Romans 15:16 - Our Offerings to God, Pt. 1 (07/31/2022)

Romans 15 and the Difference Between Salvation’s Cause and Its Effects

But welcome to everyone, so glad to be back. Turn to Romans chapter 15 if you would, and while you're turning there or clicking on your phone or whatever you're doing, I'm going to review just a little bit mostly for my sake because I haven't preached from this material for three weeks.

So in Romans chapter 15, starting with about verse 5, you kind of start to pick up the theme of the chapter, and we've been going verse by verse through the book of Romans for a long time. We go slowly through books of the Bible, usually on Sunday morning.

But what will happen is as we go, we hit major Bible themes and then all of a sudden it may become topical for a few weeks because we'll go out and branch out in the scripture and find all the information that deals with that major Bible theme as we go.

So it's kind of a mix of verse by verse and topical. Most of you guys are kind of used to it. Anyway, this particular chapter, it talks quite a bit about the idea that, and America has got this so wrong in the church in so many areas of our churches now, about the difference between the cause of salvation and the effects of it.

And Charles Spurgeon had it right. He said that an effect can never be the cause of the cause. That's just logic. If you never took the logic, it still makes sense, even if you never took a course in logic.

But Spurgeon never went to college, never went to seminary, but he was self-taught and the best-read man in England by the time he was 21, they say. And he made that statement in a sermon one time, and I was reading the sermon and it clicked with me, and I said, man, that is such a beautiful way to put this.

It puts the entire book of James in perspective. You ever have a problem reading James and you think it contradicts with Romans a little bit? Seems like it does. I know the great Martin Luther left James out of his German Bible.

Did you know that? Because he didn't like it, because it sounded like salvation by works. But if you understand that James wrote about the effects of salvation, not the cause of it, it makes perfect sense.

And it is supposed to be in our Bible, by the way, and God put it there for good reason, because the effects are very, very important. They don't cause you to be saved, but they're there because you are saved, and they're sort of like symptoms of salvation.

You know what I mean? Like somebody says they have a cold and they want to miss school, right, but they don't have a runny nose, their eyes are not red, they're not achy all over, and you kind of doubt that they have a cold.

They don't have any symptoms. Well, sometimes, you know, Christians will, people will say, well, I'm a Christian, but they don't have many of the symptoms of Christianity. The main one being loving the brethren, right?

Love, unity, kindness, those kinds of things they lack. And so you wonder, not to be judgmental, but you just wonder about it. And I'm sure sometimes people wonder about us, right? Every once in a while, because we got like an old man and a new man working there.

But this particular chapter, Romans chapter 15, has a lot to do with effects. And another way you could put it in the Greek language, kind of like in English, you have what we call imperatives. And an imperative would be where the grammar itself indicates that what the Lord just said is where he's not making a suggestion.

He's saying you need to live this way. Not for salvation. Remember, it's not the cause. It's the effect. You need to live this way because you love me, he would say. You need to live this way because when I saved you, I did 33 things to you, including putting the Holy Spirit in you to dwell there the rest of your life on the earth.

So you're different now. So live different. Live for me because you love me. That's the effect. And that's what this chapter is talking about. You can call them imperatives, where the Lord says, you know, turn the other cheek.

In the Greek, that's in the imperative, which means it's a command. And isn't it interesting because we talk about we're not saved by works. Well, I love what John King said, because I was listening in Italy.

So wonderful how we have technology, even though I can't operate it. I figured out how to watch your service while I was there. And I heard him say something along those lines about cause and effect and things like that.

And it was pretty cool to hear him from Italy. But you have these imperatives. And I heard him say, John said, we actually are saved by works, but God did all the work. And that is a fact. It's called the finished work of Christ.

And when he died, he said, right before he died, he said, it's finished. He had done everything to save us. But once we are saved, there are many things we're supposed to do for the Lord, walk with him, you know, and do good works as he leads us to do it, pray for people, witness to people.

All of these things are part of the wonderful Christian life he's given us. Romans 15 talks about a lot of that. For example, here are some imperatives it talks about. In verse one, it says, bear the infirmities of the weak.

It doesn't say I ask you to or suggest you. He said, you just need to do that. When you have a weak human being, that's a part of the church, you need to help take care of them. All right. Down about verse two, do things that lift and build up people and edify people.

Don't tear people down. Man, that's an imperative I wish we would review about once a day. Verse four, the importance of the Old Testament principles for building our faith. Verse five says, be like-minded one toward another, which is really important when you understand the context of Paul, who is always trying to convince the Jew that God will even save a Gentile.

And here you have a room full of Jews and Gentiles. Paul's preaching and he's telling them, you need to be like-minded. You got the Jews sitting over here, Gentiles over here, or the Jews up at the front, probably, and the Gentiles at the back.

And he's saying, no, you need to be like-minded. And that's the context that that's found in. And it says, I pray that the Lord will grant that you be like-minded according to Jesus Christ. Then he talks about the purpose of being like-minded in chapter 15, verse six of Romans, that you may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father, our Lord Jesus Christ.

So the reason we need to be like-minded and have unity is it brings glory to God as the world views us. Wow. How do you think the world's doing as it looks at the church today, though? It's saying God's not very powerful.

I'm not sure God's even there. That's what it's saying today. It's the weakest church in the last 2 ,000 years, if you just speak in general terms. But that's the purpose. We looked out in the book of John, chapter 13, some of those areas where it talks about that unity that the Lord wants us to have.

And then chapter 15, verse seven is beautiful. Once again, if you understand the context, receive ye one another. You've got the Jews sitting up here. You've got the Gentiles back there. And the Lord says through the Apostle Paul, receive each other as brothers, as one.

There's neither Jew nor Gentile, neither male nor female when it comes to God loving us and having favorites and all that. He did. There's no respect for persons, right? And the Jew had a hard time with that.

In Galatians 3, verse 27, 28, it says there's neither Jew nor Gentile, et cetera. And then we got to verses eight through 12 here in Romans chapter 15. And it just talked about that in detail where Paul once again is arguing to the Jew in the room that, hey, actually you're not saved because you're a Jew.

You're saved through the Abrahamic covenant, which predated Moses by 400 years. And that includes the Gentiles and all of your scriptures, he told the Jews, say that, especially in the book of Isaiah chapter 11.

And we covered all that. So see, we jump out and get around and we pick up all this amazing information as we go, but we've done all that. So then we get to verse 13, Romans chapter 15, verse 13. And now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that you may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Now, a comment made when I covered this one, I think last time was that the scriptures in this passage had already spoken about the word of God and its importance in both salvation, but also in living for the Lord.

Now the Holy Spirit brings in himself, which he seldom does. The Holy Spirit doesn't talk about himself much. He speaks of Christ. He points to Christ again and again and again, and Jesus points to the father again and again and again.

But in this one case, he says through the power of the Holy Spirit. So now we can sort of understand some of the times when Jesus was talking, like if you go into John chapter three in verse five, where Jesus says, barely, barely, I say unto you, except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

There are two components to salvation always have been always will be. And one is the water of the word. And we know from Ephesians chapter five, verse 26, it talks about the washing of the water of the word.

So water is a picture of the word of God. It pictures this book right here. And you have to have the water, which is this book, the word of God. It doesn't have to be the book. It can be spoken by us.

It can be, you know, heard any way you can hear it. But that is one of the required components of salvation is you have to have heard the gospel. You have to have the word of God. And now here, as Jesus talks about the water, that's the Bible.

Then he says, and you have to have the spirit. That's the calling of the Holy Spirit. No man, woman, boy, or girl has ever been saved unless the Holy Spirit called him. It's called the effectual calling has to happen.

It doesn't happen by praying some little prayer down here at the altar. It doesn't happen by anything anybody tells you to do. It's not of the blood. It's not of the desire or the will of man, but it's of God.

And that is the spirit part of salvation. Now, what's interesting, this passage is talking about effects, not the cause of salvation. So it's taking us beyond being saved or getting saved. I mean, that phrase doesn't even sound right anymore when you understand how salvation works.

You don't, you know, what do I got to do to get saved? You don't got to do anything. The Holy Spirit's going to call you and you're going to, you're going to know the gospel because you've heard it from someone in your family or some preacher or the radio or the TV or something.

And if you have the word of God and the Holy Spirit calls you, he makes Jesus irresistible at that moment. He opens your eyes and your ears to where you see him for who he is. And you want him just like Paul did on the road to Damascus.

That is the salvation experience. But then as you begin to walk your whole life, the idea of growth of growing in the Lord, becoming stronger than you were last year and all these different things, guess what it takes?

Two components, the water, which is the Bible and the spirit. And without that, you don't grow. In fact, if you try to take this like so many of our seminary professors do and just read it academically without the spirit, you won't grow.

You might not even be saved. So there it talks about the water and the spirit. Now I want to take us down to, let's just start with verse 14 in chapter 15 of Romans. It's kind of where we are today. Actually 15 is where we are.

The verse 14 ends up talking about this wonderful component of the two things it takes for salvation and for walking with the Lord, the water and the word. It ends up talking about the water part. It says, and I myself also am persuaded of you, Paul speaking of the crowd he was speaking to, my brethren, Jew and Gentile, all my brothers, that you also are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish and teach one another goodness, knowledge, wisdom, but teach and encourage.

These are all fruits of the spirit, but also of the word. And so he puts both components together. Now look at verse 15. We're going to discuss this a little bit and probably we'll be discussing this today and next time at least.

So read with me here, Romans 15, 15. Nevertheless, brethren, I have written the more boldly unto you in some sort as putting you in mind because of the grace that is given to me of God, that I should be the minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles.

Now he's talking to Jews and Gentiles and the Jews don't even believe God will save Gentiles. And he's talking to Jews and Gentiles and he says, look, not only will he save them, but he called me Saul of Tarsus and named me Paul and made me an apostle to the Gentiles.

And you Jews in the room are just getting the benefit of what I'm teaching them today. And they're going, they probably didn't like that a whole lot, but he told them that. And he says, I'm the minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles.

Now watch this, ministering the gospel of God. I wish Katie had been here to hear me say that, Charlotte. Watch this, ministering the gospel of God, that the offering up of the Gentiles might be acceptable being sanctified by the Holy ghost.

Now I want to chew on that one a minute. He's talking Jews and Gentiles and he's convincing the Jews, the Gentiles don't, you know, they're oblivious to all this. They're just happy to be saved. You know, they know the Jews don't like them a lot, but they're just happy to be in the room.

But the Jews are sitting there like this, you know, like we see in so many churches do, right? We have different groups and churches usually. But anyway, there they are. And Paul comes out and says, look, God sent me to take the gospel to the Gentiles and listen to this so that the offering that they offer up talking about like offerings.

And it points back to what the Jews know because Gentiles don't know what he's talking about, but the Jews know what Paul means when he says an offering, like a lamb that's offered for the sins of the people, right?

Or a scapegoat where the priest would raise his hand above the people, symbolizing taking the sins of the people, put his hands above the goat, symbolizing he's putting the sins on the goat and sending the goat out of the wilderness forever, which is a picture of imputation where God took our sins and put them in Christ and he died for them and took his righteousness and put that on us.

It's an accounting term. It's a picture of all that the Jews know. All that runs through the Jews mind when he talks about an offering. And look what he says to the Jews. Gentiles kind of know this, but the Jews didn't.

He says it make because of the spirit of God and the word of God and the salvation that these people have, it makes their offering acceptable to God. And they're going how? The Jews are going how, right?

So, well, he answers it in the last phrase of verse 16. Because it is sanctified, what does that mean? What does sanctified mean? Set apart from something to something, right? Set apart from the world unto God is a good way to put it.

So, these Gentiles, Jews too, but these Gentiles have been set apart from the world unto God, how? By the Holy Ghost. So, the word of God has already played its role in their life and the Holy Spirit called them to Jesus and they got saved and that sanctified them and set apart them from the whole world.

So, now they're not Jew and Gentile. They're of a heavenly race and they're human fathers. They've been regenerated, regened. They have God's genes now. They're all part of that race. They're not part of this race and we talk about that with blacks and whites and Mexicans and so forth in our country.

Because when you get born again, you lose that race in a sense and you're part of one race and you're part of one family. That's why you get along. You can't expect the lost to get along. They're not, the races will not like each other.

They will act like they do and the governments will act like, oh, we have, you know, we don't have racial problems but lost people can't deal with it, but Christians do because it's just part of who we are.

We're part of a higher race in the same race and Paul was teaching this in verses 15 and 16. So, the offering of the Gentiles is acceptable because of the word of God which Paul preached to them, the gospel of God, and because of the Holy Spirit which had sanctified them and saved them.

So, I want to talk about this and we're about out of time here today, but I'm going to talk a little bit about it. We're going to launch off into a question I want to ask you. What are the offerings that we as Gentiles can offer to God?

I mean, do we go kill a goat? Do we kill a lamb? What do we do? And it's a spiritual picture of things that we are supposed to be doing. So, let's talk about some of them. Now, you're going to have to go around to different places in the Bible to see these.

Presenting Our Bodies as a Living Sacrifice

So, the first place I would go backwards to Romans chapter 12 and about verse 1 and we'll talk about the first offering that we as Gentiles can give unto God that will be acceptable to Him because we've been saved.

All right. So, the first one is our body. Now, that's interesting, isn't it? We offer this body to God as a living sacrifice. So, let's read it together. I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, and that means because you've been saved, that you present your body.

Now, let me ask you this, is this cause you to be saved by doing this or is it the effect of salvation? It's an effect. It's something that happens because you're already saved. You got that? You got to get that because if you don't get that, you'll be so confused about how God works.

So, this is an effect. So, now that you are saved and that's what the phrase by the mercies of God means. It means you already have His mercy on your life. You already have His grace. You already saved.

He says, I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you saved people, present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy. What does that mean? Set apart, same as sanctified, same root word.

Set apart from the world unto God, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. It's how you should be. It's how you should live because you're saved now. So, what is the first offering we can make to the Lord then after we're saved?

It's our own body. We just say, hey, it's not mine anymore. It's yours. You bought me with a price. You own me. You're the king. I'm a servant. What do you want to do? And yet, He comes and tells us, look, you're not just a servant.

You're my son. You're my daughter. You're a child servant. You're like my child growing up in my family and you're going to go to school with the servants for a while, but when you grow up, you won't.

You'll be next to me, serving with me. Like, think about it. The reason we teach the family business with Tradeway is because God gave the ancient precursor of it. When Jesus came to this earth, He said, I don't say anything or do anything that I haven't seen the Father do.

Well, that's the Father bringing Jesus in as a family business, right? Salvation of the world. And then right before He left, what did He say about us? He says, as He sent me, so send I you. So, now we're part of that family business, God's business.

So, everything we do is part of God's business. You may think you own a company that's got spaceship rockets. That's not. That's Jesus that owns that. You may think whatever you're doing is your thing.

It's not. It's His. You're part of His family business and He chose to work with you together with you in it and allow you to work with your Father in His business. Everything we do is like that or it's not real.

We shouldn't be doing it, but you will be doing it. He's called you to do it. Whatever you're doing is this way. And so, now we offer the service of this body to Him since He is our King, but He's also our Father.

And listen, kids that are raised right will, listen, they will esteem their parents. They will honor their parents and obey their parents and do what the parents want because they love them and they feel that love and they've been trained properly.

Those two things. You're not seeing, you know, one of the symptoms of the end times. I never understood this in the 80s. You guys heard me say to me, but new to you, I just need a new crowd, right? So, like you in the 80s, Charlotte and I were doing youth work and I would teach them the signs of the coming of Christ, right?

One of the signs was children will disobey their parents and I'm going, that's funny. That's not a sign. It's been around forever. That's what I thought until I saw how kids are now because now kids are taking assault weapons and going into schools and killing hundreds of kids.

And that's a kid doing that who is disobedient to God and certainly to whatever his parents were, must have been animals, didn't know anything about child rearing, didn't love them like they should have.

Who knows? Who am I to judge? But I know that doesn't happen naturally. There's a cause to every effect. So anyway, so here we are. I mean, now it's prophetic, right? But anyway, that's a rabbit trail.

So, how do we give our bodies? Well, go to Romans chapter 8 verse 3, if you would. Romans 8 3 says, here's how we do that. For what the law could not do. So, you don't do it by getting all legalistic.

You don't do it by telling men that their hair can't touch their ears or women that they can't wear pants or all these weird things that churches create rules that are not in the Bible. Did I say that right?

Well, what I meant was they have to wear dresses. I don't know if I even said it right. I saw something elaborate. I probably said something weird. But anyway, they come up with all these or tell their teenagers, here's the music you can listen to, but you can't listen to this.

And we've done that. All of us have probably done that, but it's not how it's to be done. Because what you do is you tell your kid, if the Holy Spirit won't listen to it with you, turn it off. That's what works.

You see the difference? That's what works. Because what we do when we try to replace the Holy Spirit's work in the life of our children or our brothers and sisters in a church is we start to create rules.

Now we got to have rules in school. I'm not talking about that. In an institution sometimes, but we don't need them in church for adults. It's okay to say the kids shouldn't be running, but we let them run a little bit because we built it perfect.

It's a circle. It's a racetrack out there. But you have to realize the law cannot accomplish this sanctification. It won't do it. You can try. How many have you tried? We've made rules. It doesn't work.

You just break them. Paul said, if the commandment hadn't said thou shalt not covet, I never would have coveted, Paul said, right? Anyway, so what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh.

So it's not that there's a problem with the law. It's a problem with us. God sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh, that's imputation. He came as a man and died with our sins in him, in our place as our substitute.

And he died for sin and he condemned sin in the flesh. That's what causes it to work. So that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit. There's the command.

This is how you should walk because you love me. This is how you should walk because you are saved. You should walk not according to the flesh, but by the spirit, not the old man, but by the new man that has been reborn in your life.

That's who you should listen to and who that's who should run your whole body. So it should be a spirit controlled, mind controlled body. You got to always be thinking what you're thinking about. Think about what you're thinking about because your old man can start thinking and you're in trouble in a nanosecond.

Okay, so you have to monitor and make sure the old man comes in and says, Lord, that wasn't really my thought. That's not me anymore. Would you remove that from my mind? Let me have the mind of Christ.

Let me think like him in this situation right now. And ladies and gentlemen, you can handle anything if you do that because you won't sin when you're in that mode. That's called being spirit filled. You won't sin when you're in that mode.

Now we don't stay in that mode all day so we can sin. We don't want to sin. We get mad at ourselves. So we go back in the spirit and it's a battle your whole life. And guess what? God made it that way on purpose.

You know how I know that? Because he said, I have put this treasure in earthen vessels so that God may get the glory. So when we do get it right, it's because he did it in us and he gets the glory. But anyway, it's all part of his wonderful plan even though we feel a little bit like schizophrenics and we get upset with ourselves and each other because we fail again and again.

But we're supposed to get back up and never quit. And when the new man will always present his or her body as a living sacrifice today, what do you want to do together with me today, Lord? Because I'm in your business, not like you're going with me and mine.

I'm in your business. What do you want to do? And you walk that way, you have a good Christian life. Why does all this happen? So that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit.

So when we're in the spirit, we keep the law of God. We keep the heart of God. We keep all of it. It's a whole different way of walking. So the first sacrifice that we can give is our body. I got time for one more probably.

Giving Love Offerings to the Saints

Turn to Philippians chapter 4 verse 8. I'll give you a second one. Probably gave you the most important one first. How we walk is so important and I see more and more the mega churches that I hear about and young people come and tell me what it's like where they'll have Bible study and then the teacher will take them to have drinks, alcoholic beverages after Bible study and all that.

I'm going, boy, things have changed, you know. Things have changed. But I mean, really think about this for a minute. Is it wrong to get a drink? That's the wrong question. The right question is to make you the person that when someone needs help, they'll come to you if they see you're just like them.

They're not going to come to you if you're just like them. You need to be holy. Well, holy doesn't mean that you just make all these rules and try to look better than everybody else so that God will be happy with you.

That doesn't make him happy. What makes him happy is when you sit on his lap. I've been spending lots of time with grandbabies lately. I like the ones that sit on my lap and don't jump up and want to play all of a sudden, unless they want to play with me, then that's okay.

I like the ones that just want to sit on the lap for a while, right? God gave us that picture for a reason. That's how he is. So when we do that, then we live right. That's giving the body as a sacrifice.

A second one is love offerings, all right? So here we're talking about money. You can give money to God's work, and that's an offering for a Gentile. And guess what? God says it's acceptable. Why? Because it's sanctified.

So look at this, Philippians 4, 18. But I have all and abound, Paul says. You know why? Because Paul was, I was like Paul in this sense a little bit. He was a businessman who made tents, and he didn't take money from the church.

But when he did, he took it to give it to poor churches, not to keep for himself. I mean, there were a couple of exceptions where he needed something, and the church provided it. And that's fine. It's not wrong.

It's just he didn't need it because he built tents and sold them. But anyway, that's just history. That's scripture. So he says, I have all and abound. He said, you know, I don't need a lot. But he said, I am full, having received of Ephroditus the things which were sent from you, an odor of sweet smell.

So Paul, once he got in prison, how much did his business activity help him? He's hanging on the wall of it, you know, a prison. All of that's probably gone by now. And so a church did send some things to help him with, and he can look what Paul calls this.

He says, you sent some stuff for me, some things for my physical body while I'm in prison, and it has an odor of a sweet smell, and he means to God it does. A sacrifice acceptable and well-pleasing to God.

See? So there's something Gentiles can do that's just like an offering to God is that when you give of the things that you have to other Christians who are in need at a certain time in their life, and you help them.

And it's an offering to God when you do that. Isn't that cool? I got another quick one. Let's do one more and we'll quit. Turn to Hebrews 13, 15. Hebrews 13, 15. And I would say the first offering we talked about today is we can offer our bodies as service to him.

So he lives through us and in us and works with us and in us, and we work with him. Secondly, we can give love offerings that help other Christians in times of need. And third one here in Hebrews 13, 15 is this.

It says, by him therefore. Now what does that mean? You know, just read verses. Y 'all stop and think, why does it start with that? Why does it say by him therefore? Somebody tell me what that means. We're out of time.

I'm not waiting on you anymore because I'm getting hungry. It means if you do a good work without him, it's not a good work and it doesn't count. You don't get any rewards in heaven for that one. Okay.

But when the Holy Spirit leads you to do it and you do it with him, it counts by him. Therefore, let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually. That is the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name.

So did you realize that when you give praise to God and thanksgiving to God, it's an offering, but it's only acceptable when it's by him. So let me explain something that needs to be explained in this day and time.

You can't put a rock group back here and I love rock music. So because you guys don't know me, so you might be thinking I'm getting legalistic here. I'm not. I play like for guitar sometimes, believe it or not.

I don't usually wear my suit when I do that, but I grew up doing that. I'm not against that, but what I'm saying is you can't put any kind of music back here and turn it up. Although music will be loud in heaven, you turn it up loud and you get people emotionally aroused and they get their hands up and they start bouncing like a rabbit and call that something that's pleasing to God because it may not be.

I'm not saying it's not sometimes. It can be because you don't know the other person's heart, right? You don't know why they're doing it. Might not be the music, might be the Holy Spirit. But my point is when it is an offering to God, it is by Him.

It's the Holy Spirit leading you to praise God at that moment, leading you to remember to thank Him for the little things He's done and the big things He's always doing and that when we do it as an offering, it's acceptable to God.

Do you know the difference between praise and thanksgiving? You have to think about it a little bit because sometimes we get confused. Thanksgiving is easy. That's something God has done something for you or your family or someone else that you love and you thank Him for it.

He's given us Jesus Christ. How can we ever thank Him enough for that, right? That's easy. But praise is different. Praise is when you look at the scripture and it begins to reveal the character of God to you.

Maybe through the names of God as you look them up in the Hebrew and you see what they mean. Every name of God describes part of His character or maybe just through knowing God from reading the scripture and you get to the point where you know God better and better and you can start to tell Him how wonderful He is.