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listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsack preaches from his series in the

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Book of Romans, A Righteousness from God. Let's listen in. Well, welcome, everybody.

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As Dave said, I'm Don Filsack. I'm the lead pastor here, and I want to start off by welcoming all of you. I recognize that for many of you, this is routine.

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Some of you, this is your first time here, so a special welcome to those of you that are gathering together with us for the first time.

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Glad that you're here as well. It's been a joy over the years for us as a church to gather in different locations.

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We originally met out at a storefront out on Red Arrow for a season. We set up and tore down at the center building in the cafeteria at the schools for several years, and then

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God granted us the ability to build this building. And so we're just grateful for the things that God has done in us and through us over the years here in this community.

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And the reality is the good news of salvation through the cross of Jesus Christ has shaped us over the years.

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That's really been the rallying point for us as a church is the gospel, the good news that Jesus Christ came and died for us, that by faith we can have hope and trust in a future with him.

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And so we continue here at this church. We continue on with that original goal of growing in faith, growing in community, and growing in service.

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And this morning in our text that we're going to be looking at from the book of Romans, I really hope and pray and have been praying all week that this is another chance for us to be challenged in these three areas of growth that all of us need, really from the truth of his word, that his word comes in, we believe it, we trust it, and then we go out and we live according to it.

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And so our text this morning out of the Holy Scriptures really concludes the teaching portion of Paul's letter to the

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Romans. It doesn't conclude the book, but it concludes that portion in which he's attempting to directly teach and instruct the church.

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And he ends with a final application of the gospel of Jesus Christ. How do we apply it? How do we put it into practice?

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Because really, you see, Paul had no delusions that the gospel was a solitary, individualistic, personal kind of thing.

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I believe and I just go on with my life with God and it's just me and God. But as he concludes with the final application of the gospel, how do we put it into practice in our lives?

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This text stands as a potentially surprising application in what I feel and what I sense in our culture is highly individualistic.

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Do you guys know what I'm talking about? How many of you feel that in your day to day? Highly individualistic, my career, my plans, my agenda, my, my, my, my iPhone, my iPad, my, all

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I, I, I, or me, me, me. And so our text is most concerned with us putting the gospel into action.

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And if I just gave you the instruction right now and concluded the message with this instruction, go out and apply the gospel this week.

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If I told you that what God wants us all to do this week is to put the gospel to work in your life, what would you do?

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Answer that question. If I told you to go out and gospel this week, what would you do? What actions would take up your week trying to apply the gospel?

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Would you, would you take it as a call to share the gospel with others? Maybe some of you would say, well, to gospel means to go out and evangelize, to share that with others.

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Or would you take it as a call to have maybe a more vibrant, quiet time and meet with God in the morning and read the

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Bible and pray more? Or would you change maybe what you watched on TV in order to apply the gospel?

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Or would you avoid sin more this week and really enter into that battle against sin?

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You see, all of those would be good things, right? Would it be good things if you did those things? Share the gospel, read your

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Bible more, avoid sin, be more careful with what you watch on TV and what you put into your mind and all of that stuff. Of course, that would be good.

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And they could indeed all flow out of the gospel. But what Paul is calling us as a church to in the application of these seven verses we're going to read here in a moment is a bit more relational than that.

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So see if you can get what Paul is calling us to do in applying the gospel to our lives as we read this text that wraps up the teaching section of the book of Romans.

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So if you're not already there, turn over in your Bibles, navigate in your device over to Romans chapter 15 verses 7 through 13.

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Grab your Bible or like I said, grab your device. I do recommend if you have an Apple product,

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I recommend the ESV Bible app if you don't have that one. I read out of the English Standard Version of the Bible. I really love the search interface of that app.

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And so if you go to the iTunes store, the app store and look up that Bible app, that's the one that I recommend.

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So Romans chapter 15 verses 7 through verse 13 recasts

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God's precious and holy word. When we read this, He, the

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Almighty One is speaking to us. Therefore, welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you for the glory of God.

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For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs and in order that the

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Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy as it is written. Therefore, I will praise you among the

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Gentiles and sing to your name. And again it is said, rejoice oh Gentiles with His people.

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And again, praise the Lord all you Gentiles and let all the peoples extol Him. And again

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Isaiah says, the root of Jesse will come. Even he who arises to rule the

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Gentiles, in him will the Gentiles hope. May the

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God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing so that by the power of the

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Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. Let's pray. Father, I do ask that this would be fulfilled in our midst.

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I've seen people loving each other even this week. I've seen people caring for the needs of others around them.

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I've seen people who are hurting, who are being lifted up in prayer and being raised up.

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And I see a strong sense of unity. But Father, I am not deceived into thinking that we're 100 % on this one.

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We're fallen and we're broken. And so Father, I pray that you would be increasing our hope.

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You would be increasing our unity here. You would be increasing joy and peace in our midst.

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Father, that you would help us to be a people who go out and apply the gospel by loving each other. Certainly by sharing the gospel out there.

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Certainly by waging a war with sin as we see it in our own hearts and lives. But Father, one of those prominent sins is the divisiveness that wells up in the human heart.

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The division that we could cause between ourselves and others. The gossip, the slander, the ways that we could talk poor and ill of each other.

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And so Father, I pray that you would be continuing your plan of unity and love here in our midst.

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What a privilege it is that we have to sing together. Just that in itself is a unifying thing, that our voices would blend together in one voice before your throne.

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And so Father, I pray that that would be a reality in our midst. That even the singing of these songs would be a uniting event under the words and the reflection of sound theology and good worship to you.

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Father, I pray that you would receive our voices as worship to you. In Jesus' name, amen.

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Yeah, you can go ahead and be seated. And if you can find your place and keep your

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Bibles open or your device open to Romans chapter 15 verses 7 through 13. During the remainder of our time, our goal is going to be to focus on that passage of Scripture.

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Kind of dig into it and see what God has for us. But remember, if at any time you need to get up and get more coffee, juice, or doughnuts, you can take advantage of that.

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And again, just to keep our focus on God's Word as much as possible during the remainder of our time. If gospel could be used as a verb, what would the action be?

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If I told you to gospel, you would rightly be confused because it isn't a verb.

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It's a noun. It means good news. But Paul sat down to write a long letter to the church in Rome.

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And we've gone through it. We've read it together. We've studied it together. And the primary intent of this entire letter has been to clarify the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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He wants to make sure that we know that it isn't by works. It isn't by keeping the law. It isn't by our good deeds that were saved.

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And so in chapter 1, he was abundantly clear that the wrath of God is being poured out on all ungodliness and unrighteousness.

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That what we obtain, kind of like the earnings of a life that is ungodly is the wrath of God.

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The earnings of a life that is unrighteous is the wrath of God. And then through chapter 3, he indicted all of humanity as ungodly and unrighteous.

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So let's do the logic in our minds from just understanding what the flow of the gospel really is.

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God's wrath is poured out on unrighteousness. All humans, regardless of how religious or irreligious we are, are declared according to Scripture to be unrighteous.

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Now let's do another exercise. Raise your hand if you're human. That's all of us, right? And so all humans,

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I just said, regardless of how religious or irreligious, are destined for God's wrath. Therefore, we all who just testified that we are human are worthy of the wrath of Almighty God.

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But then Paul gives the good news set in the backdrop of that terrible, terrifying news.

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He spent several chapters explaining that there is a righteousness that is available to we who are ungodly, to we who are unrighteous in ourselves.

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It's available as a gift from God. How many of you think that's good news? Praise God. A gift of righteousness available to you by faith in His Son, Jesus Christ, who gave

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His life on the cross to pay the penalty that our unrighteousness earned.

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He taking the wrath of the Father on Himself in our place as our substitute so that we can be declared righteous.

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And all who trust in Him are rescued, and their feet are set on the road of eternal life based on the forgiveness and the righteousness granted through Jesus Christ.

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Is that good news? That's the best news. That's the greatest of all news possible. And that is the good news that's set in the backdrop of terrible news.

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We all deserve His wrath. And so in yourself, what He's been getting at all throughout the book of Romans is that in yourself you have no righteousness, and you deserve the wrath of a very powerful and true

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Creator, God. But in Christ, you are granted righteousness from God that brings you into His family.

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We can be adopted into His family through faith in Christ. So that's the gospel. That's the good news. You deserve condemnation as a rebel against God.

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You have been given salvation and the righteousness of Christ if you're trusting in Him as your King and Savior. And so how do we live out that good news?

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Knowing that that is the gospel. Knowing that that is the whole thing that He was explaining for the first 11 chapters of the book of Romans.

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So look at verse 7 of our text this morning here. Verse 7 of chapter 15. Therefore, as a result of these things, therefore welcome one another as Christ, in this way, like this, as Christ welcomed you.

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He is intentionally going back to the gospel and pointing to the gospel for the way that we welcome one another in the church, the way we treat each other here in this gathering.

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He's speaking to a real church in Rome, a real gathering of people just like us. It's just a different context and a different time.

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But He's speaking to them and He's saying welcome one another, greet one another, encourage one another, live with one another, love one another, together.

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How has Christ welcomed you? Just think about that for a minute. What words come to your mind when you think about the way that Jesus welcomed you if you're a child of God?

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What kind of words would you use? Somebody throw out a word. Unconditionally.

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Yes. Anyone else? Welcome? Yes, He welcomed us.

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On purpose. Someone else? Forgiveness?

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Love? Yes, good words. Mercy. Grace. Sacrifice. Forgiveness.

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Love. All of these and more that we could just probably spend some time going over the ways that we have been received and welcomed into the family of God through Jesus Christ.

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He's saying that way, when you think about the way that Christ received you, receive each other that way.

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Receive one another that way. You see, to apply the gospel requires, hear me carefully recast, it requires relationship with one another.

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We must be in relationship with one another in order to gospel right.

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And I'm not talking about evangelism and sharing the good news with others. Now that's part and parcel of our call.

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We are indeed called to do that. But He's really referring to the church. He's talking about the way that we roll with one another in here.

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And that's the fundamental thing of the gospel first, getting it right in here so that we know how to live out there.

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The text is clear that the gospel, the very way that Jesus accepted us, is the way that we should roll and interact and love on each other within the church.

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And I don't think it's possible for me to overstate the centrality of relationships in applying the gospel to our daily lives.

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You see, in the Middle Ages, there were a group of men, mostly that came out of monasteries. They were monks, and they were known as the ascetics.

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The ascetics would basically not eat cake. They wouldn't eat anything that was delicious. They kind of tried to starve their body.

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Some of them would just eat bread and water. And many of them, actually, in the Middle Ages, they moved out into the desert to be alone and live kind of a hermit type of lifestyle because they thought that the way that you drew closer to God was in isolation.

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How many of you know that if you don't have to interact with other people, you'll sin less? So they had a little bit of that notion there.

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There's a little bit of reality to that, isn't there? There's less room for friction if you just have to deal with yourself.

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Now, there's still plenty, I mentioned last week, there's still plenty of room for friction if you're the only one in the room. Whenever you get frustrated with yourself, you get angry at yourself.

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As a matter of fact, they say that one of the things that terrifies Americans the most is being alone with your own thoughts.

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Right? We always have to have music going. We always have to have sound. We always have to have stuff going on because we don't like to spend time alone with ourselves.

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Well, the ascetics were the exact opposite. They thought that the way that a person draws closer to God is in isolation.

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That they needed to be alone and that the best place for a person to be was alone with just me and God.

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But consider early on in scripture, God said something quite opposite to that.

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God literally said, it is not good for the man to be alone. Right?

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And so he made a helper for him. Now, the context of that is obviously male and female, but the statement stands that the first thing that God declared to be not good was aloneness.

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The very first thing he said, this is not good, was being alone. And God didn't create a defect in the system on accident.

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It was all with intention. It wasn't like he was like, oh, whoop, I made a mistake. I forgot to create a woman for the man.

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He did all of that with intention. And I believe that he created Adam alone so that he could say that aloneness is not good in a dramatic way.

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So that Adam could experience aloneness and recognize the need for relationship.

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And that he could make that statement, it's not good to be alone. And once again, just like the third point from verse six, if you kind of glance back at verse six from the sermon last week, it was our final point in the sermon.

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Looking at the first few verses of this, we see that our unity in welcoming one another is for the glory of God.

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The purpose of our unity is worship. Our unity itself, our togetherness, our love and our care and our concern for one another is worship.

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Not just singing together, I mean, that's a great thing. How many of you enjoy singing together? It's a good part of the service and I love that.

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And I love the opportunity to lift my voices up together with you. There's something that's glorious and beautiful about the opportunity that we have every

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Sunday to do that. But more than that, all week long can be worship as we serve one another, love one another, care for one another, text and check in with each other, and hold each other accountable, and do life together, and get engaged in our community groups together, and study together, and all of those different things.

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It's a form of worship. And early in Romans, Paul highlighted that the gospel is the righteousness of God for all who believe.

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And thinking about relationships and thinking about the way that the church comes together, he said it is for the Jew first and then also for the

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Greek. And we actually saw the Apostle Paul use that model and that framework as kind of an overlay for his missionary work.

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So when he went into his community, where did he go first? He always went to the synagogue first. The first thing he did was he went to the

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Jewish manifestation of religion in that community and shared the gospel there first. And as soon as they rejected him, then he turned to the

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Gentiles and said, well, if they won't listen, how about you? He recognized that the gospel is for everybody, but he always wanted to start with the

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Jews first because they were the Old Testament chosen people of God. And surrounding that Old Testament people, we know that over their history and over the course of time, there was a hostility that developed toward the rest of the world, an animosity towards the way that the pagan

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Gentiles worked, and with good reason. I mean, remember that in Jewish history, there were pagan tribes around them that sacrificed their children on altars.

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They did detestable things. And not only that, I mean, even in Jesus' time, through the

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Jewish mind, they ate detestable things. They couldn't fellowship together, they couldn't eat together, they couldn't go in each other's houses was the idea.

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And so, you know, there was that animosity that could develop or the priority about my people are better than your people kind of mindset.

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And so around here, we might say, if you ain't Dutch, you ain't much, right? I'm Polish, so I don't know where that puts me.

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I know it's not very Dutch, but we know that here in West Michigan. But there was a theme woven throughout the letter to the church in Rome, this letter, that has been the bringing together of Jews and Gentiles into one church under the lordship of our

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Savior, Jesus Christ. That's been part of the whole big theme, the gospel, explain the gospel, and explain how it brings together people, how it unifies the church, how it puts us all together in one big picture thing that God is doing around the world.

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And so verses 8 and 9 show that even as Paul has been talking about unity within the church, he's been driving toward a unity that encompasses people of different religious backgrounds, people from different ethnic backgrounds, people from different racial backgrounds, forming one church where the goal and the hope is people from every tribe, tongue, people, nation, ethnicity, race, gathered around that glorious throne in the end, with a new heaven and a new earth, singing the praises of God.

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A glorious and beautiful day. Does anybody here look forward to that day? The walls are all down, and the worship is pure, and the sin is gone.

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Oh, I long for that day. A great picture. So verse 8 shows, verse 8 takes half of the equation, and in verse 8 he's showing that God had in mind the

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Jews when he sent Jesus, when he welcomed in people through Jesus Christ, and he welcomed in the

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Jews, he had Jews in mind, and so it says he became a servant to the circumcised, which is really just there as maybe the most uncomfortable way to say

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Jews, right? I mean, thanks Paul for bringing that into the equation, but I think he does so because he wants to point back to Abraham, the father of the

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Jewish nation, and that covenant of circumcision that was given to him, that's why he mentions it here in the text, is to highlight the covenant,

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God who actually makes promises to his people, and then in turn fulfills those promises.

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Promises given to Abraham, part of that sealing of that promise was the right of circumcision that was given to him.

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But still thinking about the gospel, Paul says, Jesus served salvation up to the Jews, through the gospel, as a way to preserve the faithfulness, or in the text it says specifically truthfulness of God, but you can imagine how truthfulness and faithfulness go hand -in -hand with one another, and I think he is really getting down to,

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God is faithful to keep his promises. He speaks what is true, and always fulfills that truth that he speaks.

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And there were all kinds of Old Testament promises for a Messiah, right? A Messiah who would come, who would be the rescuer and the hero of his people, one who would come and crush the head of that wicked ancient serpent, all the way back in Genesis chapter 3, at the very beginning of the

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Bible, is the prediction that one born of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. A hero who would come and destroy that ancient enemy of humans,

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Satan himself. There's so many promises that were given to the patriarchs, and you see it in verse 8 there, that he would be shown to be truthful and a fulfiller of promises.

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There was one repeated promise that one would be born of the offspring of Abraham, and through him all the nations of the earth,

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Gentiles, all peoples would be blessed through him. There are promises that one would be born of the line of King David, who would take the throne forever, and his kingdom will have no end.

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He will sit on the throne forever and ever, eternally ruling and reigning over his people.

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And Jesus was sent to show that God is not a liar. God is faithful and he is true in all that he says.

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He made good on those promises given to the patriarchs through the welcoming of Jesus Christ, through his welcoming of peoples, including first and foremost

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Jews, into the family of God. So the gospel brings good news to the Jews, highlighting the honesty and the faithfulness of God.

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But notice that verse 9 comes quickly on the heels of verse 8, because what I picture is, you got to remember that this letter was read in its entirety, probably in one sitting at a church gathering.

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Like, we got a letter from Paul, says the leader of the church in Rome, and he steps up and he has one copy, and he reads it, or the messenger who brought it from Paul stands up and reads it in the sitting.

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And I have a picture in my mind that you've got Jews and Gentiles gathered together in the room, and when verse 8 comes into play, the

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Jews are like, oh yeah, see, it was all about us. See, he came to prove the old covenant to his people, and we, we are still the chosen people.

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But not so fast, because verse 9, verse 9 comes. Can you see the tendency in our own hearts?

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Do you have a tendency in your own heart to make it all about you? And I think that's the problem within the church that this whole letter is partly written to address, is the way that we can war with one another, the way that we can think of ins and outs and that type of stuff.

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And so verse 9 begins with the word, and. Not just the Jews, Jews and Gentiles.

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Whoa, say the Jews, okay, sit back down. There's more to the message than just what God is doing with us.

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He also came for the Gentiles, so that we also might be brought into the text as glorifying

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God for His mercy. That all the nations might be brought in to glorify God for His great mercy.

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You see, we who did not pursue Him through the law are those He is bringing in.

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Our non -Jewish ancestors worshipped all kinds of things that were not God. That's our tradition, that's our history, that's where our people, you trace your line back, if you're not of Jewish blood, then you trace your line back and you're getting to pagans pretty quick.

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Do you understand what I'm saying? That's where our line goes, that's where our ancestry goes.

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And so he's highlighting that he's brought us in as well.

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Yet earlier in verse 11, Paul talked about the Gentiles being like a wild olive shoot, and that's our history, that's our ancestry, wild olive shoot, being grafted into a cultivated tree.

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The roots are the Jewish faith, but we are like branches brought into the benefits of an ancient tradition that was not ours by ancestry and lineage, brought into a salvation that we didn't deserve.

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So in the gospel, do you realize that you don't get the wrath that you deserved? Do you realize that?

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I mean, I mentioned that earlier, and that's part of that wrath poured out on ungodliness and on unrighteousness, but that's no longer over our heads.

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That is what is meant by the word mercy here in verse 9. What we deserved was to be shut out in wrath due to our ungodliness and our unrighteousness, but in Christ, it says the

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Gentiles sing his praises. And Paul, who loved the Old Testament, now goes into, you know, probably

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I picture it to be one of his favorite parts of his letters, you know, kind of like, oh, I like the way that this got crafted, but he begins to quote the

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Old Testament, and he quotes the law, the writings, and the prophets, all three of the divisions by which the

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Jews would divide scripture. So we can talk about Old Testament, and we talk about New Testament, we talk about letters, we talk about gospels, we can talk about historical books, we divide it up into a bunch of things, they would have said law, writings, and prophets.

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And so he makes sure that he quotes from all of them, identifying that the Gentiles were brought in by the ultimate plan of God himself.

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In verse 9, he quotes, he starts out by quoting the writings. He quotes two of the writings. He quotes

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Psalm 18, verse 49, which has King David of Israel, the great, awesome, powerful, mighty

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King David of Israel, declaring an expected future in which he would one day praise

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God among the Gentiles. This would be like mind -blowing to the Jews.

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They probably skipped over this in their daily reading, or it just passed over their minds like, well, there's something about Gentiles there, but let's quick get on to the

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Jews. And the indication from the original context is that the Gentiles would be singing and praising

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God, the same God of Israel as well, among the Gentiles.

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This is crazy important for the Jews of Paul's time to get this, to let this sink in. Their great

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King David had some sense of hope in his writing, in the writings. He had hope for non -Jews.

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And verse 10 doesn't seem at face value to add very much. If you look at verse 10 in light of verse 9, they look very similar, but this is a quote from Deuteronomy in verse 10.

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Deuteronomy 32, 43. And it seems to say about the same thing as the

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Psalm that's quoted in verse 9. So why repeat it? Why spend more ink? But the

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Gentiles, it says, will rejoice with Israel. But once again, it matters who's saying it. It's very important for defining the unity of the church, that early church.

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Not just the Psalms declared hope for the Gentiles. Not only did great King David declare hope for the

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Gentiles, but so did the Torah. So did the Pentateuch, the first five books of the

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Old Testament that was the core of the Jewish faith. Those first five books that are credited and given to Moses.

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And this shows the Gentiles being commanded to come together with Israel to praise and worship their

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God. All the way back in Deuteronomy, there were promises that this is not just for the

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Jews. This is for the uniting of peoples all around the world. So let me pause for just a minute and explain why does this matter?

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What does it have to do with us here in Matawan in 2020? Why in the world would we be talking about this? Why does the church, recast, need to hear about this?

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But here's the point. The animosity between Jew and Gentile before the church came into being was radical and hostile.

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So what God is doing is bringing a melting pot of people in the church together who might not necessarily like each other.

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That's the point. See, Jews didn't go into the homes of Gentiles, as I mentioned before. They couldn't eat in the same places.

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Jews called Gentiles dogs and pigs. They hated each other. And worse of all, in this context, when

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Paul's writing this, the Jewish nation is literally subjugated and under oppression and occupation by those pagan

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Gentiles, the Romans. They own them. They are heavily taxing them. They rule them, and their soldiers are the ones who keep the

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Jews in line. They are dominated by those pagan

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Gentiles. So to bring Jews and Gentiles together in one church in that context was so radical that we have a hard time matching that in our minds with any kind of contemporary issue that we might face here today.

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I think the only thing I could think of that might be similar, and it's not something that I live through, but it's something that I read about and I come to some understanding, but I think it would be like even worse, even harder, even more difficult in the mind of unity, like bringing blacks and whites together in the deep south in the 1950s during that terrible era of segregation.

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And imagine bringing a church together in Alabama in the 50s to worship together with blacks and whites together.

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But I actually think, in all honesty, I think it would have been harder to bring Jews and Gentiles together.

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Because not only do you have the racial divide and the difficulties and all the ignorance that happened in that era of our time, but you also have a deep -seated religious animosity.

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How many of you know that that can even just cut deeper? To associate with you is to risk being on the outs with God, the

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Jew thought. So can you imagine what's at risk here in the early church?

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I think what's at risk, as Paul is writing the book of Romans, is literally in the early stages of Christianity, what's at risk is the formation of two religions.

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Two different religions following or attempting to follow after Jesus Christ. Imagine a Jewish expression of the

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Christian faith and a Gentile version of the Christian faith. And the Jewish one is more laws and rules and regulations, and the

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Gentile one is more loosey -goosey. And so Paul's extensive quoting of the

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Old Testament is here, and it serves to show that unity was always the thing that God was driving for in his church.

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A faith under Christ for the whole world, regardless of history, regardless of background, regardless of ethnicity or race or religious background, his goal has always been one people together, praising

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Jesus from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. That's been what he's driving for.

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I hope that has significant practical implications for what we're striving for here as a church, a unity that is radical.

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Verse 11 once again quotes from the Psalms, and it's 117 .1, the shortest of all of the

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Psalms. Psalm 117 is only two verses. He quotes the first one here, and it has the Gentiles being told to praise the

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Lord, and this one makes explicit the point that praising the Lord is for all people.

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All people. He emphasizes, he just lets loose with the word all. All peoples should praise

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God. And the final quote brings in the final category of scripture for the Jewish mindset.

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Remember, he's reading this in the gathering of God's people, and he's saying Gentiles are also to be brought into the worship of God, and they divided that Old Testament into law, writings, and prophets, and so he hasn't quoted a prophet yet, so he grabs one of the prophets, and he says,

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Isaiah, come here and testify. Isaiah 11 .10, where Isaiah predicted the coming of the

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Messiah, and he calls the Messiah the root of Jesse, meaning that he will be a descendant of Jesse, who is the father of King David, and he predicted that the

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Messiah would also rule the Gentiles, and in him, listen to this, in the Messiah, in the

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Jewish Messiah, the Gentiles will find their hope. And we have.

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Praise God, we have. Have you found your hope in the Messiah?

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I don't think that there's any prediction in the Old Testament that's more verifiable than this one.

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There's nothing there that's written that's more concrete for us. Do the Gentiles find their hope in Jesus?

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Yes, we do. Where is the global movement for Jesus Christ?

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It is among the Gentiles. It's in South Korea, which is starting to vastly outpace us in the sending out of missionaries.

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It is found in Brazil, in movements of evangelicals, small pockets of evangelicals who are rising up in England and throughout

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Western Europe. The church in Eastern Europe that's coming out from underneath persecution and is growing.

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The church in China, where there's glorious things happening even in the midst of suffering and difficulty.

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Pray for China. I have the fear that many of us, even in this room, are just glad that we don't live in China right now, and that might be as far as it gets when we think about this coronavirus thing.

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Well, it's not going to touch me. I live here in, you know, we've got really good health care here, right?

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Do you know what I'm saying? And I'm not talking about fear -mongering. I'm saying pray. Pray for people. Do you love other people or is it just us?

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As long as we can hide out in our house, we're okay. Or do we love others and do we recognize that what

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God is doing is this global, big, glorious, majestic thing? Globally working with people.

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This is a beautiful thing. In him will the Gentiles find their hope. There are more

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Christians in China than there are in America, according to statistics. Did you know that? Pray for the church.

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A lot of it's underground. A lot of it's in hiding. A lot of those pastors get arrested. They're persecuted. They hide out in basements, and they are growing because the gospel.

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There's a quote. I can't give it to somebody, but there's a quote from a Chinese pastor who said, don't pray that the persecution ends.

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Pray that we grow in the midst of it. Pray that we grow in the midst of it. The Gentiles are bringing glory to the

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Messiah. In four short quotations, Paul has made a solid case for the

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Jews, the religious, to worship together with the Gentiles. He made a strong case to the church in Rome to welcome one another into fellowship and to worship together in unity.

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He is appealing to us together today, Recast. For us, it may not be the strong Jewish -Gentile divide that we have to face today.

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It's really not a reality. I actually did just read an article. It was interesting. I had already written this sermon on Wednesday.

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I think our World Magazine, any of you get World Magazine or even know what I'm talking about? There's a magazine that kind of gives news from a

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Christian perspective. It's actually a great magazine, but the cover article was about the rise of anti -Semitism that's really happening in our nation.

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I have a hard time understanding, so I had to read it to really understand that there is, once again, a rise of anti -Semitism that's going on around us.

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It's happening in Western Europe. It's happening here, but I don't think that that's primarily what we're facing here in our community, but we do face within ourselves the desire to exclude people.

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Every church that has ever divided has found someone to exclude. We just choose to express our animus over more silly things like the style of worship or end -times theology or the carpet color or preferences for church polity or whatever it might be.

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Who should and shouldn't be welcomed here, Recast, and that's a fundamental honest question from this text. Who should be welcomed here?

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Who should and shouldn't be a recipient of love and care within this church? We've intentionally sought to make the bar fairly low for membership here at Recast.

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As much as possible, we would love it to be the case that anyone who has asked

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Jesus Christ by faith to be their King and Savior can be a member with us here, but I don't think welcoming one another is merely your stance on church membership or even maybe more a paltry in our mind is just the notion that welcoming people.

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Yeah, we've got a welcome team. We've got people who stand out at the door and hand out worship folders and greet people, which, by the way,

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I'm very grateful for that team. I'm so grateful. They stand out there in the cold. They stand out there in the heat in the summer, and they're willing to be the first person to extend a handshake and welcome you.

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I'm just very grateful for that greeting team, but what's going on here in this text is more than just merely that kind of welcoming.

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Welcoming one another is an attitude of unity and care for one another. All throughout chapter 14 and 15,

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Paul has been talking about bearing with one another, loving one another, taking care of those, even those who are weaker among us, and by concluding the teaching portion of this entire letter by emphasizing unity,

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Paul is revealing his primary application for this gospel expression. What do we do when we're gospeling? Unity expressed in a community of joy is gospeling.

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Unity expressed in a community of peace is gospeling. Unity expressed in an ever -increasing hope in our midst is gospeling.

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All of this joy, peace, and increasing hope is brought to us through the power of His Holy Spirit, he says in verse 13.

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He also expresses that there's an intermediate cause to our joy and peace. He says, certainly the

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Holy Spirit is the one that we're depending on to bring it to us, but the intermediate means by which we obtain joy and peace is in believing.

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In our faith in the gospel, we find joy and peace, and a joy and peace that flows ultimately out of hope.

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How many of you know that if you don't have the hope for heaven, you're going to scramble and claw and fight for every ounce that this life can give you, and it's still never going to satisfy you?

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Without Christ, without hope, without hope for something beyond this life, oh, you're in a miserable state.

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And so think of it this way. To gospel this week, you need to dwell with one another in joy and peace.

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When you gospel this week, you love one another in unity. That's what it is. When you're gospeling, you are welcoming others for whom

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Christ died. So as we consider how to apply this text that deals with an ancient problem of division and disunity, every application ought to be relational as we think about this text, as we think about applying the gospel.

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It's all in relationship. And let me also suggest to you that not every application is doing.

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I fear that a lot of times our mindset is that to apply the word is to make a checklist to do this week.

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But how many of you know that sometimes when you encounter the word, the number one thing that God wants to do is change your mind about things.

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He wants you to think differently. And so let me throw out three possible applications where there could be 20 or 25 applications from this text.

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But for you, and that's one of the things I fear. It's kind of funny. In a preaching class, I raised my hand and I said, do we have to have an application at the end?

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The professor's like, yes, you have to have an application at the end. And I was like, I don't like to give application. This is part of the way that I'm built and I'm designed, but I don't like to give an application because I don't want you off the hook.

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If I give you the three things that God told me to do this week as a result of this, or three ways that he's shifting my thinking, then you go, well, that's not,

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I'm doing those. And you walk away and you don't feel the pressure. So that's why I'm verbally telling you, ask the spirit right now, what do you want me to do as a result of hearing this text this morning?

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And it might be something that's completely different than any of these three things that I say. But from verse seven, this is one of the things that God pressed on me, adopt unity with others as a part of my definition of worship.

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A part of my definition of worship. How do you define worship? Is unity with your brothers and sisters in Christ sitting around you right now, is that part of your definition of worship?

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Or is worship singing on Sunday morning? Or is it doing a really good job this week? Or is it praising

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God for a sunrise as you're on your way to work? Is that it? Is worship something you do on your own except for once in a while you sing some songs together?

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Or is it loving each other? Is it caring for one another? And that's what God pressed on my heart this week, is to define worship, to allow my definition of worship to grow broader and to encompass unity within the church.

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Love, welcoming one another, is a part and parcel of what it means to worship God. I believe he wants to shift our mindset to say,

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I'm not getting it if I'm not connecting with other Christians. I'm not really worshipping him as he's intended me, as he's designed me, as he's created me to do, without relationships, without connecting through a community group, without seeking someone to mentor or someone to mentor me, without engaging relationally with one another.

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That's not it. You're not getting it then. The second thing is from verse 9, and it says that Jesus has welcomed us so that we might glorify

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God for his mercy. We need to be a people of praise and thanks to God.

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All the time, routinely, throughout our lives, look at the quotes talking about our attitude towards God because of this mercy, because of this gospel toward us.

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Verse 9, praise and sing to his name. Verse 10, rejoice.

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And again, verse 11, praise the Lord and extol him.

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And in case you struggle with the word extol, I mean, it's kind of a generalized praise word. I just asked

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Siri, and she defined it as to praise enthusiastically. Praise enthusiastically.

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I was like, go for it, Siri. You do that. And in verse 12, further when it talks about our worship,

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I think that this is a worshipful phrase in itself. In him we hope. That's worship.

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To hope in him, to trust in him. Some of you are going through very dark times. You're in a valley right now.

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It's like you're in a cave and you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel, and you're pretty sure when you see the light, it's going to be a train coming for you because you've been hit, and you've been hit, and you've been hit.

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In him we hope. In some seasons, that's the extent of our worship.

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It's just hope. I know, I know that there's more than this. In him we hope.

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What does this life look like for us? A life that takes this on, that really takes the gospel, believes it, and lives it.

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We are to be a people of happy and glad worship. I don't know about you. I can only speak for myself, so again, applications for myself, but too often

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I get drawn down into complaining and grumbling. Probably none of you struggle with that.

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It's probably just a problem for me, although I've seen some of you online, so I know that you can do it too. But I can complain about the weather.

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I can complain about the slow internet. I can complain about people who don't know how to drive, especially when it snows again, and it's like everybody's forgotten what snow is like.

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I can complain about politics. I can complain about the J -Lo halftime show. I can complain about all kinds of things, right?

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And I can tell you all kinds of things that I'm against, to the point where people in my life could define me as what

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I don't like. Yeah, I think some of you are relating, but the picture from this text is that we are being called and welcomed in together, and we are to be welcoming one another in by Jesus to be a people of praise and thankfulness to him.

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Not in isolation, but in community together. Praise him and sing to his name among the

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Gentiles. Rejoice, the text says, with his people together, relationally.

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The last application is believe the gospel. Believe the gospel. Joy and peace flows from faith because faith results in the power of the

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Holy Spirit being brought to us. The very power of the

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Holy Spirit coming into our lives when we believe. And hope is set free in our life by believing in the

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God of hope, as the text says. We come to communion each week to bring things back to the cross of Christ, which is the centerpiece of our hope and our salvation.

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And we do this together. I am not a fan of taking communion alone.

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I would never offer it to anyone alone. As a matter of fact, to the degree that when I do weddings, I've had several people ask me, could we just take communion together up front?

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And I said, where's the church in this? You need the church to take communion. You need to be together when you take communion.

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It is something for all believers in a gathering together. Something that we celebrate together.

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We remember together. It is communion, unity. Togetherness is in that word.

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Togetherness with God and togetherness in relationship with one another. And so if you belong to Jesus Christ, I encourage you to come to the tables to remember his body that was broken, not just for you, but for us.

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To remember his blood that was shed, not just for you, but for us. And before you do this, consider where joy and peace are at in your life today.

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Maybe even before you get in line to go to the table, take assessment about how you're doing in unity with others around you.

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One of the coolest things I ever saw, this is in my notes, but one of the coolest things I ever saw, I got an opportunity to go to an

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Iranian Christian gathering in Atlanta, Georgia when I was working on my master's degree. Many of you don't know this, my master's degree was in Islamic studies.

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I got to study Islam from a Christian perspective and how to share the faith with them and stuff. But part of my degree,

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I went for a weekend and hung out at a mosque and then got a chance to go to this

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Iranian Christian church. And before they took communion, it was eerie. It would make you guys, it would make your skin crawl,

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I guarantee it. But before they took communion, literally there was a time for people to share grievances.

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And to reconcile. And there were people in tears who literally got up and together up front, embraced one another, and said,

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I've been angry at you for weeks. They hugged each other, hugged it out, asked for forgiveness, and then took communion together.

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And it was like, hey, we got five minutes here to get up and just clear the air.

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There's something that's beautiful about that. There's something that's right about that. There's something that's good about that. How many of you that would just freak you out?

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Be honest. Right? No, I'm not doing it this morning, but I am encouraging it. I am saying that we're going to be standing in lines here, and there's nothing that's weird or wrong about you walking across and jumping across a couple of lines to reconcile with somebody who you've been angry with.

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And for some of us in this room, it's probably a person sitting next to us, if we're honest.

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Some of you, did I linger too long to make that awkward? There's a lot of nervous laughter here, but you know exactly what

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I'm talking about. How dare we take communion together and act unified under the remembrance of Jesus Christ while we have animosity and frustration going on between us and our children, us and our spouse?

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Make it right. We might take a little bit of time. We might need a little bit longer. Dave, I hope you can play and vamp this song a little bit, you know?

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Give us a little bit of time to make things right. It's a glorious thing, a glorious application for this.

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By the way, if you need prayer, we're going to do this every Sunday. We're kind of just making this a staple of the church.

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We're not going to do it down here because people are going to be moving those chairs. We're going to do it down here, and we're just going to clear the space out here as quickly as we can and just leave some time and some room for people to pray down here if you would like to.

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If you've got questions about the faith, if you've got things that are dark, things that are going on in your life or even just something to celebrate and you want to praise with someone.

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If you want to just pray alone, you can come up here and just pray alone, but we want to just open that up and become more intentional about providing those opportunities to pray with one another.

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But are you living in joy and peace in this gathering? Are you welcoming others like Christ welcomed you?

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If not, I would encourage you to repent and ask the God of hope to fill you with joy and peace.

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Let's go out from this place to gospel together this week. Our church has had its share of hurts and heartaches over the past few weeks.

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Some of you know, some of you don't, but there's been some hard things that people individually have had to face here, and I've been just pleased, so grateful to see the church rally around those who are hurting and suffering.

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Dozens of meals provided to people, including Linda and I, just after she's had surgery. People have been so gracious to us, but other issues that are going on in people's families and in people's lives, it's been glorious to see this church really loving one another.

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So let's keep this gospel unity at the center as we love each other and praise him together.

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Let's pray. Father, I rejoice and I thank you for the hope that we have in Jesus.

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I thank you for the opportunity for genuine joy and genuine peace from your spirit that comes from our believing and results in a hope for the future.

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Father, help us to be a church that welcomes, welcomes one another with open arms, that we're quick to bear up with one another, we're quick to compromise in terms of those gray area issues where we can.

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We're gracious, we're merciful to each other, slower to complain, and quicker to thanks and gratitude, quicker to reconcile, quicker to make it right.

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Father, I thank you for the sacrifice of your son, Jesus Christ, who came, shed his blood for us, his body broken in our place.

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I thank you that that's where our hope is found, not in our ability to fix ourselves, God forbid, because at the end of the day, we just can't do it.

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Without a savior, we would be lost in our unrighteousness and our ungodliness.