WWUTT 238 By Way of Reminder?

As I've heard Tim Challies say, sanctification is a community project.

You cannot grow in sanctification by yourself. You cannot grow in the gospel by yourself.

You're intended to grow with the body of Christ when we understand the text. You're listening to When We Understand The Text, celebrating one full year as an online

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Here once again is Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you, Becky. Greetings, everybody. I am tired.

It is late in the night when I am recording this. We have a homeschool practicum that's going to be at our church

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. It's basically a conference for homeschool families, and we're expecting something like 50 or 60 homeschool families.

Very exciting. I'm thrilled to be able to host this at our church. Well, right before we got to practicum, one of our computers crashed.

Very important computer, and we can't play some of the videos that we need to play without it.

So I had to make a run to get a new one and have spent the evening trying to hook it up. There's been some bugs to work out and some of those kinds of things, and then

I've got to get up early in the morning, and I'm kind of opening the conference with worship and with a devotional.

And so I'm going to do this rather quick, but I still wanted to be able to provide a devotional for you today.

So we're going to come back to Romans chapter 15. We finished the chapter yesterday, but there's something that I wanted to share, and let's go to Romans 15, starting in verse 14.

I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able to instruct one another.

But on some points I have written to you very boldly by way of reminder because of the grace given to me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the

Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the

Holy Spirit. The Apostle Paul had talked about coming to Rome so that he might share the gospel with them.

And he had talked about this at the very beginning of the letter, where he said that I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you, that is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith, both yours and mine.

That was Romans chapter 1, verses 11 and 12. And then in verses 14 and 15, he says,

I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish.

So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome. Now we know that we're supposed to preach the gospel to the lost, right?

That should be a given. But why do we preach the gospel to one another? Why would we preach the gospel to those who have already heard it and received it?

Let me give you kind of an illustration, and I'll bring this to a point here at the end. This past Sunday, I was sitting in my office before church started.

I usually get to the church about 7, 7 .30 on a Sunday morning, get things ready. I spend some time in meditation and prayer, also get songs ready, and sometimes

I'll sit at the piano and play and just kind of sing to myself, and I'll have kind of a worship moment there with the

Lord as I'm preparing my mind and heart for the service that morning. Well, at about 8 .30,

the band usually doesn't come in until about 9 o 'clock, and then we go through songs together. At 8 .30, I was sitting at my desk listening to one of the songs that we were going to be doing, and I heard the front door bell ding.

I thought it was Archie, one of our deacons, though he usually comes in the back door. But still,

I didn't pay much mind to it until there was a man standing in the door to my office that I didn't recognize, and I looked up and I said, yeah, may

I help you? And he said, well, I'm traveling from this place to this place. I don't remember where he was coming from and where he was going now, but he said,

I need some help on my journey, and I was wondering if you had any funds set aside to be able to help me with something like that.

And I said, well, no, we don't, and he said, do you take a love offering for this sort of a thing? I didn't really know what he meant by that, like pass a basket around during church and say, hey, this man needs help, so would you put money in for this guy that we don't know?

I don't know if that's what he was asking for or not, but I just reiterated again that we don't have funds set aside.

And he said that, you know, he was asking if there was anything that I could do to help. And I said, well, I've taken folks down to the gas station down here, and I can fill up your tank with gas if you want to do that.

And he said, well, sure, I'd love that. And I said, I tried to talk him into staying for church. I said, is there a chance that I could get you to stay for, you know, attend a

Sunday school class with us, go to church, and then I could buy you lunch and fill up your tank after? And he said, he said, no,

I really need to get back on the road. I didn't have any reason to question him. He had his reasons for that. But I said,

OK, we'll come down to the gas station with me here. I'll fill up, fill up your tank for you. So we got down there and and as I was filling up his tank,

I gave him a John Piper book and he said he actually had two of them with him. And he mentioned one title that I recognize and one that I didn't recognize.

And we talked about Cowper and Bunyan, and he said that he was actually saved reading

John Bunyan Pilgrim's Progress. And so we talked about that a little bit and then we got to the end of the tank, you know, it felt that thing dinged and it filled up.

So we pulled the pump out and I said to him, Paul, Paul was his name. I said, would you mind if I prayed for you before you go?

And he said, sure, that would be great. And so I don't remember exactly what I prayed, but I set my hand on his shoulder and I know that somewhere in the prayer

I said something to this effect. He had talked about having a bum tire on his truck. And so I had prayed that that members of the body of Christ would come along to show kindness to another fellow member in helping to fill his tank up, give him some food, help him on his journey.

And that somebody would even step up, be able to replace the tire on his truck. May we as the body of Christ be able to show love to one another and encourage one another in this way.

Something to that effect. And I said, amen. And he said, well, thank you, brother. I said, yeah, no problem.

It was sure a pleasure to meet you. And he said, but you know, not everybody who is in Christ is part of the body of Christ.

And I was really puzzled by that. And I said, well, what do you mean? And he said, well, you had said in your prayer and he, you know, repeated back to me something that I said, but not everybody who is in Christ Jesus is also part of the body of Christ.

And I said, well, we, though many are one body in Christ and individually members of one another, that's

Romans 12, five. And and Paul said, well, yeah, but Paul wrote

Romans before he wrote Ephesians. And I stopped him right there. And I said,

Paul, it's all relevant. We have to be under the authority of all the all of the scriptures.

We don't just pick and choose the parts that we like. And he just dismissed that. I was saying that. And he said in Ephesians chapter one,

Paul says that we have received the heavenly blessings. And so that's where my blessings are.

They are in heaven. And I followed him around his truck. He still wanted to go inside and use the bathroom and grab a snack or something like that.

And so I followed him and I said, I said, Paul, I think you're making excuses for why you don't go to church.

And now I'm doubting as to whether or not you're even part of the body of Christ. And if that's the case, you're not in Christ either.

And he said to me, I've considered all of the things that you're saying before. And I said, no, Paul, I don't think that you have, because Christ built the church.

He founded it on the apostles. And we've been commanded to go to church. This is a command. It's not an option.

You've got to go to church. You cannot grow with the body of Christ. You cannot grow into Christ.

As Paul talks about in Ephesians, Ephesians chapter four, unless you're doing it with the body.

We grow together into the head who is Christ. And he said, I know what you're talking about and still walking away from me.

I said, no, Paul, I don't think that you that you know what I'm saying. And eventually

I just had to let him go. I was not making any sort of an impact on him whatsoever. Folks, when we try to grow on our own outside of the body, this is what happens.

We pick and choose the verses of scripture that we like that best supports our doctrine and our theology that we have established for ourselves.

But that's not the point that I want to make about why we preach the gospel to one another.

So why is it that even though we've heard the gospel and we've received it, that we are to preach the gospel to each other?

It's so that we are constantly reminded we still inhabit this flesh. We are prone to forget.

We preach the gospel to one another so that we are constantly reminded we did not do this on our own.

We don't do this on our own. We did not. We did nothing to save ourselves.

As Jonathan Edwards said, you contribute nothing to your salvation, but the sin that made it possible.

We did nothing to save ourselves. We do nothing to grow in this process of sanctification, except that God is the one who makes it possible.

Jesus saved you. And Jesus is the one who keeps you saved. He is the one who grows you in holiness and sanctification.

You did not do this on your own at any stage in your salvation. And so you cannot even do this process of sanctification on your own either.

It is the work of God in his people. We read in Titus chapter 2 that Christ gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people who are zealous for good works.

Tim Challies has said, and I mentioned this in the introduction to this episode, sanctification is a community project.

You don't sanctify yourself. We are sanctified by Christ through the members of the body of Christ.

Don't think that church is something you can do by yourself or on the internet. You were meant to fellowship with a body of believers, growing one another, encouraging and admonishing one another, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, making music in your heart to God, as it says in Colossians chapter 3.

That's something that we do with the entire body of Christ. That's what

I wanted to share with you today. Do not fool yourself into thinking that you can be a Christian by yourself.

If you think that there's a good possibility, you might not be a Christian at all. Dear Lord, I pray and ask that we are convicted by these scriptures and we understand that we do not do salvation on our own.

We were not saved on our own. We don't grow in sanctification on our own. Holiness does not come from us.

It comes from Christ. And so Lord, I pray that we would cling to you and in so doing that we are clinging to the body of Christ, the people of God, growing together in sanctification that we might be presented before you on that day of glory, sanctified.

Paul said to the Philippians, He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it on the day of Christ.

So God, convict our hearts to continue in that work which you began and continue in it to the very end by the power of Christ and in his name we pray.

Amen. Gabriel Hughes is the pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.