Jeff Durbin: The Mission of God Sermon

The Gospel of God in Romans 1

Hey everybody, I'm Pastor Jeff Durbin with Apologia Church. I want to thank you all so much for watching the content right here on Apologia Studios channel. What you're about to watch is a sermon, a message from Apologia Church's worship service.

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So thank you again so much for watching these and sharing them. God bless you. If you would, turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter 1. Romans chapter 1 again today. Just a step off of our series, The Gospel According to Matthew, the Kingdom of God series.

Back on that next Sunday, next Lord's Day. But today I wanted to do my duty as a shepherd, a pastor of the people of God here at Apologia Church that's been entrusted to us, and speak on what the Apostle Paul has as the emphasis at the beginning of what many have called The Gospel According to St. Paul.

And he sums up at the very end, the mission of the people of God, our mission with the good news, the gospel of God, the gospel of the kingdom. And I wanted to do that, moving through quickly through that mission, and then talk about our duty as believers in the midst of that mission, our unity in the faith, our unity together as the body of Christ, together hand in hand serving the same God, the same Savior with the same gospel.

I wanted to talk about the spiritual nature of our warfare, the attacks upon our church, upon us as a body. And the reason for this is being in Kauai, in a hotbed of the occult and spiritism and all the difficulties there, we recognize as elders that our church, both there and here, has a target on our backs.

And so we'll be talking today about some things we haven't talked a lot about as a church over a decade of ministry, but we feel as elders it's our responsibility before God and you to do so. So if you would, in Romans chapter 1, I'm going to read through the first seven verses, which interestingly is just one sentence.

Seven verses, one sentence. Hear now the words of the living and the true God. Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures concerning his son, who was descended from David according to the flesh, and was declared to be the son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead.

Jesus Christ, our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.

To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. As far as the reading of God's holy word, let's pray together as a church.

Lord, we come before you humbly. We submit ourselves to you and we ask that, Lord, you would teach us today. Lord, I pray that you would get the pastor out of the way today, that you would speak by your spirit, Lord, through your word, that you would, Lord, open our eyes to the truth, to your truth, that you would reveal to us any wrong way in us, that you'd bring about repentance, and, Lord, that you would allow us to see what you see, to know what you want us to know.

We pray, Lord, that I would decrease, that you would increase, that you would teach by your spirit today. We pray you bless us, Lord, as we hold this marvelous, amazing gift in our hands of your word.

In Jesus' name, amen. So, I want to today talk about what the Apostle Paul says at the beginning of his systematic explanation of the good news and the end. It's interesting because, as Christians, be honest.

I think we can be honest with ourselves here. At times, we can get mellow-headed to the truth. We can see glorious things in the word of God, things that are powerful, things that are so above us, things that ought to just wash peace over us and fill us with strength, and we can get mellow-headed because we read these things or we hear these words, and we've heard them before, read them before, and at times, we get completely mellow-headed to it, especially for young people, children raised in the church under solid theology and doctrine.

So, at times, we can be in the context of the Christian communion and Christian fellowship our whole lives under the hearing of these truths, and we can get indifferent towards them. They can become pithy slogans, like the word itself, gospel, can be something that you just put as a bumper sticker or a Christian t-shirt.

We hear things like, preach the gospel, preach the gospel. This is the good news of Jesus Christ, and it becomes just a pithy slogan. What does it really mean, gospel? Why is it such good news? Why do we go out onto the street corners downtown and preach the good news to people?

Why do we risk our lives? Why do we risk persecution and suffering and even death for this thing called the good news? Why is it so good? Why is that meaningful to me or to you or to anybody else? Because I think at times, again, if we're transparent and honest with ourselves, these can become pithy slogans for us.

We hear things like Paul is talking about here, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, the good news of God, and it just goes right over us, and we lose the beauty of that, that God has good news for the world.

We lose the power of that, because it just becomes for us a pithy slogan. We say it so much. We talk about it so much. It's part of our context. So we lose the power of the fact that the creator of everything around us, you, me, every animal, baboon, giraffe, the stars, the sun, the moon, everything, that God says that this is his story to us that's good.

It's his good news to us, because there is, of course, bad news. And the apostle Paul sets this up in a very, I think, powerful way. In the first seven verses, again, one sentence, run along, he says as an introduction of himself to the saints in Rome that he hasn't met yet, he hasn't, he wants very, very desperately to meet with them, he says, to impart some spiritual gift to them.

He just can't wait for this opportunity. He says to them, your faith is being proclaimed through the entire world. This is not very, very long after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, and he says your faith is proclaimed throughout the whole world.

Everybody's talking about this. Everybody's talking about what God is doing in Rome, and you guys, and what God has done to save. The apostle Paul opens up to this church with an introduction of himself, and he says, Paul, a, I prefer this, slave of Messiah Jesus, a slave of Christ Jesus.

We don't like to use that word today, because that's a dirty word. When we think about slave today, in our context, we think about what happened in Georgia. We think about what happened in the South. We have a particular framework that we work with, and we hear the word slave, and to us, that word is only a dirty word.

It can only be a dirty word, because we think about the abuses. Now, by the way, if you want to know what God thinks about slavery and his law, he said in his law that if you kidnap a man, if you mans if you engage in man-stealing and enslave somebody, that is something that deserves the death penalty.

So if you agree that slavery of that kind is a wicked thing, then you're in good company, and God may actually hate the sin more than you. But for the apostle Paul, he uses the word doulos, and the word doulos means slave.

Paul, he's proud of it. I'm a slave of the Messiah, Jesus. I'm a slave of Christ Jesus. That's his introduction of himself to the church in Rome. Hi, I'm a slave of Jesus. First thing you need to know about me is that I belong to him.

I obey him. I am the servant of a good master. That's who I am. That's my identity. Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, to be a messenger, to be an envoy for the Lord Jesus Christ.

That's who I am. That is my identity, a slave of the Messiah, and I'm called to be his messenger. I set apart for the good news of God. And I have to ask us this question again. I've said it at the beginning here.

I have to ask the question, is this something that we have become indifferent to? Is this something that has become a pithy slogan for me? Is it? This is God's good news to the world. As you read through the first couple of chapters of this systematic explanation of the gospel by the apostle Paul, you'll see why that's such a big deal for Paul.

That it is the gospel of God, good news from God. The first couple of chapters runs through, of course, the universal condition of fallenness and sin. You want to know what's wrong with the world. You want to know what's wrong around about you.

You want to know what's wrong in your own life. It is the fall. It is our rebellion against God. And the apostle Paul in this first chapter explains that sinful condition, that we all know this God, the only God, the true and living God, the one that there is none before and none after, the one that Psalm 90 verse 2 says is from eternity into eternity, the creator of all things who spoke into nothing and then something came.

That God. We've rebelled against this God, the only true God. And how have we rebelled? We rebelled so that His wrath is abiding on us and we are suppressing the truth and unrighteousness. We know the true God.

We know Him well enough. The problem isn't a lack of light. It's not a lack of evidence. It's that we know the true God, but we hate Him. And so I might say that might be sort of a explosive way to say that, Pastor Jeff.

Are you using the right word? Yes, that's what it says about fallen people. We are haters of God. It says in Ephesians chapter 2 that we are children of wrath. And Paul is now explaining that in the first chapter.

Why is this good news? Why should it matter to you in the 21st century in the West with all the Facebook and Twitter and all the technology and all the ease of life and all the ways that we are progressing as a society?

Why does it matter to us that a Palestinian Jew in the first century was crucified as a common criminal, died, was buried and rose again, and people claim that he rose and he ascended? Why does that matter to us today?

Paul says it matters because of the universal condition of sin. All of us are image bearers of God. We know the true God. Paul says in this very chapter that he's made himself clear to all of us. And even with the creation itself screaming at us constantly in unavoidable ways, we don't want Him in our knowledge, Paul says.

That means we don't want to know Him. We'd rather not know Him. And so even with the clear revelation of himself, every image bearer of God, hostile towards God, rebellious towards the one and only true and living God in whom's image we are made.

This one God, we suppress the truth, and then what happens, the condition is, Paul says in this first chapter, is that God does what? He gives us up. He gives us up to do things that are unnatural. It's unnatural anyways to rebel against the true and living God, but he gives us up to do unnatural things, even sexually.

We're disobedient to parents. We are full of sin. We worship and serve the creature rather than the creator. What do we do as fallen people? We try to find some other God to worship that maybe looks a little bit like Him, but it's not Him.

And so we switch God for idols. We switch God for the unnatural, and Paul explains here why this is good news, of course, even to the Jew who has the word of God, but doesn't do what it actually says.

The person that says don't steal, but they steal. Don't commit adultery, but they commit adultery. I think all of us can feel in these first two chapters of this explanation of the gospel, we can sense ourselves as we run through the text, either in his explanation in chapter one or chapter two, the hypocrisy that's within all of us, the sin, the rebellion, the suppression of the truth, the switching of God for idols.

So then Paul in chapter three explains that all of humanity, whether you're Jew or Gentile, you're under the same indictment, the same sinful problem, and you're not going to get out of it, Paul says in Romans three, through law keeping, through obedience to the law, because the law, Paul says, was given to expose your sin so that the whole world might have their mouths closed, shut up before God.

The law reveals our sin, and that's why Paul opens up and says, called to be an apostle, set apart for the good news of God. This is good news, that God would actually condescend, that he would come to chase the rebellious, those who don't want to think about God, they don't want to know God, they'd rather exchange the true God for some bootleg pleasure, bootleg joy, false God, something that can't even satisfy their needs as an image bearer of God.

And so this is good news, that that God enters into human flesh, enters into our story, our experience, and he comes to chase the hostile ones, the rebels, to do what? To live the life that they could not live, to have a righteousness that actually avails before holy God, to die a death, listen closely, that you and I deserve.

There's another answer right there for how we can become mellow-headed or indifferent to the truth, because as Christians, we're always saying it's the wages of sin is death, we deserve to die for our sins, Jesus took what we deserve, he died in our place, we deserve to die.

I have a question for myself, I want to ask, do I really believe that my sins are so serious before God that I actually deserve to die for them? That's why this is God's good news, because the truth is, everybody in this room, everybody in the hearing of my voice, you deserve to die for your hostility and your rebellion against the one and only true and living God, you deserve to die for your sins, you deserve to die for your hatred for God, and yet in the midst of that, God comes into his own creation to chase the rebel, the hostile one, the one who is guilty, just guilty before him, to do what?

To give them a righteousness that's not their own, through faith, as a gift by his grace, and to not count our sins against us, Paul says in Romans 4, to credit us a righteousness apart from works, and to not count our sins against us.

There's two things done there, one is a positive crediting of righteousness, Paul says in Romans 4, that's not your own, it's apart from works, and it's a gift, it's not something you can earn, not a wage you can earn, but a gift, God justifying the ungodly, crediting to them righteousness apart from works, and not counting your sins against you.

Let me just say, if you know your heart, and you know your mind, and if you have enough integrity in this moment to be honest with your own life and sin and rebellion against God, you can see why it's good to be a slave of the Messiah, you can see why it's good to have this gospel of God, good news of God, you can see why it's so meaningful and so powerful, and why it's worth your entire life to worship and serve this Messiah as a slave, why it's worth your entire life to let goods and kindred go, your mortal life also, to go and tell this good news to the world, to proclaim it, to the end that Paul gets us to here, again this is in two places, it's in Romans 1 and it's at the very end in 16.

I want you to see both, to see the Apostle Paul bookends his systematic explanation of the gospel with this message, here's what he says, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the scriptures, this isn't a novelty, this is something that God said he was going to do, this is not some new thing they weren't anticipating, it was what God promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures concerning his son, that's what this gospel is about, it's about Jesus, it's about him, it's about Christ concerning his son who is descended from David according to the flesh, that means a lot in terms of the Jewish expectation of the Messiah, he had to be descended from David, that's where he had to come from, it goes all the way back to Abraham and where Abraham is promised that through this seed all the nations would be blessed, Jesus, and was declared to be the son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, there's the testimony from God that this is God's savior, this is God's Messiah, should you question it?

Through whom we have received what? Tell me guys, grace, unmerited favor, you didn't earn this, you don't deserve it, you're not special, you're not more interesting to God, not simply better parents, better upbringing, which I think if we're honest with our own pridefulness we think, well yes God saved me, yeah it was by his grace, but come on, right?

The story is about grace, it's about Jesus and God glorifying this Messiah and the salvation of rebel sinners and it is about his grace, we've received grace and apostleship to bring about what? The obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are, what's the word, called to belong to Jesus Christ.

We're a couple of verses in and what are we hearing here? We're hearing grace upon grace upon grace, this is God's story, it's God's good news, it's his plan, he's promised it, he brings it about, all of this is to the glory of God and it's about the grace of God, us who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.

You didn't call yourself, you didn't get yourself into this good news and into this story, this is God's grace poured out on the undeserving, God's grace poured out on people who do not merit this salvation, they are called to belong to Jesus Christ, to all those in Rome who are loved by God, did you catch that?

Who are loved by God, you are loved by God. Are you indifferent towards that as a Christian? Have we become indifferent towards that? God has given us so much grace over 10 years of ministry at Apology of Church, so much grace through his power, through his mercy and grace, he's empowered this body of believers to be involved in some very difficult ministry and he's blessed us, he's poured out his love upon us, we've been able to communicate the truth of God from his word against opposition, against arguments that exalt themselves against God, false teaching, false doctrine, the cult, all of that, God's allowed us to do that, but if we lost sight as Christians, as believers here at Apology of Church, to that glorious truth that we are loved by God, the simplicity of that, we received his grace and that God loves you, he loves you, you're not at war with him any longer because he's redeemed you, he's not at war with you, he doesn't count your sins against you, he counts you righteous in his son, you are loved by God, loved by God in your adversity right now, loved by God in your discouragement right now, loved by God in all your suffering right now, loved by God in the midst of your conflicts right now, loved by God right now in the midst of your marital strife, loved by God right now in the midst of your conflict with another believer in this room, loved by God when you've lost your job, loved by God when you can't pay your bills, loved by God, God's poured out his grace upon you, he's given you his good news, he's called you to himself, and he loves you.

I think a lot of the times, if we're, I think, honest with ourselves, is that promise of being loved by God can fall on us onto hardness because we've been told we've been loved by people who then turned around and hurt us.

We've heard that I love you before from somebody who's now no longer with us. We've been told I love you by people who didn't really mean it. But when God says that you are loved by God, that is something that is a promise from a holy God who cannot lie.

You are loved by God, called to be saints, called to be set apart. Grace to you and peace from God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's end on this point here and then take it to the end here in terms of how does Paul bookend this.

Another thing that's really important, I think, for us to communicate right now is in this moment as a church, in the midst of your difficulties and trials, in the midst of all of the onslaught of the enemy, the attacks, these are God's words to his church.

Grace to you and peace from God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Peace from God. Peace. You have peace with God. That's why it's good news because here's the truth of it all. Each and every single one of us, this is not to scare you, but just to be honest, each and every single one of us are going to stand before this God one day.

You will, I promise, stand before God or fall. You're either going to live or die before him. Paul says here in the same chapter, the righteous shall live by faith. You shall live, stand before God, not die, but live before God by faith.

And this is truly good news because that day when you stand before your creator, the only God, the holy God, the just God, the perfect God, this good news will really seem like good news. That the God of all creation pulled you out of your darkness, out of your rebellion, your hostility, and your sin.

When you would rather spit at his face and turn your back on him, he chose to give you grace and peace. That's good news for the world. Listen, I want to add this. I've been preaching the gospel for a long time by God's grace, and I believe that it was sometime in the middle of my time as a chaplain at the hospital that the reality of the goodness of this message truly hit me, truly hit me when I stood over the dead bodies of children that I had just been ministering to that week.

I could tell you about times where I was talking to somebody face to face on a Wednesday, and I came into the hospital the next day and discovered that they were found dead in their garage with a needle in their arm.

Or on a Monday, I was just talking to somebody and trying to plead with them to take their life seriously and this good news seriously, and I'm pleading for their soul. And on Friday, I was standing above their dead body in a casket.

And it's amazing because there were times, of course, before this experience as a chaplain at a hospital where I had said, we're all going to die. We're all going to die. Everybody here is going to die.

You need to get reconciled with God. You have to take this seriously. And it wasn't, of course, until I had given that message on a Monday and then stood over their dead body on a Friday that it really made sense to me.

It's true. This isn't a manipulation of trying to scare you into following Jesus. This is the reality of our experience. You're not immortal. You are an image bearer of God and you're going to die because you live in a fallen world and we're all rebels against the king.

And there's the consequences of the fallen world is we all experience physical death. You're going to die. That's why this is good news. That you're loved by God, that you've received his grace, that he called you out of darkness into his marvelous light to save you.

That's why it's good news. It's good news about God and what he does to save sinners. But I want to highlight this particular point in verse 5, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.

Now that's the first chapter of Romans. And if you move to the very back in Romans 16, you'll see how the apostle Paul ends his systematic explanation of the gospel. Same message. So it must mean something to the apostle Paul.

This was something he chose to open with and to end with. He says in verse 25, 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 has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations according to the command of the eternal God, here it is again, to bring about the obedience of faith.

To the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ. Amen. Do you hear it again? Chapter 1, chapter 16. Start my message with this core part and then end the message. To do what? To bring about the obedience of faith.

Where? Among all the nations. For what? For the sake of his name. You should know this, that this is not something that's new for the apostle Paul or to the first century Jews that believed this message.

It wasn't something new, wasn't a novelty and by the way it was what Jesus departs with in Matthew 28, 18 through 20. Same message, same goal, same purpose, same ends. Our Lord died, was buried and rose again and at the ascension as he goes up to the ancient of days presented before him to be given kingdom dominion, a glory that would never pass away.

He says this, all authority in heaven and where? On earth. Now here that is something that's true today. In heaven and on earth has been given to me. He says, go therefore because I have all that authority in heaven and on earth, go therefore make disciples of all the what?

Nations. Sound like Paul, doesn't it? Among all the nations, make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the father, the son and the holy spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

Sound familiar? How does Jesus ascend with that message? How does the apostle Paul explain his systematic explanation of the gospel? Chapter one, to bring about the obedience of faith among all the nations for the sake of his name.

Chapter 16, to bring about the obedience of faith. And this again is something that is reiterated by Paul in Romans 1, promised beforehand in the holy scriptures. Genesis, the first book in our bible is filled with this truth.

Did you know that? We think about Genesis of moments of awe and you, I can tell if you've been reading Genesis lately because that should have been something you laughed at. Genesis, I remember my wife, I think it was last year, she was reading some Genesis with the kids and at some point she said to either one night after coming home from ministry, she was like, there's a lot of interesting things in the book of Genesis.

Yep, Lot and his daughters and Noah and the tent and the drinking and all that stuff. It's like, yep, all of our heroes, sins on the page, right? All that crazy stuff in the book of Genesis. But what also is in Genesis, in the Torah, in the first five books of Moses, we have this same message.

The same thing that Jesus ascended with. What's the promise to Abraham? In you, all the what? Nations shall be blessed. Look up to the stars, Abraham. So shall your descendants be. Like the sand and in Genesis 49 10, Shiloh is coming and to him shall be the obedience of the nations.

This is not a novelty. This story of Jesus is God's majestic story. He has been weaving all along and it's to his glory and for his purpose. From the very beginning, the expectation was the Messiah was going to come and he was going to draw the nations to Yahweh, to God.

Psalm chapter two, the father promises the son, he says, ask of me, I'll give you the nations for your inheritance, the very ends of the earth for your possession. And then the father actually warns the kings of the earth to obey the son or they'll perish.

Psalm 22, the famous passage we have before us of the passion of the Messiah, his hands and his feet pierced, his heart like wax melted within him, surrounded by dogs. They cast lots for his clothing.

After all of that story of the passion, long before Jesus comes to accomplish it, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? All of that in that text, that same Psalm doesn't end with that sadness and brokenness.

It ends with what? That all the nations of the earth will return to worship Yahweh. Psalm 72, he shall have dominion from sea to sea, from the river to the ends of the earth. And of course, the most popular verse in the New Testament quoted from the Old Testament or alluded to, Psalm 110 .1 of course says, what the Lord said unto my Lord, sit in my right hand until I make all your enemies a footstool for your feet.

The apostle Paul highlights that in his explanation of the gospel in 1 Corinthians 15. That's where history is going. You might be asking, well, okay, Pastor Jeff, gotcha. This is exciting stuff and it's all inspiring and powerful from the Word of God.

It gives us a foundation, but why are we talking about this today? Well, I want to say that that has to be the heart and mission of our body. I'm challenged by that, truly challenged as a Christian, as your brother, as a minister of the gospel.

That the early church entered into tremendous suffering and difficulty and trials and persecutions. And of course, that was from a love for God, being filled with and indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God, the gospel on their lips, the boldness.

Read the book of Acts and ask yourself the question, if our evangelism today looks anything like what we see in the book of Acts. Same God, same spirit, same gospel, where are we? You ask the question, how has the apostle Paul lived such a risky and bold life?

And we all have to have the same answer, because he knew Jesus, because he was in love with God and God loved him and he's filled with the spirit of God and he knew the gospel. Well, yes, all of that's true, but which direction was he going?

What did he think about the future? This ragtag bunch of believers in the first century under the boot of Rome, why were they living such risky lives? Where did they think they were going? I'm sure it seemed like an awfully big commission for those few limited disciples standing with Jesus at the ascension.

All authority in heaven and on earth is mine. I think the Caesar would have had something to say about that. Here's Jesus, this first century Palestinian Jew, killed in Rome, crucified, murdered on a tree.

Here's Jesus with this bold statement, I own the world, it's mine, it's mine. I have all the authority in heaven and here on earth. It's not the Caesars, it's not the rulers you see, it's none of these realms of authority, it's my authority, and so go get the nations, teach them to obey me.

The Apostle Paul has that vision before him in Romans 1 and 16, that here's what we're doing, we are bringing about the obedience of faith among all the nations for the sake of his name. That is the mission here, and so how do we live these godly, risky, missionary lives as Christians?

I think we have to have a foundation from what is theonoustos, breathed out by God. History is going somewhere and it's moving towards the glory of God in Jesus Christ through the proclamation of the good news and the redemption of rebel sinners around the world.

What drove so many of the missionary movements in the last couple of hundred years to live such risky lives, to do such stupid things from a human perspective? What led Pastor Luke's grandfather to walk into a jungle in Africa with his little children, to walk into the jungle and move through the bushes, to go and preach the gospel to people who didn't know Jesus?

It's the great commission, it's the call of God, it's our commission as the people of God to preach the gospel, to lay our lives down. The apostle Paul says this, he says, I endure all things for the sake of the elect.

I endure all things for the sake of the elect. God has his elect people out there, people out there who haven't heard his voice and heard his name, and the mission of God is to go get them. How does God do it?

He does it through the proclamation of the gospel, and he does it through his people. You're the means of his grace, and you might be thinking about yourself, how can God do that in me? I'm not very mighty, I'm not very powerful, I don't have a way to articulate this very, very well.

I would say, well, you're a perfect candidate, because this gospel is what is the power of God for salvation. Paul says here in Romans 1, it is the power of God for salvation. That good news goes out, and God, by his spirit, empowers that message to bring dead people to life.