Romans 1:1-7 Hitching 2019 to Jesus

Of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak preaches his series in the Book of Romans, A Righteousness from God. Let's listen in.

I'm Don Filsak, I'm the lead pastor here, as Dave said, and I wanna start off by welcoming you to this gathering here at Recast, and also to welcome you to 2019.

So, here we are.

I look forward to what God has for us as a church in this next year. I believe that he's called us all together, and I just appreciate that you've taken time out of your busy schedules to gather together.

To honor Christ.

It really is something that he desires of us, something we cannot do alone is gather together. And so, that's part and parcel of what it means to walk with God and to be who he desires for us to be, is to gather together and to hear his word.

And so, my goal as a church leader is that each and every one of us would be growing in faith, growing in community, and growing in service in this next year. And so, this morning we're gonna be launching a brand new sermon series on the Book of Romans.

We're gonna be taking that off chunk by chunk. It's interesting to note that some other preachers have made this work in about 250 sermons. I've got some commentary sets in my office that would be about 200 plus sermons in the Book of Romans.

I'm gonna try to do this in 46. So, if you see me and my hair is falling out, or it's turning white or whatever, you'll understand why. I'm doing a lot of reading and a lot of research.

As we go through this.

Romans as a Righteousness from God

But we're gonna try to take it with some pace and try to move through the book so that we get the whole big picture of what this is gonna be all about. So, we're trying to do that this year. We may take a break in the middle.

We'll see how it goes. If it becomes too heavy or too dense, we might jump into an Old Testament prophet just for some relief. Some of you got that.

So, we'll see what God has for us.

But I believe that God desires for each and every one of us, and it's something that he's laid on my heart. So, I believe that it's his will that we would reconnect each and every one of us to the glorious good news of Jesus Christ.

I think it's his desire, I believe it's his desire for us to do that every day, that we would be people of the gospel, that we'd be people who understand it thoroughly and let it saturate our hearts and minds at the start of each day and at the end of each day and everything in between is saturated by this glorious, beautiful gospel.

And that's really what the book of Romans is about. And so, the sermon series is entitled Romans, a Righteousness from God. Because that's the core of the good news that Paul is gonna clarify for us throughout this book and throughout this year as we study it together.

The good news is that God has broken into, by the way, gospel means good news, and so every time I say gospel or every time I say good news, those words are interchangeable. But the good news is that God has broken into our bad news.

How many of you have read some bad news recently? How many of you had some personal bad news recently? You've had some things go on, and so bad news is a reality, but God has broken into our bad news with forgiveness, with salvation, and an ongoing restoration that in the end will culminate in a great, glorious kingdom for his son, Jesus Christ.

And that salvation isn't made out of our own goodness. That salvation is not made out of our own efforts. This is the message of Romans in a nutshell. Our salvation is not made out of our own righteousness, but our salvation is made out of his righteousness given to us through his son, Jesus.

It is Christ's merit. It is his power, his sacrifice, and his love that is making us whole. And so this morning, we're gonna get an introduction.

Paul’s Introduction and the Call to Hitch Our Lives to Jesus

To the author of Romans.

We're gonna look at the first seven verses of the book, and he's gonna demonstrate to us how closely he tied his life and his ministry to Jesus Christ and his gospel. Even in introducing himself, the Apostle Paul will produce a question that I would like all of us to consider this week.

Will we hitch 2019 to Jesus? Are you gonna hitch your life to him this next year and let him pull you along? Are you gonna let him dictate the direction? Are you gonna let him be the one who carries you and moves you forward?

I believe that this text is calling us to take assessment of our own lives this morning. In this text, we see Paul fade into the background as someone else takes center stage in his own introduction. And so let's open our Bibles, if you're not already there, to Romans 1, 1 through 6.

If you don't have a means to navigate to the Bible, maybe you have a device that you can jump over to Romans 1, or you can grab the Bible that's under the seat in front of you and jump over to Romans 1.

But I just want everybody to see that the things that I'm saying this morning are coming from God's word. This is not unique to me. This is not my message. This is God's message to us. So Romans 1, 1 through 7.

Again, recast what a privilege that we have to hear from the almighty God in our gathering this morning. 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.

Let's pray.

Father, what a privilege it is to gather together in your name. Just that in itself is an amazing thing on the world stage. The fact that we have the privilege in this nation to openly declare the name of Jesus Christ, to pray, to gather, to sing, to hear from your word.

But Father, even within the word, there's so many privileges and so many glories just that you have revealed and opened our eyes. You have provided for us a revelation that is true, that is pure, an anchor for our souls, a place to turn for the truth, time in and time out, day in and day out.

And as the years march on, and it's hard to believe it's 2019 already, Father, it'll be 2020 before we know it, and time just flies, but your word stands. And so I pray that as we launch out into Romans that, Father, this next year would be a year of just gospel purity in our church, that, Father, it would be a year of bringing the good news, even as in this text, the mention of all the nations is there.

Father, that this would be a refresher for each and every one of us, and maybe even for some, a new thing that you're doing in their lives, that, Father, some may come to understand the glorious gospel and the hope that we have through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Father, I thank you that we have an opportunity to lift our voices in song now, and, Father, I pray that you would be honored and glorified, that you would be lifted high, and that we would see you as you are, exalted and on your throne, and that we would worship you and you alone, that you would help the band members to fade into the background, that it wouldn't be anything that we do musically here that matters, but at the end of the day, it is about you and you alone and your glory, and your glory alone, in Jesus' name, amen.

Well, amen.

Thanks a lot to the band for leading us. I appreciate Dave's leadership on that, and the time and energy that they put in each week, ultimately with the goal of fading into the background so that we can step before God's throne.

I appreciate them. I encourage you to get comfortable and keep your Bibles open to Romans 1, 1 through 7. If you lost your spot in the shuffle there, jump back in there so that you have the text in front of you so that you can see that I'm walking through that verse by verse, and that's gonna be our goal throughout the book of Romans, is to just see what God has for us from his word.

If at any time during the message you need to get up in the back and get more coffee or juice or donuts while supplies last, take advantage of that. If you get uncomfortable and need to use the restroom, they're at the back door, the barn door's in the back, on the left-hand side, down the hallway.

But our goal is to keep the remainder of our time focused on God's word and what he has for us here from Romans. I just wanna start off by saying that those of you who have been here for a while, maybe over the last year or so, or within the last year, there's a pretty big shift between preaching in 1 Samuel and the Old Testament, and then jumping into the book of Romans in the New Testament.

The two books were written about 900 years apart. There's a difference in language, the book of 1 Samuel written in Hebrew, the book of Romans written in Greek. Different languages, a major difference in the form of what is written.

1 Samuel was written as a historical account, and Romans was written as a letter. But I think a lot of times when we jump into Romans,.

How many of you have ever read Romans before, or parts of Romans, or some of Romans?

Okay, so I've got a crowd here who has read quite a bit of this book.

Then you would understand a little bit.

That we can kinda get lost in the weeds of the details, and it's pretty dense, it's pretty thick, there's a lot of theology there. And I've talked with other pastors who have launched out into a series of Romans.

I know a couple of pastors who said don't do it, and a couple of pastors who said they gave up on it, in part because it was so thick, and they weren't ready for it to be so meaty. And so that's one of the reasons that we're gonna try to take it with a little bit of pace.

We definitely won't mind, in 46 sermons, we're not gonna mind the depth of this thing. I mean, in any book, we're not going to, and so we're gonna take it with a little pace. But I wanna point out that we could lose perspective here because it's a letter, and because some of us have memorized, some of you even have memorized verses out of this book.

And so it's become a go-to for little sections here or there, and not understanding how the whole thing flows, and certainly not understanding the history behind it.

Where is it coming from?

And so we can lose perspective that the book of Romans was written within history. It was written by a person who was inspired by the Holy Spirit, the Apostle Paul, who wrote it from a real place to a church made up of real people who lived in a real place, a real large city called Rome.

You see, I think that we need to introduce Paul a little bit and understand a little bit of his background. He's gonna introduce himself, that's the whole point of this message, is an introduction to the Apostle Paul, but Paul was a man radically opposed to this new religious group who called themselves Christians.

He was a promising young Jewish student. Every indication from early in the book of Acts is that he was on his way towards being a leader, maybe even on the Sanhedrin, which was the ruling council, both religiously and politically, for the Jews.

He was an up-and-coming star, maybe like a freshman senator or a freshman representative in the house, someone who was on their way to big things, politically and religiously. He was given responsibility in the attempt to eradicate this new religion that was focused on this murdered Jewish man that they kept claiming had come back from the dead, and his name was Jesus of Nazareth.

But then, the Apostle Paul met Jesus of Nazareth. The guy that they claimed, the guy that had been killed and that they claimed came back from the dead, the Apostle Paul met him. He was on his way to arrest himself some Christians, and on the road there, Paul was blinded by a bright light and saw a man who identified himself as Jesus Christ, and from that day on, Paul's life would never be the same.

And one thing is for certain, the Apostle Paul believed that he encountered the risen Lord. The transformation in his life is so radical and so amazing that there is no doubt of this one fact. Now, you have to decide for yourself whether or not Jesus Christ was raised.

That's something that everybody has to come into a conclusion in themselves, but Paul believed it.

Paul believed it firmly,.

Based on seeing the risen Christ with his eyes, the blinding light on the road to Damascus. And so, we need to keep in perspective who it is that's writing to us. Who is it that, what's some of the backstory here?

When we come to his writing of the book of Romans, Paul is quite likely wrapping up the final of three missionary journeys. Get this, three missionary journeys all around the known world to spread the good news about this very Jesus that he was seeking to persecute.

His transformation was so radical that he went from trying to violently stop people from following Christ to enduring violence in order to encourage people to follow Christ. How many of you think that's a pretty dramatic shift?

Performing violence to incurring violence in the name of Christ. He's likely in Corinth when he writes this. He's on his way back to Jerusalem, his third of three missionary journeys that he undertook, but he's already planning for his fourth as we come to the book of Romans.

Matter of fact, a fundamental reason why he's writing this is because he's planning a fourth missionary journey that he hopes will include a stop along Rome and he wants to be known to them so that when he comes there, he can encourage them, teach them, bring them along, grow them in their faith and then that they might propel him on to Spain because that's where his goal is to get to the western edge of the known world during this time.

He wants to bring the gospel to the places where Christ has not yet been named. That's part of the reason he's writing this book is to say, hey, you guys in Rome, here's where I stand, here's the gospel that I bring, here's the truth that we have in common.

I'm hoping that I could come and visit you some time later. But I say all of this in this context to help us realize how radical this message is, but even more, how radical the messenger is. He is the last man that you would have expected to be writing the book of Romans during this era.

He's one of the last people you would expect to hear these words from, the last person that you'd expect to be teaching us as a church here moving forward in 2019. But he is the man that God has chosen.

And I even find just a little bit of application, a little bit of comfort in knowing that he can use people like Paul so he can certainly use us. He can use somebody who's opposed to him and he's going to use Paul to sharpen us, to grow us in our faith this year.

But it also helps to understand, as we jump into this letter here, that Paul has never been to Rome. As of the writing of this letter, as of writing to Rome, he's writing to people that many who have never met him.

So his introduction is the longest of any of his letters. He wrote many letters in the New Testament, but it's the longest of any of them. And in part, it's because he's introducing himself to people that he has never met.

The gospel was likely, by the way, you're going, wait a minute, how did the gospel get to Rome then? Some of you have that question in your mind. Some of you are like, I don't really care, but I'm gonna share it with, yeah, anyway.

So here we go, real quick.

The gospel was brought to Rome most likely. Most scholars believe that it may have very well been Jews who attended Pentecost. They would travel back to Jerusalem to celebrate Pentecost. And on the day of Pentecost, they were there in Jerusalem.

They heard the preaching of Peter on that day. Remember, 3 ,000 were added to the church on that day. And then many of them dispersed after the celebrations of Pentecost to go home. And in going home, they took the gospel back to their places and it's quite likely, as Rome was such a hub, that the gospel came to Rome and a church was established there based on converts from Peter's preaching on the day of Pentecost.

By the greetings, by the way,.

At the end of the Book of Romans, it's clear that some of the people that Paul had worked with in his missionary work and his first three missionary journeys have actually traveled to Rome ahead of him to assist the church there as well.

So he does know some people that are there, but not because he visited Rome, but because he sent people ahead of him to Rome and some are there working among the church there today. So the church in Rome, we need to get this perspective, the church in Rome is growing, but they are still in their infancy as Paul is writing to them.

And Paul is longing to visit them and he's longing to help them along as they grow in their faith. And so if we listen with ears like the Roman Christians, we can listen just like them because how many of you have ever met the Apostle Paul before?

You haven't met him.

Now you have some information about him, probably very similar to them in some ways because you've never met him face-to-face, but you've heard of him, you know of him, you know some things that he said, you know some things about him.

It's likely the church in Rome had some idea about Paul. They had heard about this firebrand of a character who was traveling the known world, sharing the gospel with others. And so we can listen like them and remember that they don't know Paul except by word of mouth.

He didn't plant that church, but he wants to teach them some stuff. And so he opens up by giving his resume, so to speak, and that's what we're gonna be looking at. And I just encourage us to listen in as we go through this, especially this introduction, because you're gonna meet the guy who's gonna be teaching you over the next year.

So listen up to this first message because you're meeting the Apostle Paul and his priorities. And he says to start with, this is what he wants you to know about him. This is what he, one of the Romans, if he could write a letter to you, this is what he would say.

I am, first, I am a servant of Christ Jesus. It's the first thing he wants you to know about him. I am a slave, a servant of Christ Jesus. Second, I have been called to be a messenger for Jesus. Third, I am set apart for the gospel of God.

And he says all this in one verse. He just gives this flat-out introduction of himself. I'm a servant of Christ. I've been called to be a messenger for Jesus Christ. I am set apart for the gospel of God.

These three things are the first and fundamental things that Paul wants to communicate to the church in Rome and to the church at Recast today. And as we pick them apart, I want you to be thinking about your own personal introduction.

What would verse one look like in your introduction? If you were writing to somebody who didn't know you and didn't know about your faith, what would you say about yourself? Paul says he is a slave of Jesus Christ.

The English translations all soften the word to some degree. People, you know, really recoil and understandably at the word slave. And so it says bondservant or servant in various translations. But there is no doubt in my mind that Paul's word choice in Greek had a strong sound of ownership by Jesus.

Jesus owns me. He flat-out owns my life, says Paul. He will do, Paul says, I will do what Jesus tells me to do. I will go where Jesus tells me to go. And I will represent Jesus to anybody who will listen to me.

Everywhere in every context, I will be a Jesus man. I'm his and his alone. So that's what he wants you to know about him first. Is that a pretty big deal? That's a pretty intense introduction. I'm a slave of Jesus.

He owns me and I want you to know my master before you know anything else about me. I want you to know who I'm serving. All right, a little bit of conviction, but do people in your workplace know who you serve?

Do people who frequent your business know who you serve? Do they know who your master is? Or do you represent yourself more than anything? Ugh, convicting to all of us, I think. Secondly, Paul makes it clear that he has been called to be an apostle.

It's a fancy word for someone sent with a message. He's a postman, so to speak. That's what he is. He's a UPS delivery driver. He just brings the messages. He doesn't make the mail, he delivers it. He's an apostle.

He received a calling from Jesus to bring the message of the gospel to others. And here, he identifies his title as apostle of Christ. See, Paul's a man who understood who he was. He understood in Christ what he was made to be, and he says, I'm a messenger.

Lastly, in this first verse, he identifies his purpose as set apart for the good news of God. God had some good news, and Paul was more than just a generic message courier for God. He had a specific mail that he carried to everyone that he saw.

He had a specific message given to him. It was the good news of God that he was traveling around and sharing with others. He was a Christ man, he was a messenger, and he was a gospel man. In this very short verse, Paul introduces himself with humility, but with authority, but with grace.

Do you see that?

He's basically putting his foot down and saying, listen, it's not all about me, but I've got something to share with you, and it is with authority that I bring it to you, because it is God's message that I carry.

See, he covered three things that I believe we would all be wise to consider in our own lives. He told the Romans who he served, Christ Jesus. He told them what title he had been given, an apostle, and then he declared the purpose for which he was an apostle to bring the good news, and I think we would all do well at the start of a new year here at the start of 2019 to review exactly where we stand on this type of introduction.

Where are these three things in our lives? Ask yourself just flat out, honesty in your heart. Who do I serve? Who do I serve? This is the most fundamental question of your life. You see, I believe that everyone in this room, as I look at you, all of us are slaves.

You are all a slave to someone. You either are a slave to sin and yourself, which really are the same thing, because in essence, to serve only yourself is to be a sinner, and so you are either a slave to yourself, your desires, your wishes, your impulses, your passions, or you're a slave to God.

Who do you serve? Who is your master? Second, what is your title? Paul had a firm grasp on his role in God's kingdom. He was an apostle, a messenger, and what title is God giving you? I would encourage you to work to find that out.

Find out what is your title this next year. Ask God for it. Say, what is my title? What is my role? What is my fit in your kingdom? And I would love to sit down with anyone. I would, over a cup of coffee, or here in the office, or over breakfast, whatever works into your schedule, but anybody who would want to sit down with me and try to figure out your calling this year.

I would love this to be a year of people here just figuring out, what am I made to do? How am I made to serve? Because we want to be growing in faith, growing in community, and growing in what? Service.

We want to be growing in service as well. And God has fit each one of us together for the purpose of serving one another. Paul got his area of service. He understood what he was given in order to bless others and to be a minister of Christ.

See, I think that, to some degree, every single one of us in this room are called to be a messenger of God to our own context. There's at least a low-level, low-key sense that everyone's called to be an apostle in a small A word that is to bring the gospel to our context to bring the good news to those around us.

We have a message to share with others. But it would be wise for each one of us to understand the specific ways that God has put you together in order to serve him. Lastly, what is your focus in life?

Well, I gotta be careful with using the word lastly here because there's a lot more text after this. Lastly in verse one, okay? Lastly in verse one, put that in perspective. What is your focus in life?

For Paul, I saw a couple of you, by the way, starting to put your Bibles away.

I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, not yet, not yet, you know me better than that.

What is your focus in life? For Paul, it was a focus on the gospel of God. We are not all set apart, by the way, to the same degree that Paul was set apart to gospel ministry. How many of you know he had a pretty unique calling, a pretty high and amazing calling to go around and to spread and to start new churches in the first generation of the church?

That's a pretty significant thing. But let me encourage you that if you belong to Jesus Christ, then the gospel will be a focus in your life. The good news that Jesus came to die for the forgiveness of sins is the central focus of any ministry and of any minister that truly belongs to Jesus.

That means that greeters at the door or people running the soundboard or those who are getting the coffee ready early in the morning on Sundays or those who get down on the floor in the nursery right now, there's some back there who are getting down and playing with the little ones.

All of that ought to be done with the good news of Jesus Christ at its core. I have been rescued and saved from so much I can in turn give out of a heart that is set free. And so, therefore, all of my service is rendered as an unworthy servant, just one who gets to serve the master who died for me.

Who do you serve? What is your calling and what is your focus? One thing we're gonna be able to see, and we're introducing Paul, so I wanna introduce this aspect of him right here at the start. We get verse one, great introduction.

What happens is verse one and verse seven ought to go together in most Greek, written letters during this time. Everything between two and six is a side note. You're gonna get used to that. There's a lot of side notes in Paul's writing.

I believe that if anybody has ADD, it's the Apostle Paul. And so, therefore, some of you have read his writings and have been confused because you want him to finish a point before he moves on to the next one.

And then you actually find that he finished.

The point way back here and you gotta figure out.

How he started back here. So, that's the way he is, and to God's glory, it just shows he can use all of us, right? He can use all of us, even in our distractibility and our, oh, look, squirrel, and all of that.

He uses all types of people. Paul often follows a lot of rabbit trails, but they're related and they're important and they're scripture and they're inspired. But his writing style loses some people. But Paul is still introducing himself, but he takes a side track in verses two through six to explain his calling in more depth, which kind of is still on the same line as his introduction.

But after his mention of the gospel and his introduction in verse one, it's like whenever he mentions the gospel, he goes off on a rabbit trail.

Because he's gotta explain it.

It's in his heart, it's a passion of his. So, when the word gospel gets introduced, it's like, oh, and by the way, this is the gospel of Jesus Christ, the gospel that saves us, the gospel that was predicted in the Old Testament, and he goes off on that for a while.

And we're gonna see that that's what he does here. He mentions the gospel in verse one and then he goes on to say, oh, by the way, that's the same gospel that's rooted in the Old Testament. And what he wants to convey to all of us and what he wanted to convey to those in Rome is I am not bringing you something new.

This is not novel. This is not something I came up with. It was predicted in the Old Testament. I'm not bringing you a new message. This was in the Holy Scriptures. And you can go back and look at it for yourself the way that the Messiah was predicted.

Paul is appealing to an authority that is above himself. He isn't saying, listen to me, because I came up with an awesome message for you and you in Rome should listen to me. He's saying, listen to me, because I have an awesome message that God has for you.

It's not new and it's been slowly, progressively revealed in history through his prophets in Holy Scripture. And in verse three, he clearly hitches his message to Jesus Christ. The entire book of Romans hitched to Jesus.

The gospel isn't only ancient and predicted by prophets, but it all along has been a gospel. Get these three words. A gospel concerning his son. Concerning the son of God. That is, the gospel is in and out, up and down, all around is about Jesus Christ.

That is the only good news that we have to bring. If you think you're bringing the gospel and you're not talking about Jesus, you're not bringing good news. There is no good news in the statement, God loves you, because there's no Jesus in that statement yet.

Do you understand? Without Jesus mentioned, there is no gospel. And we like this phrase, and I hear it often, I hear it regularly, I heard it just last week. Preach the gospel and use words if necessary.

I wanna watch you try that. You can't do it, because you're never gonna get to the gospel. The gospel is good news about you if you just act good. Now, certainly go act good. Certainly be kind to those around you, and speak the good news of Jesus Christ, and use his name in it.

Talk him up. Talk about his salvation that he's provided for you. But do you get what I'm saying about the whole, you know, use words if necessary? Words are necessary. You don't get to the guy hanging on the cross without words.

Unless you pantomime. Are you mimes? Are you gonna show it? How are you gonna do that without words? That's why I'm saying I'd like to watch it, because it'd be really funny to see. Because it's not good news if it's just you being a good employee or a good worker.

Or a shoulder to lean on for your coworkers. Are you getting what I'm saying in that? You gotta have words in it. Certainly don't even open your mouth and say the words if you don't intend to be kind and good either.

Does that make sense? The flip side of that is actually true as well. So many people have opened their mouth with vitriol and mentioned Jesus in the same sentence. And don't be that person either. Do good works and bring the gospel with words and talk about it.

None of that was in my notes. I'm like Paul here. So let's try to get back to where we were at. Paul is appealing to an authority that is above himself here. And in verse three, he's hitching his message to Jesus Christ.