WWUTT 233 Building a Foundation?

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You have to worship God. It is a command. You must do it. You have to worship God.
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But just hearing me say that and then offering up worship to God does not automatically make it acceptable, but that God makes your worship acceptable when we understand the text.
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This is When We Understand the Text, a daily study of God's Word, that we may be filled with the knowledge of His will.
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Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. Romans chapter 15 again today. If you want to open up your
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Bibles and join with me there, beginning in verse 14. So Romans 15, 14 through 21.
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We'll look at this section again today here. Paul says, I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another.
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But on some points I have written to you very boldly by way of reminder because of the grace given me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the
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Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God so that the offering of the
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Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. In Christ Jesus, I have reason to be proud of my work for God, for I will not venture to speak of anything except what
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Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the
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Spirit of God, so that from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum, I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ.
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And thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else's foundation, but as it is written, those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand.
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So we come back to verse 14 again. I know we had looked at this section yesterday, but I come back to this again today where Paul says,
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I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able to instruct one another.
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Boy, that's like a sermon outline right there in one verse. You've got your three -point sermon.
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All you've got to do is throw in a happy -sappy story and do a little bit of cross -referencing, and boom, you've got a good sermon outline with those three points.
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You yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able to instruct one another.
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But remember once again that these things come from God. We were talking about this last week when we were at the start of chapter 15, where Paul says,
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For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the
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Scriptures we might have hope. May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus.
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So the endurance and the encouragement that we have come from God, the
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Word of God spoken to us, and it is that Word that brings about the endurance and the encouragement that we receive.
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How is it that we endure in this world? How is it that we are encouraged by the hope of the gospel?
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Because we hear these things proclaimed. So in this same way, to be full of goodness, to be filled with all knowledge, and to be able to instruct one another is not something that we harness or come about on our own, but it is given to us by God and through the
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Word of God. Filled with all goodness, how do we know all good things that come from the
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Lord? Because of what we read in His Word. Filled with all knowledge, how can we know anything about God except what is written down for us in the
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Scriptures and able to instruct one another? How are we able to do that? Because we are inherently smart or wise or have gained this knowledge that we might be able to be a leader or a teacher or point somebody in the right direction.
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It's because we have heard the Word of God. And it's with the Word of God that we instruct one another.
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And Paul says that he has made some of these points, brought these things up again with the
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Roman Christians by way of a reminder because of the grace that had been given to him by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the
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Gentiles in the priestly service of the Gospel of God so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the
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Holy Spirit, which was where we finished off yesterday. So remember that we on our own can offer up nothing good to God.
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As it says in Romans 3, no one does good, no one does any righteousness.
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Together we have become worthless. So our offerings to God are not in and of themselves valuable to the
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Lord. Votibachum, I've heard talk about this before. As a matter of fact, this was at the G3 conference a couple of years ago.
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He said to the congregation, you must worship God, but your worship is not good enough.
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But you tell me I have to worship God. That's right, you have to worship God. You must, you have to worship God. So how is it then that our offering is able to be acceptable to God?
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It is because God is the one who makes it acceptable. Jesus cleanses us.
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It is by his blood and his atoning sacrifice that we have been made right before a holy
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God. So it is because Christ is upon us that God looks at us and receives our sacrifice, our offering, as acceptable.
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Whereas before Christ, before the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, these things were not acceptable to God.
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Nothing that we could give to God would ever have been good enough. Isaiah 64, 6, our best deeds are as filthy rags before a holy
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God. So it is Christ who then clothes us in his righteousness that makes our gifts acceptable to God.
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Where we read previously in Romans 12, verses 1 and 2, I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
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But these things could not have been done if it was not made acceptable by God and by the
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Holy Spirit. Paul had said previously in Romans 8, 7, For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law.
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Indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the
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Spirit. So it is by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that makes us acceptable to the
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Lord. It is because of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross that we have been clothed in righteousness and are acceptable to God.
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We on our own, by our own merits, by our own works, can never be acceptable to God. It is the work of God that saves us, that makes us righteous, that grows us in sanctification, that makes our offerings before the
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Lord acceptable. And praise God for these things. It was Lorraine Bettner that once said that mankind is capable of offering volition, but he cannot offer holy volition.
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Volition is an act that is done by the will. So a person can willfully do something for God, but it's not acceptable.
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It's not holy to God, except that God is the one who has made it holy. Twice in John chapter 6 does
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Jesus say no one can come to him unless it is granted to them by the
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Father. A person cannot just make a willful decision to follow Christ and do so in a holy way, except that God makes them able to make that decision.
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Repentance itself is something that we do not do, but is granted to us by God. As it says in 2
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Timothy 2 .25, God is the one who grants repentance. So the way that we offer holy, acceptable sacrifices unto the
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Lord is that God makes us able to offer those sacrifices. Consider something that David wrote in Psalm 51, where he says,
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Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
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Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.
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Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your
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Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.
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The joy of salvation that we have in Christ Jesus is given to us by God.
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And David goes on to say, O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.
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God, open our mouths, so that I may declare your praise. Verse 16,
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For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I will give it. You will not be pleased with a burnt offering.
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The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
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Do good in Zion in your good pleasure. Build up the walls of Jerusalem. Then will you delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offerings, and whole burnt offerings.
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Then bulls will be offered on your altar. When will God delight in right sacrifices?
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When David is the one who has repented to God, when he has finally made the decision to apologize for his sins, that's when
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God will delight in right sacrifices? No, it's when God does good in Zion for his good pleasure.
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Then he will delight in right sacrifices. It is God who cleanses us and makes us acceptable to offer him right sacrifices.
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So lift up prayers to the Lord, that he would cleanse you from your sins.
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Your ability to even open your mouth and offer genuine repentance to God is because God has granted you that repentance.
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So praise his mighty name. Let's go back to Romans 15 again here.
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Paul says in Romans 15, 17, In Christ Jesus I have reason to be proud of my work for God.
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Not because of what Paul has done, but because of what Christ has done. For I will not venture to speak of anything except what
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Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the
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Spirit of God. Again, it is by the power of the Spirit of God that a person is brought to obedience.
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So that from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum, I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ.
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And thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else's foundation, but as it is written, those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand.
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I had a lunch with a pastor a few months ago who is a pastor of a
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Presbyterian church outside of my community about 20 miles away in another town. And he came and had lunch with me because he was thinking about planning a church in Junction City.
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And he asked what I thought of that. And he said that he did not want to build on someone else's foundation. And I said, you know, there is a
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Presbyterian church here in town, but it's very poor, and the doctrine is not sound, and some of the practices that they have there, no church should ever be doing.
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So if a sound, reformed, doctrinally committed gospel teaching
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Presbyterian church wanted to come here and plant, I would say, how can I help? You know,
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I'm a Baptist, he's a Presbyterian, but I don't think that our differences in understanding baptism and covenant should necessarily divide us from doing the
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Lord's work and planning good gospel churches in our community. But he very wisely wanted to make sure that he was not planting or building on someone else's foundation.
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There's another church in the same community that his church came from that does saturation mailings in our town, and they're trying to attract people to Manhattan, Kansas, which, again, is about 20 miles from here.
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And I've had to contact that church and tell them, look, what you're doing is not honest. You are trying to take away from churches here in Junction City.
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You're not trying to find people that are unchurched. You're doing these saturation mailings, and if somebody were to come to your church that was attending a church in Junction City, you'd have no problem with that.
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Well, that is a big problem. So we do need to be careful. We need to be brotherly, even in the ways that different church congregations operate and do ministry with one another, because we all have the same goal, and that is to reach
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Christ. It's not to steal members of a congregation into another congregation. So Paul is saying here that his ambition is not to go where Christ has already been named, lest he build on someone else's foundation, but as it is written, and quoting here from Isaiah 52, those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand.
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So we do see some of these places where Paul has not been to because a church has already been planted there, so he doesn't want to build on someone else's foundation.
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Colossae being one of those places. Rome being another one. Paul has not yet made it to Rome.
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There is a church there in Rome, but he's not meaning to try to build on someone else's foundation. Rather, as we've read at the beginning of the letter, he means to offer encouragement to the
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Roman Christians who have yet to have an apostle come to them and teach them, and he also wants to be encouraged by them.
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And so we're beginning to draw this letter to a close. We're starting to come full circle here.
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We're coming back to some of the things that Paul had introduced at the beginning of the letter, and here within the next few weeks, we will wrap up our study of the book of Romans, coming up on the last chapter and a half.
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Now, I've received some emails from some folks. I had put this out on Friday that I'd like to hear from you as to whether or not we can throw in an
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Old Testament book study, doing Romans on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, or at least a New Testament book, because when we finish up Romans, we'll be doing something else.
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So doing that Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, then an Old Testament book on Thursday, and still doing our Q &A on Friday.
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Well, so far, the response I've been getting has been unanimous. Yes, let's do an
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Old Testament study on Thursday. At least I've not had anybody say to me, no, let's not do that.
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I mean, I've only gotten a couple of dozen emails or so. It's not been a whole lot, but at least the response that I have received has been unanimous.
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So I think tomorrow what we're going to do is come into the book of Judges, and then we will resume our study of Romans on Monday.
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Our Lord God, as we wrap up what it is that we have read here, I pray that this enlightens us all the more in our minds and in our hearts to understand that true wisdom comes from God, knowledge comes from God, the ways that we instruct one another come from the
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Word of God. Our salvation came from God. Holy volition comes from God.
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Our ability to sing praises to you and have them be received from you as genuine and acceptable, this even is a gift from God.
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So we understand these things to make us worship you all the more. We praise you for a great sovereign
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God that you are. The more that we know about God, the greater our praise of you can be.
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So Lord, enlighten our minds and our hearts to who you are according to your word.
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Fill us up with all these good things that are stored up in the Word of God, and let us then take this word and share it with others, so that they too might worship the
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Lord in holiness. We pray and ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. For more about our ministry, visit us online at www .tt