The Complete Christian Life

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August 27, 2023 | Sam Kelm on Romans 1:1

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This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.
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All right, I'd like to begin our time today with perhaps a few pointed questions to you.
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The first one is, is Christ your Lord? Have you really, fully submitted to Him as your
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Master? Do you serve Him with every fiber of your being?
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I'm afraid that too many Christians today believe that the Christian life is a game and that they live their lives with the mindset that the
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Christian life begins and ends solely with salvation. That the Christian life does not come with any strings attached and no responsibilities toward Christ and those around us.
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We will question, for example, a husband that does not fulfill his responsibilities and obligations to his wife and family.
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Meanwhile, we are content to live a Christian life with no strings attached.
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Countless consider themselves as Christians without ever having come face to face with Christ.
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Others never submit to the Lordship of Jesus and live willingly in sin.
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Many true believers submit to Him as Lord but do not serve Him. They are content to show up at church on Sundays and be served by others.
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We call it a service, after all. They do not use their God -given gift for His glory and the up -building of the local church.
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None of these, I suggest, are examples of the way Christ intended us to live the
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Christian life. And I believe that Paul, if you would turn with me to Romans 1, verse 1.
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In this passage, in the opening verses of this epistle, paints for us a picture of what the
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Christian life ought to be. His life is in many ways a blueprint for us to follow.
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And so as we look at this verse, we'll begin with the sovereign work of God in salvation.
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You'll note that in the outline of the first point, which is called from death to life.
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Secondly, we'll move on and look at complete submission to Christ in all things.
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Finally, as we close, we'll look at the third point, faithful service. Well, I will aim to give four practical steps to help you discern how you're gifted and how to begin serving.
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With that, let's get straight into the text. Romans 1, verse 1.
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If you haven't already turned there, please turn there. Romans 1, verse 1. Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God.
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As mentioned, we will begin our time by looking at the first step of the
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Christian life, salvation. As we move from death to life, let us consider
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Paul. Who is Paul? Paul begins this letter with the usual standard form of ancient letter writing.
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He states his name and his office. Before ever we look at the office, I want us to consider the man himself.
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When we think of Paul, the first thing that we think about is the man who wrote about half of the
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New Testament. We think of a man whose writings under the inspiration of the
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Holy Scripture have changed the world. We think of a man who traveled all over the ancient
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Greco -Roman world to preach the gospel and plant churches. It has been said, and I would think that many of you agree with this, that Paul was the greatest missionary and apart from our
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Lord himself, the greatest preacher that has ever lived. Nothing could prevent him from fulfilling his divine mission that he had been given, the preaching of the gospel to the
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Gentiles. During his time in his service, he endured many hardships.
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He was beaten multiple times, received 40 lashes minus one, five times.
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He was stoned and shipwrecked, was a knight adrift at sea, and imprisoned several times.
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All of that, however, I suggest is a picture of Paul's later years. When we first meet
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Paul in the New Testament, we meet him as a man named Saul. I want to take a quick look at Saul.
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Who was Saul? The writings of Luke and even Paul himself give us great insight.
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We find out that Saul was born in Tarsus, that he was raised in Jerusalem, circumcised on the eighth day according to Jewish law.
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He was a Hebrew of the tribe of Benjamin, that he was a Pharisee, educated in Jerusalem according to the strict law of Judaism.
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I want to hone in just a little bit more on Saul being a Pharisee. In our study of the
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Gospel of Mark over the last year and a bit, we found that the Pharisees were zealous critics of Jesus.
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Their synoptics referred to them as evil, as hypocrites, as being of the devil. We are told that they were self -righteous, quick to call to sin of others, meanwhile maintaining their own self -righteousness.
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They're displayed as persecutors of Christ, seeking to kill him. In many ways, their belief system was a lot outward appearance, but no true substance.
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Jesus mentions their hypocrisy in Matthew 23, verses 1 through 7. Feel free to turn there with me, we'll read it so you can see it for yourself.
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Matthew 23, verses 1 through 7. Jesus speaks to the crowds and addresses them regarding the scribes and the
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Pharisees. Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples,
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The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat. So do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do.
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For they preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders.
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But they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. They do all their deeds to be seen by others.
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For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. And they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues.
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And greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others. Then we'll skip down to verse 13 through 15.
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But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces.
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For you neither enter yourselves, nor allow those who would enter to go in. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
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For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte. And when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.
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Again, we see that they were very pious outwardly, but their hearts were far from God. It is that tradition that Saul grew up in.
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So it should come to us as no surprise to find Saul as a self -righteous enemy of Christ.
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In Acts 22, verse 3, Paul himself mentions that he was raised under the law.
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That he had lived according to the traditions of the Pharisees. In his letter to the
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Philippians, he proclaims that he saw himself as righteous and blameless under the law.
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Saul was very zealous and committed to this belief system, even surpassing many of his own age.
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He had an unwavering trust and obedience in his own self -righteousness. He believed that pursuing the law of God with all his might would declare him righteous before God.
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He failed to see us falling short of the glory of God and had himself stumbled over the stumbling block.
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As a man who was dead in his sins and trespasses, we not only find him as a self -righteous man, but as an avid enemy of Christ.
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He zealously and violently persecuted the church. Lowell has read for us Acts 9. He imprisoned and beat those who believed in Christ.
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He gave approval to the stoning of Stephen. Saul had made it his life's mission to persecute and destroy the early church.
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He was so opposed to this new movement that proclaimed that the Messiah had come. A man named
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Jesus came to deliver his people from sin. At the time,
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Saul was the most prominent enemy of Christ.
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As Lowell has read, one day when Saul was on his way to Damascus to imprison the believers there, he came unexpectedly face -to -face with Christ.
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And when Christ appeared to him and personally called him by his name, he fell to his knees before him.
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And right then and there, the dead man, Saul, was raised to life.
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The spiritually dead man was raised to life in Christ.
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And that is where Christ changed him from violent persecutor to humble servant, who would eventually go on from imprisoning
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Christians to being a prisoner himself. Where Saul claimed to be self -righteous and blameless under the law,
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Paul, in his letter to the Philippians, claims that he had no righteousness in and of himself apart from Christ.
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In Galatians 2 .16, for example, Paul proclaims that the law does not justify anybody, but that we are justified by faith in Christ.
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Paul was now acutely aware of his sinfulness, calling himself a wretch and the chief of sinners, the least of all the saints and apostles.
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He describes himself as being dead in sins and trespasses. So when we read
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Paul then, we should stand in awe at the mighty work of God in salvation in this man's life.
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We see that salvation is truly of the Lord. Saul had studied the Old Testament, the law of Moses, all his life.
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His entire life was wrapped up around studying the law. Maybe he had picked up bits and pieces of the gospel as he persecuted the church and oversaw the stoning of Stephen.
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Yet despite all his knowledge, he was blind to his own sinfulness and that righteousness was attained by faith in Christ alone.
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That is, until Christ revealed himself to him and removed the scales from his eyes.
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The conversion of Saul shows us that man cannot save himself, that salvation is truly of the
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Lord. Knowledge of the scripture in and of itself is useless. It will not save you, it did not save Saul.
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It is God who saves when he reels to you his son and grants you the gift of repentance.
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Christ himself said so when Peter confessed him as Lord. Christ said to Peter, blessed are you,
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Simon Bar -Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my Father who is in heaven.
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So praise God for saving Paul, for displaying his mighty power of salvation in the life of the chief of sinners.
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And rejoice that he has done the same work in you, that he was pleased to reveal Jesus Christ to you.
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That you too, if you have repented of your sins and believe on him alone, just like Saul, were made a new creature.
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Just as Lazarus was raised from the dead when he heard Christ's call come forth, so you were raised spiritually from death to life.
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You are a new man, a new woman. No longer dead in your sins, but alive in him.
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You have gone from death to life. This is the foundation on which the
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Christian life is built. And on that foundation, we build our second point.
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You'll see it in your outline, complete submission. This was certainly true in the life of Paul.
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After stating his name, we'll see that he goes on to say, a servant of Christ Jesus.
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Paul begins a series of three statements here, stating who exactly he is and what his office is.
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And we expect that as he was not the only man in Rome, or in that time, called
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Paul. And he had never been to the church in Rome. So he has to establish who he is and introduce himself to the church.
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Two things that are worth noting in this phrase, servant of Christ Jesus. First, the word servant.
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The Greek word here for servant is actually doulos. And most English translations that I have found fail to translate this term correctly.
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It does not mean servant. It means slave, and it was used to describe a slave.
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The Greek language has several other words to describe the term servant, and even the type of servant.
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And the difference between a servant and a slave is an important one. In the ancient
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Greco -Roman world, a servant was a hired laborer. They had legal rights and a legal status.
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A slave, however, did not. A slave was considered the property of their respective master.
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They had essentially no autonomy and were unable to make decisions regarding their own lives.
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Even children, when they were born to slaves, were considered slaves themselves. The second thing to note is the phrasing that Paul uses.
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A servant of Christ Jesus called to be an apostle. This phrasing would have been very familiar to the people in Rome.
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Because Paul uses the same manner in which servants were named. Servants were named differently from freemen.
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Roman free citizens were usually named by what is called the trianomena. It's a set of three names.
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The first name is similar to what we would call a first name. The second name would be similar to a last name.
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And a third name would indicate another specific characteristic of that person or another detail regarding their heritage.
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Slaves, however, did not have that privilege. Slaves only had one name, oftentimes given by their master.
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And that name was attended by the possessive form of their master's name and a description of what their job was for their master.
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So when Paul says a servant of Christ called to be an apostle, he follows that exact formula that a slave would have been named with.
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And when he does so, he officially identifies himself as a slave. He's making clear that he is not his own, that he belongs to another.
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That he follows and obeys the will of his master. He has freely, willingly given up his status as a free man and now submits to another.
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He goes on to identify his master, which of course is Christ Jesus. Which is quite a claim, considering that Saul, with all his might, was persecuting the church and Christ himself.
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Yet on the road to Damascus, he underwent such a radical transformation that Paul went from persecuting
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Christ to calling him his master. He's now wholeheartedly devoted to Christ and belongs to the
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Lord of the universe. By making this statement, Paul lays aside any claim to any fruit of any of his labors and surrenders all honor and glory to his
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Lord. Paul's existence and entire mission now belongs to Christ. Instead of following the desires of his flesh and indulging in the defiling passions, he now counts everything as loss.
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He sets his mind on things above, always striving to please his
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Lord. Not to obtain his own righteousness, but to make him known.
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Paul has gone from being dead in sin to alive in Christ. From slave of sin to slave of Christ.
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Some might say that Paul certainly didn't mean all of that when he made that statement.
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However, Paul uses the same phrase in four other of his epistles. Paul clearly rooted his identity in being a slave of Christ.
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That's who he was. Being a Christian, to Paul, meant being a slave of Christ. He's also not the only
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New Testament author that uses that term in that sense. Luke uses it several times in Acts.
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James and Peter use it themselves in their respective letters. So does Jude and John in the book of Revelation.
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John in the book of Revelation even applies it to believers in general. Most important though,
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Jesus uses the term a lot. He uses it 28 times in the
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Gospel of Matthew alone. He uses it another 20 times in Luke. Every time he uses it, he refers to the relationship between the master of the kingdom of heaven and his servants.
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The New Testament plainly teaches that if you are a Christian, you are a slave of Christ.
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He owns you, he has authority over you, and you are to obey his commands. One group of people that really understood and believed this were the martyrs.
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One of them was Polycarp, a student of John, the apostle
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John, and a bishop in the church of Smyrna. Perhaps you've heard the story. As Polycarp was to be arrested, the soldiers that showed up at his house to arrest him, he was so committed to Christ that he offered them food and drink.
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He asked if he could pray, they allowed him to pray. He prayed so fervently for about two hours that the people that were to take him in ended up apologizing to him that they had to take him in to arrest him.
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Polycarp was arrested and he was brought before the parole council. He was asked to deny
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Christ as master and declare Caesar as his lord, to which
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Polycarp famously replied, 86 years
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I have served him. This is an old man. 86 years I have served him and he has never wronged me.
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How then can I blaspheme my king and my savior? Again, Polycarp was asked to deny
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Christ, to reproach him in order to be set free, and he said that he could not do so because he was a
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Christian. What is true of Polycarp and Paul is true of you.
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You were not purchased with silver or gold, but with the most valuable, precious thing that ever was.
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If all the riches in the world were to be gathered together and compared to the sinless life and blood of Jesus Christ, it would pale in comparison.
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Christ died for you in your place, and you are his.
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And if you are his, then you ought to obey his command, and you are obligated to live your life according to his precepts.
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And isn't someone like that, who gave the most precious thing, isn't he, even though we are not worthy to be called his slaves, isn't he worthy to be called our master?
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Our so -called human masters or lords are evil and cold -hearted. Christ is good, he's gentle, and he's kind.
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Perhaps you can relate to Job when you suffered tremendous loss. You have no means to provide for a family.
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A child or a family member is taken from you. You lose everything that you had.
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Your health, your strength is escaping you. Have you not found Christ to be a good and loving master?
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Have you not found that he will not leave you or forsake you? He's not going to discard you and throw you away one day, saying that your burdens are too much for him to bear.
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You truly can bring all your fears and anxieties to him. He alone is the good master.
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Paul continues, he says, called to be an apostle.
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This is our third point as we looked, as we have looked at the foundation of the
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Christian life. We have looked at the consequences of what it means that Christ is our
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Lord. We now come to the result which leads to faithful service.
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Paul says called to be an apostle. First, we have to look at the term called and what it means.
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Secondly, we have to consider what is an apostle. Called is used to show without a doubt that Paul did not choose to be an apostle one day.
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In Galatians 1 verse 1, he makes that clear when he writes, Paul was not given apostleship by some random believer somewhere, by some church he established, or even the 12 apostles themselves.
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Christ chose him for that office, and Acts 9 shows us that serving
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Christ in this way was truly the last thing on his mind. Paul even goes so far as to say that he was chosen for this task from before he was born.
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He was truly an apostle by the command and call of God, by God's divine will.
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He mentions this, the calling by the will of God, in almost all of his letters. I believe there's only three of them where he doesn't mention it.
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In 1 Timothy 1, for example, he says that He then goes on to tell us what he was called to.
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Called to be an apostle. The term apostle is an important one. It means messenger or one that is sent.
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The New Testament, though, only uses it in that sense three times, and another 76 times it uses it in the context regarding the office of apostle.
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So it's important for us to know what an apostle is. Apostles were personally chosen by Christ for this office.
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In Matthew 10, verses 1 and 2, we see that Christ calls his disciples to him, but he only chooses 12 of them to be apostles.
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This is really important to know that Christ chose apostles personally. In Luke 9, in the first opening verses, we also note that they were given authority over demons, the power to cure diseases, and even raise the dead.
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And we quickly see that they had the ability to do the works that characterized Christ's work.
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And Jesus even told them that The apostles were chosen to represent his work and message.
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When we look at outside the Gospels, when we look at Acts and the Epistles, we also find that they had to receive direct command from Christ himself through the
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Holy Spirit. And what's really important is that when we look at...
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You'll find this in Acts 1, 21, verse 26, if you want to write that down. What's really important is that the apostle saw the risen
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Christ. You cannot be an apostle unless you saw the risen Christ. When the 12 are choosing someone to replace
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Judas after he betrayed Christ and committed suicide, we see that that is one of the requirements they have for whoever replaced
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Judas, that that person must have seen Christ. Further, we see that their teaching had authority and was the foundation on which the early church was built.
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They were able to pass on the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands, and their words were the words of God and that they had truly received special revelation.
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Now, Paul is not one of the initial 12, but he meets all of those requirements. Important references for that is
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Acts 9, 15, and 16, as well as Acts 26, 15 through 18, where Paul tells of his conversion before King Agrippa.
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Paul had been given the ability to perform mighty works and wonders, and he had seen the risen
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Christ. If you want to take notes, there's a lot of reference for him seeing the risen
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Christ. He makes a defense of that in 1 Corinthians. Some verses there are 1
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Corinthians 9, verse 1, 1 Corinthians 15, verse 8, and again
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Acts 22, verse 12 through 16. So when Paul identifies himself as an apostle to the church in Rome, he's telling them that whatever he says in this letter comes with direct authority from Christ.
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His words are Christ's words, and they're regarded to be inspired. The apostle
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Peter even confirms that in his second letter when he puts Paul's letters on the same level as Scripture in 2
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Peter 3, 16. So Paul's words to the Romans were on the same level, and by extension us, as Christ's words, as the other apostles' writing and the
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Old Testament. Now we have to note that the office of apostle does no longer exist.
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It has ceased with the death of the last of them when John died on the island of Patmos.
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There has not been and there will not be another apostle. None of us are apostles.
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None of us have seen the risen Christ, have not received new revelation from God. We're not called to the office by Christ, and we're not given miraculous gifts and powers to authenticate that office.
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But if the office no longer exists and was specially meant for the 12 and Paul, what does that mean for us?
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I suggest that Christ did not only call 13 men for specific service in a specific period of redemptive history, but that all of us have given the task of serving him.
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All of us, in a sense, are messengers. We're sent ones as we go into all the world to make disciples and baptize them as we obey the
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Great Commission. For some of us, that means that we go overseas into remote parts of the world.
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For others, that means that we stay behind and pray and support those that go financially and preach the gospel in our city, neighborhood, family, and friends.
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Another way that Christ calls us to serve is through his local church. All of us, each of you, has been given a gift from God.
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For the glory of God and the upbuilding of his church. In Romans 12 and 1
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Corinthians 12, Paul, among other many gifts, mentions some of the gifts.
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He mentions serving, teaching, exhortation, generosity, being merciful, helping, and even the dreaded task of administrating.
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When we talk about serving, we're not talking about a type of service that adopts the same attitude that the world has.
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You've seen it perhaps lifted yourself. People show up to work as soon as they get there. They want to go home.
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They want to be anywhere else but work. They dream about sitting on the couch, watching TV, and eating
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Doritos. That's not how Christ wants you to serve. Paul exhorts us to serve zealously, to not be slothful, and to serve with a fervent spirit.
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The gift that God has given you for serving is of infinite value to his church.
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Don't believe the lie of the enemy when he tells you that simple serving or helping or administrating is a futile, unimportant task because nobody will notice.
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In the early 1900s, there was a man who understood this very well. His name was
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James Craft. He was the founder of what we now know as the Crafts Food Company. He was a young man who had the ambition to become the biggest exporter of cheese and manufacturer of cheese in the world.
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One day, though, he was convicted that his priorities were not in the right order.
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He decided that he would first serve his God and then work as God would lead him.
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He was also a member at a Baptist church in Chicago where he served as a deacon and a superintendent for the
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Sunday school. As his business grew and grew, he had a patent for how to preserve cheese so he could sell it internationally.
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One week, there was a visiting preacher that came to preach at this church. By this time,
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James Craft had quite the empire already and he was in charge of thousands of employees.
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This preacher showed up late to Sunday school. He walked in the building for the Sunday school and he found this man who had this massive empire simply counting attendance for the people that showed up for Sunday school.
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He stood there with this little stubby pencil and wrote down who showed up for Sunday school. James Craft understood that any small task, no matter how small it may seem, is of infinitely more eternal value than the highest position you could possibly have out in the world.
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God knows and honors those who labor behind the scenes. He knows and honors time and energy spent that nobody else sees.
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So use the gift that God's given you for the upbuilding of his church and for his glory.
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Live and serve as Jonathan Edwards resolved to do in his sixth resolution when he said, to live with all my might while I live.
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Perhaps you want to serve your God. Perhaps you're fully committed to serving in whatever he's deemed right and whatever capacity he has called you to.
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Maybe you want to serve in this church. You know we're looking for people to serve, but you're not sure how to go about it, how to discern where you're gifted, how to begin.
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As I said, I want to offer four, what I hope to be practical steps in how to go about this.
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First, I want to encourage you to seek the Lord in prayer. Ask him to show him to you how you're gifted and how you can serve.
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Secondly, begin by serving in whatever capacity you can manage time -wise.
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Ask your leadership where help is needed. Shane will have an answer for you. Ask him.
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He will have an answer for you. If there's anything that you're more interested in than anything else, start there.
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If there isn't, do whatever leadership permits you to do. Thirdly, ask your church leadership in what they think area you're gifted in.
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They're going to see things from a different perspective. They have different discernment, and they'll be able to affirm or deny a possible gifting in certain areas.
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Once you are serving in an area, the local church, your believers around you, your brothers and sisters, will be able to either affirm or deny if you are gifted in that area.
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If you're gifted in a joy, if you labor for his glory, the people around you will be encouraged.
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They'll be built up by your service. They'll glorify Christ. They'll be making much of Christ with that.
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Just before we close here, we've looked at the complete
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Christian life from salvation, which is the bedrock, the foundation, to Christ being our
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Master and Lord, to faithfully serving Him. We have to, however, address those of you who are not believers.
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If you're here today and you have not come face -to -face with Christ like Saul did on the road to Damascus, if you have not bent your knee before Him and confessed
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Him as Lord, we want to urge you to do that now in this life while you still can.
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There will be a day when you have to bend your knee before Him and when you will confess Him as your Lord.
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Do that now while you still have time. Don't presume on the riches and the kindness of God to overlook any of your sins.
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Don't presume that a loving God will let you into heaven because you're a good person, because you're not.
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You have sinned, you have fallen short of the glory of God, and you stand condemned before Him.
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But like Saul, there is hope for you. If you, like Saul, repent of your sins and believe on Christ, He'll give you a new heart.
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He'll take your heart of stone, that spiritually dead heart, and give you a heart of flesh and raise you from spiritual death to spiritual life.
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As we close, I want to end with this exhortation.
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If you're here, if you're a believer, and maybe you've grown cold over the years, maybe you have made your job, recreation, entertainment, or any other type of sin your master,
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I want to encourage you to remember the love you had at first, to repent of your sin and to serve
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Christ with all your being. Use the gift you've been given and serve
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Him with every fiber of your being because He alone is the good master that deserves to be served.