May 6, 2018 AM Established By God In The Gospel by Pastor Josh Sheldon

Romans 16:25-27 and the Final Doxology

I'll turn again in your Bibles to Romans 16. I'll begin reading at verse 21. We'll read to the end of the chapter, though my preaching text begins at 25 and goes through verse 27. Romans 16 and verse 21.

Timothy, my fellow worker, greets you. So do Lucius and Jason and Sosipater, excuse me, my kinsmen. I, Tertius, who wrote this letter, greet you in the Lord. Gaius, who is host to me and to the whole church, greets you.

Erastus, the city treasurer, and our brother, Quartus, greet you. Now to him who is able to strengthen you, according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but now has been disclosed, and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith, to the only wise God be glory forevermore, through Jesus Christ, amen.

Doxology, Praise, and the Shape of Romans

Well, so ends this letter that literally moved nations. It comes to an end in much the same way it began, by focusing our entire attention on the God of our salvation and his son, Jesus Christ. And in this one sentence that we have in verses 25 to 27, in that one sentence, the apostle commends us to this wonderful God to whom we owe gratitude and obedience.

The three verses of this one sentence offer us this unrestrained praise to God for who he is. He's the only wise and eternal God, for what he's done, which is to reveal, to have revealed and disclosed this gospel.

How he's done that in his son, Jesus Christ, and also in this one sentence, these three verses, our necessary response to him, to give him glory forevermore, through Christ Jesus, our Lord. And most of your Bibles will have a superscript above verse 25 that says simply doxology.

I think some versions actually say final doxology, and a doxology is simply a word that means to give praise to God. We end our day here at Providence Bible Church with doxology, praise God from whom all blessings flow, or the glory of patri, glory be to the Father and to the Son.

Doxology just means praise to God, and that's how this book to the Romans ends. And you know, if you look at verses 25 to 27, and then took only the first few words of 25, and the last few words of verse 27, if you took out all the middle, this thing still packs quite a punch.

It would say something like this, now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel, and now switch to the end of 27, to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ, amen.

I mean, that's still quite a mouthful of praise to God, is it not? Well, we notice right away by reading the beginning and the end of this doxology that it's God the Father and God the Son getting equal prominence.

It's to him, to God, and it's about the preaching of Jesus Christ is to the only wise God through Jesus Christ. And that should hearken us back to the very beginning of this book where Paul said he is a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his holy prophets, through his prophets in the holy scriptures.

So we've kind of made a full circle here, ending this great letter where it began with all the focus, all the emphasis on what God the Father has done as promised in the scriptures through his Son, Christ Jesus.

Strengthened by the Gospel Rather Than Emotionalism

And the first words of verse 25 there could also be translated, now to him who is powerful to establish you. Some versions like our ESV say strengthen, other good versions say establish, and these are good words for the original that is behind it.

And as I preach this, I will interchange those two, establish and strengthen. They're both good words, and God both strengthens and establishes us, and he does either of these, or both of these, by his gospel, by the gospel of his Son, Christ Jesus, in which is revealed the righteousness of God, his power to save, he, powerful to establish, he can strengthen us by this gospel.

And these words, of course, have the same ring as we had quite some time ago when we began this series through Romans. Verse 116, the gospel is the power of God for salvation, the same power of God that converts lost souls, establishes, and strengthens those souls once they are unlost in what?

In the gospel of his Son, Jesus Christ. You know, we live in a time when we look at this and we have to think for a moment about what it means to be strengthened, to be established in this gospel. It's not simply a matter of coming to Christ in the swell of some emotional experience.

Now, we know that salvation is, at its core, an emotional experience. It's an emotional experience based upon objective truth, but there is emotion. There's sorrow for sin. There's the humility that comes with seeing your innermost self and realizing your total depravity.

There's nothing you can do outside of the mercy of God and the remaking of your soul that only he can do, that only he does. There comes joy in knowing that by faith in Christ, your sins are forgiven and that God has accepted you because of his Son, Jesus Christ.

There is emotion involved in being saved by God based upon the objective truth of his word and the working of his spirit. But salvation is more than a momentary, even an ecstatically moving event. Emotions, you see, emotions come and go.

They wax and they wane. A person might go to a revival and get caught up in the sweep of music. He might hear the people on either side of him crying out for God's mercy, and then the preacher will terrify him with the horrors of eternal hell and lift him back up with the promises of heaven, and the band plays soft, gentle strains of music and evoke memories of a mother who maybe used that hymn as a lullaby.

And then this one walks up the aisle and a stranger prays for him with tears of joy and then pushes him aside to make room for the next supplicant. And a week later, what do you have? You have a mist that dries up at the first ray of the sun.

What really happened, he might ask himself. I don't feel anything now. I must have just gotten caught up in the moment. And he's chagrined at his childish excitement. He forgets the whole thing and returns to life as usual.

And the only problem with a scenario like that is it's all too common a reality. And the problem with churches that do things like that, I came from a church that was like that, is they need to constantly outdo themselves.

I mean, once people expect the Sunday service to have that kind of excitement, you dare not let them down. And so we have to gin it up week after week. And this all has to do with the opening words of this doxology.

Now to him who is powerful to establish you. For him who is powerful, who is strong, who is able to establish you, to strengthen you, to strengthen all of us, based upon the preaching of Jesus Christ and his gospel.

And I will look at these and I will take an excursus and I will say, you know, our worship here is pretty plain, isn't it? We sing the old hymns of the faith. And I have nothing against more modern music, but I have something against music that doesn't extol the goodness and the qualities and the beauty and the glory and the holiness of God the Father and God the Son and God the Spirit.

You think for a moment, just the opening lines of that hymn that we know so well. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. Now that says something. That says something about the God who established us.

We sing and we worship here, all glory to God for what he's done in us. It's pretty plain, is it not? That we sing these old hymns. Think of the Wesley song about the dungeon flaming with light, my chains fell off, my soul was free.

That says something. I don't wanna turn this into a defense of our church and just pugnaciously say we're gonna do things our way, but we're going to stick to this gospel, this gospel that has established us.

This plain opening of God's word and presenting it to you so that it's the gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ, what God has done for us in his son, Christ Jesus, which we apprehend by faith. I've nothing better to give to you.

And that is the basis by which and upon which God strengthens and establishes his people. God is the source of this. God is the source of this power to establish, to strengthen us. God is that source and Jesus is the one by whom and through whom it is brought to bear in us.

Romans 4 and 5: Justification, Imputed Righteousness, and Peace with God

To be established is this definitive act of God when he draws us into his son. It's a deeply personal, it's an emotional thing for this to happen. God reaches into your deepest recesses and exposes what?

Utter helplessness. But he doesn't leave us there. He establishes and he strengthens us, not on the basis of the affections of a flash in the pan experience, but by his power and by the preaching of Jesus Christ.

He establishes. This is how this book ends. Now to him who is able to establish you, for him who is powerful to do this, it's an act of God and it's an attitude of God's people. Because we're established by God on objective truth, on what he's given to us in his word.

What he has brought us to by his spirit. We're not swayed by every wind of doctrine. We're not tempted by worldly goods or allures. And why is that? It's because we can look at them and we can say, no thank you, but my foundation is other than those temporary and worthless things.

I've been established as a child of God whose love will never fail to be mine and which will see me through it all. God is for me, I need nothing else. This is what it means to be established. To turn away from those worldly things is what it means to be strengthened by God.

How does God establish us? We just stay right here in Romans. And the quickest review of where we've been in this book, truths, which in times of stress, times of doubt, keep our feet planted on this solid ground, remind us of who God is and what he has done.

Romans 4 .25, Jesus was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. That is, Christ died for your sins and God confirmed that his suffering was sufficient for your forgiveness by what?

By raising him from the dead. This is an establishing gospel truth. Without it, we have nothing, because if Jesus wasn't delivered up for our trespasses, we will be. But if Jesus was delivered up for my trespasses, for yours, if by faith you've gone to him for forgiveness of sins and know that he covered your sins before God, then he was delivered up for your trespasses and raised for your justification.

Bedrock truth, establishing truth. The very next verse, chapter five, verse one, another bedrock truth. Therefore, therefore, looking all the way back in chapter four, I read just a part of it. Chapter four is that whole discussion of Abraham and righteousness being imputed to him because he had faith, he believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.

That whole discussion of how forgiveness is imputed to us. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through Christ Jesus our Lord. And what does this tell us about this establishing and strengthening God?

When you hear that little whisper making you doubt God's favor upon you, when you hear that in the background reminding you of the enormity of your sins, trying to make you believe that your sins were too much for Christ to cover or for God to endure, you can be established by this.

You can be strengthened by this. Christ did die. Christ was raised up. God is satisfied with his sacrifice, so he is with you too as your faith is in Christ. This is the gospel. This is the power of God that establishes and strengthens us establishes us as a church, strengthens us together, and as individuals to walk in his ways.

All by imputation. God, by this free gift of faith that he alone gives, imputes this righteousness of Christ, the very righteousness of Christ, reckoned to your account, reckoned to my account, the righteousness of his son, Christ Jesus.

Remember, we spoke about this some time ago. This idea of was it subjective or is it objective? Subjective or objective? Subjective. Now, if you are objectively as righteous as Christ, well, that borders on blasphemy because in reality, none of us are or will be.

So objectively, no, that's not what the apostle is saying. It's subjective because God chooses by the faith we have in his son and God's satisfaction with what the son did to see us that way. By faith, his accomplishment of God's righteous requirements for us are imputed to us by faith.

We often illustrate this to explain this subjective righteousness that we have, that God chooses to see us through Christ-colored lenses. Now, I like that illustration because objectively, I cannot come to God and say, look what I've done.

I spent a lifetime being as righteous as Christ. Well, no one could say that. You wouldn't be able to say, I spent last month being as righteous or yesterday or today or the last hour. We couldn't do it.

And yet, in reality, in all truth, because Christ was raised up for our justification, he was resurrected to show God's satisfaction in his sacrifice. It is as it were, when we stand before God as I believe we do now, we pray for God by his spirit be with us.

I believe in the promise of his word that he is. Where two or three gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them. Why is God satisfied with us? Well, back to that easy illustration. The glasses go on, the Christ-colored lenses.

And that's what he sees, his son, the one in whose name we gather. Does that not establish us? Does it not strengthen us when we go out into this world on Monday? Chapter six tells us that by faith and the working of the Holy Spirit, we're no longer bound by the deeds of the past, those dark ways of that dark old man as it was before Christ.

What does he say in chapter six? An establishing, strengthening truth here. We are buried, therefore, with Christ by baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

God, by his Spirit, makes this possible. God, by his strengthening, establishing power, makes us able to follow his ways and to actually please him. Now, we know, ultimately, who is he pleased with. He's pleased with his son.

In John 17, in Christ's high priestly prayer, God describes the love that he has, God the Father has for him as God the Son, as being the same as God has for those who are in God the Son. An equal sign.

God's love to Christ, God's love to those in Christ. Equal signs all the way. That's why we're able to walk in newness of life. He goes on in chapter six to remind us that our slavery to that body of sin and death was decisively broken when we were established, when we were converted to this gospel.

Sometimes we fall back into those old ways because we forget that Christ's Spirit has literally remade us. You don't have to do those things anymore. You don't have to fall back on those anymore. That was slavery.

In chapter six, this establishing gospel truth is what? That you're no longer that slave. You're no longer that one. Those old ways are old ways. You don't have to repeat them. They are not what you are because you are not what you were.

That's an establishing truth. God's Spirit makes possible and real this new life. Does that not establish us? Doesn't that not strengthen us? Do we not think if we would remember this, that would see us through the next trial or difficulty or temptation?

Now to him who is able to establish us by the preaching of Jesus Christ, chapter eight, verse one, has an establishing and strengthening truth for us. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

See chapter five, verse one, we have peace with God that doesn't stand alone. Peace with God, how? How are we established? How are we strengthened by this peace in God? Peace we have with God? Because Christ answered for our enmity against God.

There is therefore now no condemnation. We don't have to be scared that God's going to smite us from on high for our next transgression against his holiness. Because Christ on the cross answered them all.

He was in our place. He was there answering for me or for you. Bearing shame and scoffing rude, in my place condemned he stood. Sealed my pardon with his blood. Hallelujah, what a savior. How about a Holy Spirit who helps us in our weaknesses?

One who groans our confused and unintelligent prayers where we don't even know what we can ask for. We don't even know how to speak. We don't know what to say. We don't even know what the problem is. And we have the Holy Spirit of God who groans them into the will of God because he knows the mind of God.

That's chapter eight verses 26 to 30. Does this help us to be established in this gospel? To know that if we just fall down before God and say, ugh, I can't say anymore. I don't know what else to say.

God by his spirit takes that groan and turns it into a prayer that is the will of God so that the answer that returned to us we know is the will of God because the spirit who groans the prayer into the will of God knows the mind of God because he is God.

And therefore we are established and strengthened by this confidence. In chapter eight verses 26 to 30, that this is how God hears our prayers. How about this one? Are we strengthened and established when we read if God be for us, who can be against us?

If God be for us, who can be against us? It's a rhetorical question because the blazing answer is no one and as he goes on, nothing, neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The Revelation of the Mystery, the Eternal God, and the Obedience of Faith

It's the wonder of the times that we live in. This age between the ascent of our Lord Jesus Christ when he returned back to his rightful place at the Father's right side and his return to us. This is the revelation of the mystery that was kept cloaked for long ages, now disclosed according to the command of the eternal God.

We live in a time where in that description I just read, not things physical, not things spiritual, not things conceptual, not things that are in reality. Nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Again, alluding back to Christ's high priestly prayer in John chapter 17. If the love for God the Father, for God the Son is the same as God the Father has for those who are in God the Son, then the love that God the Father has for us can no more be broken than his love for his Son could be broken.

That's what it says. That's the gospel truth that establishes and strengthens us. John said, or wrote in his gospel, no one has ever seen God. The only God who is at the Father's side, he has revealed him.

Everything the prophets hoped for, the mystery of salvation that angels longed to look into, all revealed, all explained, all made actual in Christ Jesus. That Paul says God is eternal tells us something marvelous about this, another strengthening, another establishing truth because God as eternal, he's unchangeable, he's unaffected.

He is Yahweh and his existence is in and of himself and nothing else. He is our creator, he's the maker of all things yet he's apart from them. His person, his character, his attributes, none of this will ever change because the God who strengthens us is perfect in all his ways.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. When our house is built on that rock, it's a house well established, it's a house that will weather any storm. You know, the gospel is a matter of obedience.

We are to obey it. He says here in this doxology that it's been made known to all nations according to the command of God to bring about the obedience of faith. Most of us can say, I love your word, O Lord, it is my meditation day and night.

We memorize it and we can pull verses from memory to fit any situation. The question Jesus asks looms large here. He says, why do you call me Lord, Lord, and not do what I tell you? Well, the first step of obeying the gospel is, of course, to believe the gospel.

As Paul said at the Areopagus in Athens, but now God commands all people everywhere to repent. This is the beginning of that establishing, strengthening truth, to repent. All people everywhere are commanded to repent.

That is gospel obedience. Paul has in mind in the doxology here what has flowed since chapter 12 of this book, the life obedience of the Christian. A hearkening back to chapter six where we're reminded over and over again that the old man has no more sway over us.

We don't have to give in to those old desires. We can obey this gospel. The obedience of faith. You have faith, you believe. Now obey what you believe. He strengthens us. He strengthens us. The gospel changes us from a mercurial people who don't really know which way is up, or as the Lord said to Jonah about the Ninevites, we don't really know our right hand from our left.

He changes us from that to this strengthened and established people. We know who we are. We're the people of God. We are the church. We know how we became who and what we are by the overwhelming, unbelievable power of God to convert a soul, to take out the heart of stone and give a heart of flesh, and to say to this people, you shall be called my people, and I will dwell among them.

We know what we are. We are the people of God. And we are strengthened. We are solid. We are secure because of this gospel, this unchanging gospel from the eternal God promised through ages past, and now here in all his glory because of the cross of Jesus Christ.

And that turns us from this will o' wisp into mighty trees that don't bend or sway with the times. Not because we're so confident in ourselves, but because as we obey this gospel, as individuals and as a church, we trust that it is God who by this gospel is establishing us.

You see, it's not just an idea. The gospel is not just a thought or a concept. It's the very power of God for salvation. That's back to verse 116. Nor is it a new craze that's being marketed. It's the revelation of this long sequestered mystery.

It's a glimpse given to this one over here. It's a hint given to that one over there. And some of these previews were more clear than others, like the deliverance of Israel from Egypt or the cloud over Sinai, the thunder that Samuel called down.

And some of these glances were more subtle, like the pot of death that Elisha cured. But they all worked together to add their own texture to this growing monument of the gospel until God at the right time sent his son, who is that gospel, that for all that time had been slowly and incrementally and each moment at the right time and in the right way revealed.

This is the faith once for all delivered to the saints. This is the gospel by which God has established a strong and immovable and secure in ourselves because of the Lord who inhabits us. So we say with the psalmist, not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name, give glory.

Glory to God Through Jesus Christ

And that's how the doxology that closes Romans ends. With all the glory to God. And what is God's glory but his most precious attribute, the one that he guards most jealously, one he says he will share with no other.

And when Jesus prayed, and now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed, he spoke of a glory that was always his, not a glory that was granted to him, not a glory imparted to him.

He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. The full glory of God is Christ's because of who Christ is and what Christ always has been. The eternal Son of God, he is God the Son. God's glory is his because that is his nature.

What the apostle means is that it is by and through Christ Jesus that our obedience to and praise of him is received to the Father's glory. As we worship Christ, we glorify God the Father. The only wise God be glory forevermore through Christ Jesus, all things through him.

We know from the catechism there's no higher or more basic calling than this for the Christian to glorify God. Jesus, speaking of himself, said, since God is glorified in him, himself, since God is glorified in him, in the Son, God will also glorify him, again, the Son, in himself, which is the Father, and glorify him at once.

Our part, our part is in all we do, we do all to the glory of God and through our faith in and obedience to his Son. It is to his glory. Psalm 112, verse six, says that the righteous will never be moved.

So I ask you, do you believe in Christ Jesus? Do you believe in what he did on the cross for you? Have you repented of your sin and fled to him for forgiveness? Do you believe with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength, that he died for your sins and that he rose again for the grave?

Because 2 Corinthians 5, 21 says, that being the case, Christ's righteousness has been credited, imputed to you. Which is really back to chapter four of Romans. The Psalm says, that being the case, you will never be moved off that solid rock.

The 121st Psalm says that our never sleeping, our never slumbering God will not let your foot be moved off that path that he himself has set you on, that he by his power and his spirit keeps us on. Well, this is the end of this foundational epistle.

The one which so clearly explains the gospel of God in his son, Jesus Christ. And as I said, it ends where it began. In the very first verse, the apostle Paul calls himself an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures concerning what?

Concerning who? His son, Jesus Christ. So in the 2 ,000 years since this letter's original composition, it has lost none of its power to convict sinners and glorify God. This letter that sparked the Reformation and changed and moved nations has not only altered the course of history, but the course of the individual.

You single sinner who read these words and see yourself as desperately, hopelessly needy before this God. This letter that brought down entire nations and churches and yet the single, most wide-eyed, innocent individual can read this.

And by these words, be converted from that depraved, hell-bound, hell-bound individual to a glory-filled individual headed for heaven. One established and strengthened by the gospel that this letter has for so many centuries brought forth.

It stands today as a standard of the Christian, both individually and as the church. Converted sinners to Christ Jesus changed the course of history. Many have tried to soften some of its hard edges. And today with things that are going on out in society generally, people are trying harder and harder to soften its hard edges.

They twist Paul's words out of any semblance of original meaning or even common sense. And yet these 16 chapters, this word of God that he by his spirit and in his providence has protected, has stood firm.

It still means what it always meant. It still says what it says. And the most violent twisting and mangling of it cannot change that. What we have to do is open it up and read it. Say, no, this is a gospel that strengthens us.

This is a gospel that establishes us and we dare not monkey around with it like that. All glory to God. This remains the touchstone of the Orthodox faith. At the end of this letter, at the end of this doxology, we have this lifelong return that we owe back to God for what he has done for us in this gospel explicated from chapter one, verse one, all the way through chapter 16, verse 27.

This gospel of God, this power of God for salvation to all who believe, to the Jew first and also to the Greek, for as it is written, the just shall live by faith. This gospel, what do we do? How do we respond?

What is demanded of us by this? To the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ, amen and amen. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you not only for this day but for this letter, for this gospel of Jesus Christ that it has made so clear to us, convicted us, Lord, of our failings, lifted us up by the promise of the power of your spirit to do so, led us into the paths of righteousness and reminded us, Father, that it is all of you, that we live because of you, that in you we have all our being, that our salvation is because of Christ Jesus and the faith that you gave us.

Lord, for all these bedrock establishing and strengthening truths, we give you thanks and I pray that we would go forth in the power of your spirit and by faithfulness to your word and all the glory be to you through Jesus Christ our Lord in whose name we pray, amen.