Paul expresses gratitude, explains his mission, and declares that the gospel reveals God’s righteousness while exposing humanity’s need because of God’s wrath against sin.
This morning, if you have your Bibles, we want to continue our study through the book of Romans. And if you would turn with me to Romans chapter 1, I’d like to pick it up at verse 6 this morning. I’d like to read verse 6 through verse 17.
The Apostle Paul is writing to the church at Rome, a church he’s never seen, he’s never been there, but he’s heard of the work that God is doing amongst the people there. And so, let’s just read God’s word.
Romans 1:8-18
8 First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world. 9 For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers; 10 making request, if by any means now at length I might have a prosperous journey by the will of God to come unto you. 11 For I long to see you, that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift, to the end ye may be established; 12 that is, that I may be comforted together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me. 13 Now I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes I purposed to come unto you, (but was let hitherto,) that I might have some fruit among you also, even as among other Gentiles. 14 I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise. 15 So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also. 16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. 17 For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;
Let’s just bow in prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, as we come before you this morning, Lord, I pray that you just speak to us through your word. And Lord, speak to us through the life of the Apostle Paul and his words that you gave him to share with us.
Lord, help us to realize the importance of each one of us to understand that we are to share the gospel. Father, help us to understand the significance of the gospel in our lives and how it has transformed us and brought us into a newness of heart and a newness of relationship with you. As we experience the forgiveness of our sins and walk in the newness of life.
Speak to us through your word this morning, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
As we’re looking at Paul’s letter to the church at Rome, as I mentioned it before I just read this last section, the Apostle Paul had never been to Rome yet.
He’d always wanted to go there and meet the Christians that had come there. Now it’s interesting, a lot of people say, well, how did the Christians come about with their faith in Rome? Because if Paul hadn’t been there, he was the main evangelist, the apostle to the Gentiles. We also know that from the last portion of the book that Paul gives 26 names that he recognizes as people that he knows in Rome.
Some of these people had come from churches that Paul had established. And one of the churches was a church at Ephesus. And some of the names of those people you’ll see are names that you would see when you read the book of Ephesians.
And Paul spent a lot of time at Ephesus. And at Ephesus it was a real pagan culture that he came into. They had a temple, one of the seven wonders of the world was the Temple of Diana, which is really another name for Astaroth.
And it goes all the way back to Semiramis at the Tower of Babel, a pagan goddess that had been worshipped by people in Ephesus and that portion of the world. And Paul came there and he was met initially with strong opposition by those that worshipped. But many came to know Christ and it was such an amazing work of God in that city that literally there were those who had been caught up in the occult activity and had occult books and occult materials.
And they were convicted by God that they needed to get rid of that and yield their whole life to Jesus Christ. And so it says that they had a giant fire in Ephesus and burned 15,000 shekels or not shekels but silver. And it would be worth a lot of money today, the silver that the occultic materials were that they burned.
But they didn’t want them to go into anybody else’s hands. And that was the heart of the people, they’d been totally transformed. They wanted to be totally separate from the world.
Well some of those people ended up going to Rome. If you look at the world at this particular time, the center of all activity was Rome. Rome held the Mediterranean area under its control as well as going up into some portions of Europe and even over into some portions of Asia.
And they controlled that and it was all under Rome’s control. And so if you had dealings, business dealings or anything else, a lot of times you ended up in Rome. And so a lot of people would go to Rome and the gospel got taken to Rome.
And so there was a group of people that got to come to Jesus Christ even before Paul ever made it to Rome. And Paul had heard about them. Now I want us to take a look at some characteristics that Paul mentions to us that not only these people were known for but also that Paul says were important to him and should be important to us.
And specifically to start with we’ll look at three things. And the first thing is, Paul says in verse 8, First I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world. Now the world at this time was a dark place.
The world in our time is a dark place. Right now we’re celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States. But the problem is will there be, how many more anniversaries will there be because the darkness is so great.
What was once common knowledge in our country is not there anymore. And that is who Jesus Christ is and what the Word of God stands for and what the Word of God is. The Apostle Paul commends this group of believers.
And if you look at the whole perspective of the number of believers in Rome versus the number of people in the Roman Empire, it would just be a speck. It would be kind of like looking at the map out there and looking at the nation of Israel compared to all the Muslim countries. It’s just a speck.
These people, even though they were very small in number, had a strong testimony amongst the believers in the other portions of the world, but also in the world. One of the amazing things is Christians in Rome made an impact for the Gospel that went to all other places as they carried it with them, as they took their trade and their journey. And the Apostle Paul commends them for this because he says this should be really the characteristic of every one of us.
What do people see in our lives? What do people see in a world that really rejects the Bible? Do they see in our lives somebody who not only understands the Bible, but Jesus is in our hearts and we are truly the light in the midst of darkness in this world? And do people say about you, I heard about their faith. I heard about that they have a belief in the God of the Bible and that they trust in Jesus Christ as their Lord. So that’s the first thing that Paul says as he commends them for their faithfulness.
He commends them for the fact that their testimony has gone throughout the world and their faith is spoken of throughout the whole world. The second thing he says is, For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit to the Gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers. Paul didn’t know these people, but he prayed for them always.
And he said, you know, I don’t know about you, but sometimes I’ve told people I’ll pray for you and I forget. And it’s terrible when you do that. It’s terrible when I do that, I shouldn’t say you, when I. Because those people are expecting you to pray for them.
They’re expecting you to lift their concerns before the Lord. The amazing thing about the Apostle Paul is, Paul says that he prays without ceasing. Now how do you do that? Well, Paul, when he’s praying, he’s not kneeling and folding his hands and closing his eyes all the time that he’s praying.
But Paul is in constant communication with the Lord. When Paul’s going about his duties, he’s actually communicating with God as he’s going about his duties. As he’s going about preaching the Gospel, as he’s going about sharing with people.
And as he meets people, he is constantly lifting them up to the Lord in prayer. He tells the people in Rome, as God is my witness. In other words, God knows that I am praying for you daily.
Never met these people, many of them, and yet he’s praying for them. Why? Well, Paul in the book of Ephesians tells us why. We’re not in just living our lives in this world waiting for the one day where we can go to heaven.
But God allows us to stay here because we’re involved in a great spiritual battle. As I mentioned, our nation celebrates the 250th anniversary today where we went to war for the war of independence against England. And people went to war to gain freedom.
We sang about the Civil War, one of the songs that came out of the Civil War earlier in the service today, the Battle Hymn of the Republic. And in that song, the whole war was dealing with principles, ideologies, and freedom. But we’re at a much greater war than either of those.
The war of independence gave us freedom as a nation like no other nation has ever had in the history of the world. Much of which we have thrown away. The Civil War brought freedom to men that slavery was taken out of our nation.
And men had freedom. And there were other issues involved in the Civil War. They were both important in gaining types of freedom for individuals and for you and me.
But the problem is we’re in a greater war than either one of those every day. The Apostle Paul tells us in the book of Ephesians. Let’s just turn in Ephesians so you can just read it.
In the book of Ephesians chapter 5, I mean chapter 6. Ephesians chapter 6 verse 10. And finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles, that is wiles are schemes or plans, of the devil.
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against rulers and darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore, take unto you the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girded about with truth, having the breastplate of righteousness, and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.
Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, watching thereon with all perseverance and supplication for all saints.
Paul tells us there, number one, what we’re involved in and why we need to pray. We’re involved in a spiritual warfare that’s more significant than any war or anything that you can see happening in the physical realms. Because the spiritual warfare is behind what you see happening in the physical realms.
Satan desires to enslave all men and cause them to rebel against God the Creator. Our natural tendency is to rebel. And the only way that we are set free from that is through the blood of Jesus Christ.
And we are involved in a great battle for something that’s even more important than men’s physical lives, and that’s men’s souls because that’s their eternal life. And the thing is, the Apostle Paul tells us that we are to be prepared when we go into this warfare. And as people see us, they should know that we’re prepared because we’re carrying the very elements that God has given to us that reveal His character and which He places upon us that enable us to stand against a world system and a world ideology that is desirous to destroy all that God stands for.
And we’re to stand against it. That’s what Paul said in Ephesians chapter 6. But not only that, did you catch the last portion of that passage we read in chapter 6 where it says that we’re to pray without ceasing. And we’re to pray for one another without ceasing.
We’re to constantly have an attitude where we’re reliant upon God and seeking His direction and His will and His purpose in all that we do. And that we’re to seek how He would have us walk and what He would have us do and how He would have us stand against the schemes of Satan. The Apostle Paul did this.
He knew that the church in Rome, even though they had a strong testimony, even though they were recognized by Christians throughout the world, the then known world, the Mediterranean area where the gospel had already been taken by Paul and Barnabas and others, that as they were recognized for that, they also stood at the center and the very core of the wickedness of all that was evil in the world and that was the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire worshipped false gods. The Roman Empire, if you go back to the book of Daniel when we were studying Daniel, was the fourth in a series of a number of empires that had come into being and each one of them flowed out of the other empire.
They changed the name of the gods. They changed some of the things that they did as far as the structure of their government. But they were all the same.
They worshipped pagan gods and they all went back to Satan and he was the underlying core or foundation of their belief system. That was Rome. Rome was so wicked that the emperors were declaring that they should be worshipped as God.
Christians had to make the choice. If they would say, yes, I acknowledge that Caesar is God, then they would let them go about and then you can go about and worship your gods because you’ve already acknowledged the chief god which is Caesar. They had a choice to make.
Am I going to bow the knee to Caesar or to Jesus? And the thing is, many Christians throughout the Roman Empire history and even beginning shortly after the church that Paul was writing to in Rome found themselves in a situation where either they followed Christ or they yielded to Rome to have to live in peace. Many Christians were martyred for their faith in the Colosseum simply because they wouldn’t bow the knee to Caesar and say that he’s God. Simply because they wouldn’t worship the Roman gods.
Simply because they wouldn’t give in to the wiles and schemes of Satan. Paul is saying, I’m praying for you in Rome constantly. Why? Because you’re at the heart of the battle.
You’re in this battle just as I’m in this battle. And what Paul is saying is the same words that he gave to, that when he wrote to the church at Ephesians, we need to be in a constant attitude of prayer because our strength comes from the Lord and by placing his armor, his characteristics upon ourselves, we’re able to stand against the schemes of Satan. So the second thing I want you to understand is that Paul is saying, not only are we to remember one another, and not only are we to stand so that people acknowledge that we are walking with Christ, but secondly, we’re to be praying for one another.
And I trust that you’re praying for one another here. That we pray that God would work in our hearts and lives and use each one of us, give us opportunities to share the gospel. One of the things that we have is prayer time on Wednesday night and Sunday afternoons.
And we pray for needs. And some of the needs that are coming up is praying for people that people have had an opportunity to witness to, whether it be family or friends. Or praying that God would open up hearts so that they’d understand the gospel and that they would accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior.
Praying that when we have opportunities to share with people that claim they’re pagans and want nothing to do with God, that God would use our words and the power of His Spirit to touch their hearts and convict them that they would bow to the need of Jesus and give their lives to Him. Prayer is important. And Paul talked about being in prayer constantly.
The third thing I want you to see, beginning of verse 10, Making request, if by any means now at length, I might have a prosperous journey by the will of God to come unto you. For I long to see you, that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift, to the end ye may be established. Fellowship.
Fellowship. Christian fellowship. Fellowship with people who believe the Bible’s real.
Not just going to a church to go through motions on Sunday, but going to a church to have real fellowship. To get to know one another. To encourage one another.
Why did Paul want to go to the church at Rome? He knew the situation, the place they were located. He knew the strength of their witness. But he also knew the battle they were in.
And he wanted to go there that he could impart to them a spiritual gift. Now, did he want to lay hands on them like he did with Timothy? No, that’s not what he’s talking about. I think that he wanted to go there and personally teach them from God’s Word and from how God had used him to enable them to see how they could stand and how they could grow in the Lord.
And how God could give them spiritual gifts as well to be used amongst themselves as well as reaching out to other Christians around them. One of the sad things that’s happened in the church today, the church has forgotten about fellowship. At the heart of fellowship is love one for another.
It’s a compassion and a desire to see you grow and you desire to see me grow in the Lord and we desire to become more Christ-like. And when we have issues in our lives, we are there to help one another not to stand back and go away from one another. There are some wicked, wicked false teachings coming into the church that undermine true fellowship.
I don’t know if you heard, there’s a whole deal and it has its basis in psychology, not the Bible. And how do I know it’s not the Bible? Because the Bible says if someone does something to wrong me, I won’t push them away, but I will forgive them. And I will pray for them.
And I will love them. Jesus Himself says love your enemies and pray for those that despitefully use you. What does psychology tell us? Psychology tells us blame everybody for everything that’s wrong in your life and push them away.
And make them come and grovel at your feet and tell you how they have wronged you so much so that somehow you can gain your self-esteem back again. That’s not what the Bible says. And if you do that, what happens is it destroys fellowship.
It destroys the unity that is found in Christ and it’s a way that Satan can get people to be divided one from another. Even in the church. I’ve known people that claim to be Christians, but have held grudges for years.
You know they’re not praying for one another if they’re holding grudges. You know they’re not desiring fellowship with one another when you walk in the same building and all of a sudden they see you and they turn around and walk out, yet they claim to be your brother in Christ. The Apostle Paul says, I long to be with you.
I want to impart unto you things that I have learned and then give you spiritual gifts that enable you to grow and mature in your faith so that when I see something where you’re young and making mistakes, I can help you and not cause you to be turned away from me. This new teaching that’s coming into the church, it’s called I Place Boundaries Around You and you can’t cross my boundary.
Amongst believers, it’s Satan trying to divide and cause believers to turn one from another. So the third thing we see is the importance of fellowship. Fellowship, and Paul desires to use that fellowship when he comes, to impart to them, to give them that which would enable them to walk in greater strength, to help them, to cause them to grow and mature in their faith, not to keep them at an arm’s length if they offend him with something they say or do, but rather to have them overcome and become overcomers through the word of their testimony in the blood of Jesus.
He goes on and he says, For I long to see you, that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift, to the end ye may be established. The whole purpose of our fellowship and Paul’s imparting spiritual gift is to make them established in the Lord that they would become mature believers that can stand, and going back to Ephesians chapter 6, that when the schemes of Satan come, they will recognize those schemes, stand against them and be able to defeat the adversary and be able to be used by God in the purposes to overcome and be saved. Paul goes on, That is, that I may be comforted together with you by the mutual faith, both of you and me.
Have you ever had, as I mentioned, a Christian friend that all of a sudden you’re at such odds with them that you don’t speak to each other? Something’s wrong. Because Paul says, we’re to be comforted by our mutual faith. We’re to be comforted because we both worship the same Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
And one of the amazing things is, I’ve shared with you before, Bert and I, in some of our travels when we’ve been on vacations or whatever, we’ve gone and we’ve met people, and all of a sudden there’s kind of like a connection. We don’t know these people because we just met them. And yet we just feel this connection.
And we begin talking and all of a sudden you find out they’re believers. And you start talking and you start sharing what God’s showing in you and they share what God’s showing in their lives and all of a sudden you’re an encouragement to one another. Never met these people before in your life.
And they’re encouraging you in your walk with the Lord. And you’re encouraging them. That’s what Paul is speaking of here.
If we are with believers, there should be this unity that’s found in Christ. And if that unity isn’t found in Christ, then one needs to question, what do you believe? And what Bible are you following? I remember hearing the story of a man who couldn’t speak the language. He was in a foreign country, couldn’t speak the language.
But he decided to go out for a walk. He went out for a walk and as he’s walking, all of a sudden he hears someone humming or whistling a Christian hymn. Now the man that was out for a walk was a believer.
And he went over and he meets this guy and they can’t really communicate because they can’t speak each other’s language, but they can communicate because they’re both Christians and they both love the Lord. And he said, I had a marvelous time meeting a man I really couldn’t talk to, but we both love Jesus. That’s what Paul is talking about here.
He desires to come so that he can establish them in their strength of the Lord, that they will have this common faith in Christ that will give them a desire not only to grow in their love for one another, but to also see one another grow in the Lord. Now I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes I purposed to come unto you, but I was let hitherto, that is, I wasn’t able to come as of yet, that I might have some fruit among you also, even as among other Gentiles. Paul says, I desire that I can be able to share that you may grow and you may bear fruit that I may be part of sharing and seeing grow in your lives.
Do you know people that you’ve shared the gospel with and then you kind of just left them? One of the tragedies that I see has happened in the church and in the whole evangelistic movement over probably the last, it began probably 40, 50 years ago, was walking the aisle saying a prayer and then you just throw the people out. No, they literally didn’t throw them out, but they said, now you’ve come to know Jesus as your Lord and Savior because you walked the aisle and said a prayer, but they were left to flounder in a world that they were in spiritual battle with and now they are a brand new Christian and they don’t know what to do or where to go. And then they go to a church and the church isn’t even teaching the Bible and so they’re floundering more.
You see, one of the things that Paul is saying here, I long to be with you that I can cause you to be growing in the Lord and I can see fruit in your life. What’s amazing is to see God use people. And the thing is you don’t have to be a pastor to disciple somebody in the Lord.
You don’t have to be a Sunday school teacher. You don’t have to be a seminary professor. All you have to do is be a Christian and be growing in the Bible yourself and spend time with a person who is a new creature in Christ and help them understand God’s Word.
Have time of prayer together. Have time of Bible study together. That’s what Paul is talking about.
He longs for that time where he can physically be with them. In some ways, it’s easier today to do that than it was even in Paul’s day because you can face time with people, although it’s a lot better to be there in person. But you can have studies together.
And Paul is saying here, I long to be with you that I can do that. I am a debtor both… Let’s pick it up back at verse 13. Now I would not have you ignorant, brethren.
He longs to be with them. Verse 14. I am a debtor both to the Greeks and to the barbarians, both to the wise and to the unwise.
Now I want you to understand what Paul is saying there. Again, our culture, what is a Greek, what is a barbarian? Greeks were part of the Greek culture. They spoke the Greek language.
They were Hellenistic in their life, in their worldview. That’s what a Greek was. A barbarian, Greek was not his language.
And the Hellenistic worldview was not his worldview. He came from a different culture, a culture that the Greek would have looked down upon and said that was something that is not refined at all. And you should really ignore them.
Because they are, what Paul uses here, barbarians. In the Greek’s mind, they didn’t have any refinement, they didn’t have any ability to understand the great Greek philosophers and the great Greek teaching. And so you set them aside.
Paul says, I don’t set aside the Greek simply because he claims to be refined, but he’s a sinner just as much as a barbarian. And sometimes the Greek is harder to reach than the barbarian because they are filled with pride because they look at themselves as being something they’re not. They are merely a sinner that needs to be saved by the grace of Jesus.
And it doesn’t matter how much education they’ve had, how many refining organizations they belong to, how cultured they appear to be, if they don’t know Jesus, they’re not saved. And the barbarian sometimes is easier to reach because he may understand the depth of his depravity. But Paul says, I seek to be someone that goes to both.
I’m not a respecter of persons, but I see that all men need the gospel. Both the refined, the cultured, the educated, as well as those that are the common man, the uneducated, the unrefined, the uncultured. They both need the gospel because they both have the same problem.
They’re sinners that need to be saved by grace. And Paul says that. And he says, I am a debtor to both of them.
Now how can he be a debtor? What he has is what they need. And so he’s a debtor to them in that he must give it to them or they’re not going to hear it from anybody else. You realize that there’s people all around you and some of you have refined people, some of you have unrefined people, uncultured people.
Some of you have people from different walks that come into your life. And you’re to be a debtor to them. Understand that you have what they need and you need to give it to them and you need to share it with them or otherwise who will? He goes on.
So as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also. So he says, I’m not going to hold back. If I come to Rome, you’re hearing the same gospel that I give to the Greeks and to the barbarians.
You’re going to get the same messages from me. You’re going to hear the same teaching from me. I’m not going to change it.
And I’m going to bring it. Why? And then we come into what is the most key and important part of this whole book. This is the theme of this book.
The next two verses. It says, Paul says, For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. For it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith. As it is written, the just shall live by faith. Paul says in there, I am not ashamed of the gospel.
The word ashamed. What does it mean? You put the letter A in front of a word. Ashamed means that you have shame and something shames you.
Something causes you to want to hide, if you would. And not tell anybody. That’s shame.
Ashame is the act of shaming. The thing is, Paul says, I’m not ashamed. He says, being ashamed of the gospel is not part of me.
Because it’s what set me free. What made me different. I’m a different man because of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
So why would I be ashamed of it? The sad thing is, many Christians today, I think, are ashamed of the gospel. Don’t want to share it with people. Don’t want to talk to people about Jesus.
Because what will they think? What will my friends think? What will the people at work think if I have an opportunity to talk to them about Jesus? What will my family members think? You know, one of the interesting things about reading some of the testimonies of people that come out of really dark places. People who have been saved out of Islam. People who have been saved out of Mormonism.
People who have been saved out of the occult or pagan cultures. One of the things is, when you read their testimonies, they have a real heart to share with those that are left enslaved to these systems. And they’re not ashamed of the gospel.
A woman comes to mind that my wife read her book, her testimony, and she wrote in the book. She came to know Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior. She grew up in a Muslim home.
And when she came to accept Christ, she knew that in that home, she could be put to death for her decision. She’s reading her Bible, and she reads about the fact that she’s to be baptized. And so she goes to the people that had shared the gospel with her, and she says, I need to be baptized.
They said, we don’t really want to baptize you. She said, why? It says right here in the gospel, I need to be baptized. I need to identify with Jesus.
I need to make sure that people know what I have done. They said, well, if we baptize you, your family will probably kill you. She said, I need to be baptized.
She ended up getting baptized. I believe it was the same woman that two of her brothers came, and their intent was to kill her for what she’d done. But they didn’t.
Jesus protected her. But the thing is, she was unashamed of the gospel. She was willing, even if it meant she had to lay down her life, to be obedient to Christ.
In America right now, there’s still honor killing amongst the Muslims. That happens. There is the shedding of your own blood amongst the Mormons for blood atonement, if you leave those religious systems.
It doesn’t happen to everybody, but it does still happen. But I want to tell you, I don’t think anybody in here faced any of that. Are you ashamed of the gospel? Jesus tells us, the world hated me, it will hate you.
But we’re also called in the great commandment he gave right before he left us to take the gospel and take it into the whole world. What if the disciples had said, I’m so glad you came Jesus, I’m so glad you died, I’m so glad you were buried, I’m so glad you rose from the dead, I’m so glad you ascended into heaven and are sitting at the right hand of the Father, but I don’t want to go into the world because I might get killed. You’d say, well, you’re really ashamed of everything Jesus did because you don’t want to tell anybody about it.
Yet, the Word of God says that’s the only thing that can save them. You’ve got the only answer. It’s like the example that a man gave one time in a sermon.
He said, if I had the cure for cancer, it was 100% guaranteed it would cure you. And I have it right up here. And I knew that all the people in my audience had cancer.
And I said, I’ve got it right here, but I’m not going to give it to you. You would call me all kinds of wicked things. You would say I was one of the most evil people in the world because I could have saved you, but I’m not willing to do it.
We’ve got what can save people eternally. Are we willing to share it? Paul says, I’m unashamed of the gospel. I’m not ashamed.
And he says, I’ll take it to the Jew first. Why? Because the Jew was the one through whom God gave us the Word of God, the whole gospel message, and the Messiah. And so he said it should go to the Jew first, and then the Gentile.
Not just the Jew, or not just the Gentile, but to them all. And Jesus said to the whole world. And it’s to go out to the whole world.
And it can only do if we are not ashamed. So Paul, the fifth thing that he tells us is, I’m not ashamed of the gospel. I’m going to take it wherever God calls me to take it.
So if we look at this portion of the book of Romans, you see some amazing thing that Paul tells us, that we are to live our lives as Christians. And what we’re to do. The first thing we saw is that we are to seek, to pray for one another unceasingly.
We’re to seek to remember each other in prayer. We’re to seek to share with one another. We’re to have fellowship with one another.
We’re to lift one another up. We’re to encourage one another. We’re to help one another grow.
We’re to disciple one another. And then we’re also to share the gospel. That is the calling that’s placed on each one of our lives.
If you’ve accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior today, that’s what God wants you to do. And God will place you in positions and situations where you can do it. All you have to do is ask Him.
And the second thing is, remember to pray. Because at the heart of this whole thing is a spiritual battle. In closing, we celebrated our 250th anniversary as a country.
But unless we understand the spiritual battle that’s behind the destruction of America, which it’s, America is under attack, but it’s a spiritual attack. And God’s people need to understand we’re at the very heart of that attack. And we have the answers.
And it begins in prayer. And it begins with the gospel. Let’s just close.
Father, I pray that you just help us to understand the truth of your Word and help us to apply this truth to our life. This we’d ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.