denied Jesus. It is, of course, a weakness of our flesh.

What must we do to strengthen ourselves so that when the time comes, we may be able to stand firm and say that I am not ashamed of the gospel? As we come into this portion of these two verses this morning, I'm going to look at three things.

First of all, I want to review the context in which this statement sits. So we're not just isolating Romans 1 16 out by itself, but we're understanding what Paul means when he says it, even here in this letter.

Number two, let's revive our hearts, being reminded of what the gospel is, not just in a broad biblical sense, but we'll even consider it in the context of Romans itself. What does Paul mean when he says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel, and what is the gospel that he is about to share?

And then thirdly, let's reveal some weak areas, observing how Christians today might demonstrate shame for the gospel. And in that, we'll also find application for how we can guard ourselves from falling into those same kinds of traps or those same kinds of shames.

So once again, we're going to review, we will revive. And through his word, we'll reveal. So first of all, let's do a little bit of review of what we've read so far in Romans, and even talking about our overview of this book so that we can see kind of where we are going from here.

When Paul says in verse 16, I am not ashamed of the gospel, why does that statement sit right here the way that it does? Now, remember, as I said to you many, many times, our chapter and verse markers in the Bible are not divinely inspired.

Paul was not inspired to write, okay, verse 16, I am not ashamed of the gospel. It was hundreds of years later that these chapters and verses were added in this way. And especially, we don't get these neat little paragraphs in the original Greek with these headings that if you're reading from the English Standard Version, you'll notice 16 and 17 are set by themselves, and the heading over it says that the righteous or the just shall live by faith.

So this is a continuous letter that would be read before the congregation of the church in Rome. So when you get to verse 16, what is Paul saying when he says, I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation.

Remember what we just looked at last week, Paul's desire and his expression to come to.

Rome.

He wants to come to what is basically the capital city of the world at that time. The largest empire on earth, and Paul wants to come there and share the gospel with them. And he says to them, I've been delayed in coming to you.

This church that has existed for about 25 years up to this point, and they've not yet had an apostle come and teach them. Paul says, God is my witness. I've wanted to come to you, but I've been prevented from coming to you.

But it seems like now everything's starting to line up just right that I may come to you and I may be an encouragement to you and you may be an encouragement to me. And remember, we've also considered the persecution that these Christians have been under sharing the gospel in their own context there in Rome.

And yet Paul says to them, I'm not concerned about that, whatever persecution I may face in coming to you, for I'm going to come to you and I'm going to share the gospel. And we know kind of as the story unfolds exactly how Paul got there, right?

He was arrested in Jerusalem for sharing the gospel. He was put in chains. He was brought to court and he made an appeal to Caesar so that he might be taken to Rome and be able to make his appeal before the emperor himself.

And so he gets on a Roman pleasure cruise to Rome. That wasn't the way it was actually. He was bound in chains and put on a ship as a criminal. Some of his friends were still along with him, even though he was treated as a criminal.

But he had Roman guard that was protecting him because the Jews were trying to kill him because he was proclaiming Christ as Lord. And so Paul ends up on this ship going to Rome, is shipwrecked on the way there.

And yet he says to the people that are on the ship, God is telling me that we're going to be shipwrecked, but do not doubt and continue to trust and God is going to deliver us to our place of refuge. They come to the island of Malta and the people that live there on the island, Paul even ministers to and witnesses to them.

They're shipwrecked on this island and Paul's sharing the gospel with people. And while he's gathering sticks to throw into a fire, a serpent jumps out and bites him.

On the hand.

This is all kind of in this route to getting to Rome, right? And I remember reading that part of the story in Acts and as I'm going through all of this, I remember it making me laugh and just going, see, that would be the point where I would go, God, come on.

I'm trying to share the gospel here and all of these different bad things keep happening. Now a snake is biting me on the hand. And as the people see this viper bite on the apostle Paul, they think, oh, this man is.

Done in.

And what do these pagan Romans think about such things? Well, if a man is going to keep getting afflicted like this, shipwrecks, bound in chains, getting bit with snakes, somebody really doesn't like this guy.

They think the gods are against him. But yet what does Paul do? He shakes the serpent off his hand right into the fire. And then they're amazed that it doesn't afflict him at all. He's perfectly fine because of the power of Christ that heals him.

And there are people on the island that are even healed through the apostle Paul's ministry and his sharing of the gospel there. And so then Paul eventually does make it to Rome. He's placed under house arrest and he's there for a couple of years.

People could come and see him, but he couldn't go anywhere. He's chained to a Praetorian guard. We know from what is said to the letter in Philippians that Paul says, what's happened to me is actually served toward the sharing of the gospel.

The whole Praetorian guard are talking about it. These guys are chained to me and they have to listen to me share the gospel. And so some of them are getting saved as a result of this whole thing. So this is what God had in mind for Paul in coming to Rome and sharing the gospel.

And Paul, before getting to that point, has written this letter to these Christians and has said to them, I am not ashamed. I'm not worried. I am not concerned about what they will do to me because I know that the gospel is the power of God for salvation.

And as we'll see later on coming into Romans 8, if God is for us, what can man do to us? We are more than conquerors through him who loved us. And these very things being on the apostle's mind as he writes this letter to this church and gives them assurance of his arrival.

What if Paul doesn't want to come because he hears about us being persecuted? The stuff that we're under while we're here in Rome, Paul gives them this assurance. I'm not ashamed. I'm not ashamed of the gospel.

I want to come and share it with you and be an encouragement to you and you an encouragement to me that we may be reminded together that the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.

Now as I've said to you from the very introduction of this letter, that these two verses here, 16 and 17, even serve as the thesis statement of this letter. Because what Paul is going to share from here on is going to be the gospel.

It's the entire book of Romans and not just the gospel, but even the implications of this.

Gospel.

How now shall we live in light of the gospel that we have heard proclaimed? Now I'm going to put a pin in that one because I'm going to come back to in just a moment that gospel that Paul shares in the book of Romans.

We've done this before. Kind of did like a Romans road sort of summary as it's called, but I'll come back to that here in a moment. This is where we see this verse sitting in context as Paul makes this declaration that I am not ashamed of the gospel.

And next we want to understand exactly what the gospel is itself. So this has been our review with regards to this verse and where it sits at the beginning of this letter. Next, let's have our hearts revived by reminder of the gospel itself.

What is the gospel? We revive our hearts with reminders of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and this is not simply going to be a reminder of what the whole Bible says regarding the gospel. We also want to pay special attention to the way that Paul lays out the gospel here in.

Romans.

What is it that we have coming up and how does Paul explain the gospel in this letter? But first, an understanding of the word itself. What is the gospel? In Greek, it's Evangelion, and that just very simply means good news.

That's your definition of the gospel. Your two word definition of the gospel is that it is the good news. The good news about what? It is the good news of Jesus Christ. In fact, if you want to get a one word summary of the gospel, the one word summary is just simply Jesus.

Our one word summary of the gospel is Jesus. Knowing the Son of God, by faith in Him, we have come to know God Himself and the forgiveness of our sins and fellowship and reconciliation with God. One of the most common one verse summaries of the gospel that we like to reference is John 3 .16.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life. A couple of years ago, Becky and I had the opportunity to go to Alaska. That's quite different from Arizona.

But while we were up there, there was a preacher that had preceded us there and he went up into areas that were like beyond where we got to, way up there in the north where nobody lives or few people live.

A size of a church up in that area might be 20 or 30 people. That would be a mega church up there in that location of the northern portions of Alaska. And this particular preacher that I had heard about was preaching kind of a series of revivals up there in some of those churches in which like ice truckers would come.

So these guys, burly men that risked their lives to drive their product across ice would these church services and this one particular really big gruff trucker guy comes into this service and he is listening to the preacher night after night share the gospel.

And as big and as rough as this guy looked, yet he had this expression on his face of great sorrow and sadness. And every night that went by as this preacher preached, he never looked any more happy the next night than he had looked before.

And so the preacher singled him out after one night of preaching and came up to him and said, sir, I just want to ask why you seem so sad. Is there something I can pray for you about? Is there a way that I can encourage you?

And he said to this preacher, I've been listening to you preach night after night after night and I still don't get it. And the more I listen to you preach and the more I listen to you share the gospel and the less I understand it, the more sad it makes me.

I want to believe, I want to know God and forgiveness of my sins in Jesus Christ, but I just don't get it. And so this preacher sat down with him and he had him open a Bible and he's sitting there with these big burly hands that practically covered the pages of the Bible that was sitting.

In his lap.

And he said, just read John 3 16 for me, read that. And they read it over and over and over again. And the preacher tried to explain it to him and give it more context to God.

So love the world.

He gave his only begotten son, but the trucker just wasn't getting it. It wasn't getting into his mind and into his heart. And he did this for more than one night. The trucker would come back, he would go through various verses with him and would occasionally come back to John 3 16 again.

And finally, on the very last night of the preaching, while that preacher was there, the trucker is sitting there with the book in his hands and he says, okay, I'll read it one last time and I'll pray and ask that God would reveal these things to me and that I would understand them.

As the truckers there with the Bible open in front of him, he reads it again for God so loved the world and tears filled his eyes and started streaming down his burly face into his dirty beard and his hands begin to tremble.

And he looked at the preacher next to him and he says, Oh, Oh, I've got it.

I've got it. I've got it. He loves me. He loves me. He loves me.

And the preacher is kind of confused. And he's like, well, explain to me what it is that you mean? What is it that you've got? He's like, are you kidding me?

Have you ever read this verse before?

And finally, the power of God working in his heart to understand I'm a sinner in need of a savior and Christ is that savior and whosoever believes in him will not perish under the wrath and judgment of God that we all deserve because of our sin.

But we will have everlasting life. That's why we love John 3 16. That's why we keep coming back to that verse and using that one over and over to share an understanding of the gospel with others. There are many other verses that we could come to.

Acts 2 21 whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. First Corinthians 15 three through four. This is the gospel simplified the way that Paul would preach it. For I delivered to you as a first importance what I also received that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.

Ephesians 2 8 and 9 for by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God not a result of works so that no one may boast. First Peter 2 24 he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

By his wounds you have been healed. Revelation 11 15 the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ and he shall reign forever and ever even knowing Christ reigns is good news.

And these are our short one verse summaries of the gospel that we might reference. That's the short version actually of the gospel. What would be the long version of the gospel. The long version is this right here.

The whole Bible is the gospel all 750 plus thousand words from Genesis 1 to the maps. If you have read the entire Bible you have read God's declaration of the gospel. And incidentally here I've given you the two best Sunday school answers that you can give.

What's the answer. Jesus. What's the answer. The Bible.

OK.

Right.

Whenever the teacher asks you a question if you're giving one of those two answers and you're probably giving the right answer to the question. So that's what we have with regarding the gospel. The answer is Jesus.

The answer is his very word. When we read the Bible from beginning to end we read the story of how God created everything from the beginning to be good and perfect. Even in Genesis 1 he looks at it and he says that it is very good.

He creates mankind in his image man Adam and from from Adam takes a rib and fashions woman and brings the two of them together tells them to be fruitful and multiply gives them a command a command that's given first to the man which he then guides his wife in an understanding of the instruction of the Lord.

You may eat of any tree that is in the garden but you may not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil which is in the midst of the garden because in the day that you eat of it you will surely die.

So in this covenant that God has made with man if you do what I tell you you'll live. But if you disobey what I tell you you will die. That is the law of God from the very beginning. The covenant that God makes with man and of course we know that Adam failed in that.

The woman was tempted by the serpent to eat the fruit that God told them not to eat. She takes of the fruit gives it to Adam who is with her and he eats and their eyes are open and they realize they are naked and they are filled with shame and they try to hide from God and when God confronts them he curses man and all of creation and so that everything is under a curse.

And exactly what God said would happen because of your sin is exactly what happened in the.

World.

Death came into the picture now because of man's rebellion against God. All things were subjected to futility as we'll read about in Romans chapter 8. The curse that God put all of creation under because of mankind's sin against God.

Why are things hard for you today? Why were you in pain when you woke up this morning? Why do you find it difficult to find meaning and purpose in anything that you do? Why is it that your work never fully seems to satisfy?

Why can you buy the latest gadget and it makes you happy for a few hours but suddenly you're unsatisfied with it and you need to go buy the latest model in order to feel that feeling of elation again?

Why is it do you find yourself addicted to substances and you will try the substance once and it gives you this feeling of elation but you come back to it the second time it doesn't quite have that feeling that it had the first time?

And so you take more and more of it to get a better feeling or get that buzz or that high that you got the first time that you took it. Why is it the stuff that you are so committed to in your life, even your hobbies or your friends or other things, why is it that they will seem to even disappoint you or let you.

Down?

Nothing ever seems to make sense. And the answer to that question is sin. Sin is the reason why none of this stuff ever seems to satisfy. And all things have been subjected to this corruption and everything is under this.

And it's our sin that's made it this way. My friends, sin is the very reason why we die. Mankind's sin, one man's sin, sent all of the universe into chaos. That's how serious sin is. That's how holy God is and how unholy we are.

God expected of that first man holy and righteous perfection. If you do not eat this fruit you will live but if you eat of this fruit you will die. And man ate the fruit and sinned and all things came into futility and part of that curse is that everybody who is descended from the man will receive his sin nature.

But it's even in the curse that God gave to the serpent that God gave the gospel. In Genesis 3 .15, God said, I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.

And this is what we call the proto-evangelium or the first gospel. This was of course a reference to Christ who would come to destroy the works of the devil. First John 3 .8. And he would save his people from our sin and rebellion against God by becoming a sacrifice on our behalf.

That was even declared by God in Genesis chapter 3. And Christ would be the fulfillment. Christ would be the chosen seed. And as I talk about Romans 1 .16 being the thesis statement of the rest of this book, you could consider Genesis 3 .15 to be the thesis statement for the entire Bible.

Because the rest of scripture from then on is revealing to us that Christ is the chosen.

Seed.

He is the one who will put enmity between the woman and Satan, who will crush his head. Jesus is the snake crusher, as I believe it was Kevin DeYoung put it that way. This is the time of year when we remember the incarnation that God sent his son into the world to save sinners.

And in sending his son, he did not send his son through ordinary generation. He sent him to be born of a virgin. Why does that matter? Why do we sing that in our Christmas carols? One of our songs that we sang this morning mentioned the virgin.

Or in Silent Night, round yawn virgin, tender and mild. In What Child is This? Rays, rays, a song on high, the virgin sings her lullaby. Why is that so relevant that it finds its way into our Christmas carols?

Because if Jesus is born of ordinary generation, which is how each and every one of us have been born, born of the seed of man, then Jesus is born in sin, like all of us are. And he can't be that pure and spotless lamb who takes away the sin of the world.

But because he's not born of ordinary generation, he's not born under what we would call the federal headship of Adam, he's not born in sin, he doesn't inherit Adam's sin nature, he is born without a sin nature.

He is born without that natural rebellion that we all have, that proclivity to sin like the rest of us want to do. He was born with a clean record. And he kept his record clean. You and I are not born with a clean record, nor can we keep that record clean.

But everything that Jesus did was sinless. He did what none of us are even capable of doing. And he kept the law of God perfectly. It was necessary for him to do this. He not only kept the law, but he kept it on our behalf.

Because he's very God and very man. So all of the righteousness that he did in his humanity, that which we call his active obedience, he credited to our account. We are clothed with the righteousness of Christ when we put our faith in him.

The very righteousness that he accomplished by his life, he gives to us when we become followers of Jesus. In what is called his passive obedience, he died on the cross for our sins, and there God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, 2 Corinthians 5 .21.

Now I echo the frustration of Phil Johnson when he says, I don't really like these terms that much, active and passive obedience, but that's the terms we use. Those are the expressions to summarize this theology, that we not only have Jesus dying for us, but living for us.

So that when we put our faith in him, his righteousness is given to us. As we heard from Isaiah 53 this morning, the Lord laid upon him the iniquity of us all. And the death he died, he died to sin once for all, Romans 6 .10, the just for the unjust.

God put our sinful record upon Christ. And as said in Colossians 2 .14, he nailed it to the cross. But Christ didn't just die for our justification. He also rose from the dead for our justification, as said in Romans 4 .25.

And his impeccability, his sinlessness, his righteousness is imputed to us that God may be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. This is a doctrine that we refer to as double imputation.

Our sins were placed upon him when he died on the cross. His righteousness is given to us that we may stand before God worthy because of what Christ.

Has done.

All who come to Christ come to God. We have fellowship with God. Jesus is our access to God. The God-man who made us right to stand before the Lord, justified. And one day, when it's all said and done, we will not just be saved from the penalty.

Of sin.

We're not just rescued from the power of sin. We will be saved from the very presence of sin when we are glorified in our mortal bodies. And it's said in Philippians 3 .21, we will be made to be like him.

We will be made to be like his glorious body by the power that enables him to subject all things to himself. As summarized by Dr. Votie Bauckham, that's the gospel that we preach. That's the gospel that we need.

That's the gospel that's more than enough. We who were once the objects of God's wrath because of our sin and rebellion against God, through the person and work of Jesus Christ, he has made the children of his love.

And we have become adopted sons and daughters of God. And we're not just saved by the gospel that we just heard. We're also sanctified by that gospel. Because see, now as the sons and daughters of God, with his Holy Spirit dwelling within us, we begin to take on the family traits.

Because the Holy Spirit, as said to us in Romans 8, is shaping us and making us more into the image of Christ, who is called our older brother. He is the firstborn of many brothers, says the scriptures say.

Now this, as I've kind of like given a summary of what the Bible unfolds for us here, this is the longer explanation of the gospel. How about the Romans explanation of it? Because as I said, what Paul is going to share here is, where he goes on from here, he's going to unfold the gospel as we go through Romans together.

And I said this to you in our introduction, there's a form of evangelism that's going to be called the Romans Road, in which we summarize various points from the book of Romans, and we'll use those verses and those points to help lead a person to an understanding of our sin and need for a savior, and pointing to Christ as being that savior.

Now there seems to be a movement among a certain segment of evangelicals to discourage the whole concept of beginning with sin. Why do we begin with sin? The Bible doesn't begin with sin. The Bible begins with perfect creation.

So if you're going to share the gospel with somebody, that's where it is that you need.

To go.

But that's not the way that Paul does it. So certainly you can begin sharing the gospel that way, just as I've done here this morning. But the way that Paul starts is he starts with sin. He starts with the bad news.

In order for the gospel to be good news, you first got to hear the bad news. You're going to hell. You're under the wrath of God. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. That's the case that Paul makes in the first three chapters of Romans.

Where we go next, right after verses 16 and 17, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. Very simply, we love our sin more than we love God, and are willing to suppress the truth so that we can have whatever our flesh desires.

Romans 2 .5 says, because of your hard and impenitent heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed. Romans 3 .10 -12, none is righteous, no, not one.

No one understands, no one seeks for God. All have turned aside, together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one. And again, that summary in Romans 3 .23, all have sinned. We have all fallen short of God's perfect holiness and gloriousness.