Beginning Romans

Transcript

Good morning, family. Well, if you would please turn with me in your Bibles to Romans chapter 1. A member of the church met me in the foyer just before this. He said, aren’t you going to preach a Mother’s Day sermon? I was like, no, we’re preaching Romans. That’s how we do. This morning we are beginning a new short sermon series on Romans chapter 1, just three sermons on chapter 1. And then immediately after that, we’ll move into Romans chapter 5. Now you might be wondering why Romans 1 and then 5. Well, as I mentioned earlier, our aim as a church is to work through the entire book of Romans over the course of five years, taking one chapter at a time at various different times in the year. So far, we’ve walked through Romans 8 and Romans 12. And this morning we come to the beginning, chapter 1, verses 1 through 17. And because this is the opening chapter of Romans, I want to spend some time this morning setting some context for the whole letter. Because Romans is not just a collection of isolated chapters. Romans is a book with a heartbeat. And if we’re going to understand the chapters, we need to hear the heartbeat. So while you’re making your way to chapter 1, I want you to do me a favor this morning. I want you to take a deep breath. Slowly. Breathe in. Notice the air filling your lungs. Now breathe out slowly. What you just did, you will do around 20,000 times today. And every one of those breaths is keeping you alive. And yet, you did not remind yourself to fill your lungs. You did not tell your diaphragm what to do. While you were getting dressed this morning, looking for your keys, driving to church, walking into this room, your body was quietly doing some of the most essential work your body does. And most of you did not even think about breathing once until I mentioned it. You see, that’s the strange thing about what sustains us. It happens so frequently we stop noticing it. Like the floor beneath your feet. The blood moving through your veins. The heart pumping through your chest right now. The most necessary things in your life are often the things you no longer see or sense. They have been holding you up so faithfully, so quietly, and for so long that you’ve learned to look past them. Until of course something goes wrong. Until you can’t catch your breath. Until the floor cracks. Or until you’re sitting in a hospital room and the doctor says a word you never wanted to hear and then suddenly the thing you forgot was holding you is the only thing you can think about. Family, that can happen to us with the gospel. The good news that brought us in, that raised us from death to life, that united us to Christ. The good news that carried us through every dark season of our life. The gospel has been the air in our spiritual lungs and yet for many of us we have stopped noticing it. Because the gospel is unimportant, but because it’s become so familiar. Because we have been breathing it for so long we forgot that we’re breathing it. Here’s what that might look like in your everyday life. You open up your Bible and you feel cold. You sing words on Sunday morning, but your affections are somewhere else. You serve the church, but more out of duty than delight. You obey, but more by your own willpower than grace and desire. You believe the gospel is true, but you cannot remember the last time it made you marvel or humbled you. Or stopped you in your tracks and caused for you to weep over what God has accomplished for you. Or made you speak about Jesus with courage and joy. Family, to be clear, I’m not saying that we have abandoned the gospel, but what I am saying is that the gospel has become so familiar that for many of us we have stopped being astonished by it. And one of the reasons God gave us Romans is to wake us up again to the surprising wonder of the gospel. To notice the spiritual breath in our lungs. And so my aim this morning is to help us be reminded of the gospel, but also be re-emboldened by the gospel. Paul says in verse 16, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, and the reason he even says those words is because Paul is writing to Rome, the imperial capital of the world at the time. The central place of power and prestige and wisdom and human glory. And he writes to that city about a crucified Jewish carpenter and says, I am not ashamed. Because from a human standpoint, Rome gave him every reason to be ashamed. Just like the world we live in today. At work, where your co-worker does not believe what you believe. Or the school pickup line where your faith seems to change the temperature of every conversation. Or the family group text where Christianity feels like the fault line beneath the surface. Or in your neighborhood where you’ve learned what subjects will create conflict so you avoid them. Or in the classroom where belief in Jesus feels intellectually embarrassing. In those moments we know what to do, but we also know what we do so easily. We go quiet. We soften it. We change the subject. We tell ourselves we’re being careful or we’re being winsome. And sometimes we are, but family, sometimes we’re just hiding because we are embarrassed. And these two realities I want to bring into the light this morning. The gospel that we’ve stopped noticing and the gospel we’ve stopped speaking. Or to make it crazy simple, the drift that’s happened to us on the inside because of familiarity and the shame that’s happened to us on the outside because of the culture. And I want to address this because every single one of us lives somewhere between those two. This family is why Romans is such a needed book for us. Because Romans confronts both. Romans reminds us of the gospel until our hearts are warmed again. And Romans emboldens us with the gospel until our mouths are opened again. And so this morning, I want us to begin this book where Paul begins, with an introduction. In just 17 verses, Paul introduces us to the entire letter, and he does this in three movements. In verses 1 through 7, he introduces us to the author, which is himself. In verses 8 through 15, he introduces us to the audience, which is Rome. And then in verses 16 and 17, he gives us the aim of the gospel, which is the whole point of the letter. And so this is what we’ll be looking at this morning, the author, the audience, and the aim. So I’m going to pray for us, and then we’ll jump in. Our Father and our God, we do thank you for your word. We thank you for the book of Romans. We pray, oh God, that as we sit under your word this morning, that we would be warmed by it. That we would be convicted by it, encouraged by it, and compelled by it, to preach it to others in our world. We pray, oh God, that you would help us to see what your text so clearly shows to us in your word. Without the help of the Holy Spirit, we are helpless. So meet us this morning. Give us the eyes we need to see. We pray these things in Christ’s name, amen. Okay, so let’s begin first with the author. Paul tells us in this crazy run-on sentence almost everything we need to know about the man who wrote these 16 chapters. Let’s look at verse 1. Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God. Paul, right out of the gate, gives us three descriptions in this first verse. Servant, called, and sent apart. And notice, none of those things are achievements. Paul does not begin with his resume or with his accomplishments. He begins with what God has done to him. He is a servant because he understands Christ owns him. He is called because he recognizes Christ has summoned him. And he is set apart because he recognizes Christ has claimed him. So before Paul tells us what he is going to say, he tells us who he belongs to. And that matters because if we’re going to sit under this letter over the next several years, you need to know a bit about the man behind this pen. So let’s just talk a little bit about Paul. Paul’s name was originally Saul. He was born in Tarsus around the same time Jesus was born in Bethlehem. He grew up Jewish. As a young man, he was sent to Jerusalem to study under Gamaliel, one of the most respected rabbis in the ancient world. By his own testimony in Galatians, he was advancing in Judaism beyond many of his peers. He was wicked smart. He was a Pharisee, brilliant, disciplined, driven, and exceedingly zealous. He was the kind of man every religious parent would have pointed to and said, that’s the kind of young man I want you to become. And then Acts chapter 7 happens. There is this young deacon named Stephen standing before the religious leaders, preaching one of the most powerful sermons in the New Testament. And the religious leaders hated what he preached. So they dragged Stephen outside the city and they stoned him to death. Acts 7 gives us these chilling details. The witnesses of the stoning laid their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. So what this means is that Saul was in every way the one who approved the execution of Stephen. That’s the first time we meet Saul. Not preaching the gospel, not writing Romans, but approving the murder of a Christian. And then it gets worse. Acts 8 says that Saul began ravaging the church, moving from house to house, snatching up men and women, dragging them away, throwing them into prison. Acts 9 says he was still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord. And family, you need to feel the weight of that. The man who wrote Romans to remind you and me of the gospel, began his public life trying to destroy anyone who preached the gospel. Acts tells us that he was on his way to Damascus with authorization in his hand and violence in his heart when Jesus stopped him. When a light from heaven threw him to the ground and a voice spoke and said, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Not them, me. And you see what that means is that the risen Jesus so identifies himself with his church that to persecute his people, his brothers and sisters, his children, is to actually persecute Jesus himself. And in that moment, Saul’s whole paradigm shifted. The Jesus he thought was a false messiah was speaking to him from heaven. The church he thought was a threat to God actually belonged to God. The zeal he thought was righteousness was actually rebellion. And the Pharisee of Pharisees was left face down in the dirt, blind, helpless and completely undone. And that is where the gospel began with Paul. Not in a classroom, not from a dynamic sermon, from the gospel that found him on the road that knocked him down, blinded him for three days and began to build his entire world from the ground up. So when Paul says, I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation. He is not speaking theoretically. He is speaking experientially. Paul is not arguing for the power of the gospel. Paul is the very evidence of the power of the gospel. He has seen what the gospel can do because the gospel did it to him. It took a persecutor and made him a preacher. It took a murderer and made him a missionary. It took a man breathing threats of violence and filled his mouth with grace and with the gospel. That is who is writing this letter. And after his conversion, Paul spent the next 25 years preaching the same gospel that saved him. He planted churches. He preached in the marketplace. And as a result, he was beaten with rods. He was stoned and left for dead. He was imprisoned. He was shipwrecked. He was hungry, cold, betrayed. He was opposed. And by the time he writes this letter to Romans, he’s probably in Corinth at around AD 57. And he’s still burning, still preaching, still going. And he’s still unashamed of the gospel. Family, that is the man writing Romans. Not a young convert rushing on the first rush of emotion. Or a man who had this mountaintop experience. But a man who was conquered by Christ, commissioned by Christ, and carried by Christ. Through decades of suffering and opposition. And now in a borrowed room in Corinth, likely speaking through a scribe, he writes the most thorough exposition of the gospel ever written by a human author. A man who has been broken by the gospel, saved by the gospel, sent by the gospel, and sustained by the gospel. Which is why he opens his letter this way. Servant, called, and set apart. That word servant here, it literally means a slave. A person who is no longer living as his own master. Paul says, that’s me. I belong to Christ Jesus, the Lord. And don’t miss how bold that statement is. Paul is writing to Rome, a city where Caesar was called Lord. A city where the empire demanded allegiance to Caesar. And Paul opens his letter by saying, I belong to another Lord. You see, the gospel does not simply add Jesus to a list of all other possible Lords. The gospel demands we dethrone every other Lord. Caesar is not Lord. Sin is not Lord. And self is not Lord. Christ is Lord. And Paul says, I am his and he owns me because he purchased me. And then Paul says in two verses, in verse two, look. Which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures. And family, don’t miss what Paul is doing here. Right in the middle of introducing himself, Paul stops to tell us that the gospel is older than Paul. Which means, Paul did not invent the gospel. And the church did not manufacture it. The gospel was promised beforehand. It was preached in the curse spoken over the serpent in Genesis 3. It was promised to Abraham. It was sung in the Psalms. And carried by the prophets all throughout the Old Testament. So by the time Paul picks up his pen in Corinth, the gospel is already ancient. This is not a new idea invented by Paul. It is the oldest promise in the world. Going all the way back to Eden. And family, this matters right now. Because there is a growing hunger in our culture for something that is ancient. You see this in this renewed interest towards Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy. They want roots. They want weight. They want mystery. They want to feel connected to something older than themselves. And listen, I get it. There is something right about wanting a faith that does not feel shallow or trendy. But hear what Paul is saying here. You don’t have to run away from the gospel to find something ancient. You don’t need to trade the sufficiency of Christ to find layers of tradition. You don’t need to look past the gospel to find deep roots. The gospel goes all the way down. Before Rome. Before councils and cathedrals. Before incense and icons. There was a promise. The seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. Family, the gospel is not thin. It’s not shallow. It’s not new. The gospel is the most ancient reality you can hold on to. It’s older than any tradition that claims to preserve it. So you don’t need to be embarrassed about the gospel. Or run to some trend claiming to be more ancient than the gospel. Family, those things will only lead to a dead end. Now look at See how Paul brings us to the center in verses 3 and 4. Concerning his son who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the son of God in power, according to the spirit of holiness, by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord. He finishes his long run on sentence there. Here in these two verses, Paul gives us the very heart of the gospel and it’s important to understand because despite what people think, the heart of the gospel is not an idea. It is a person, Jesus Christ. And in this verse, Paul makes three massive claims about him. First, Paul references the fact that he is the eternal son of God, which means the story of Jesus does not begin in Bethlehem. It begins before the beginning. So before the manger, there was glory. Before Mary held Jesus in her arms, the Father loved him for all of eternity. Second, Paul says Jesus was descended from David according to the flesh and what that means is that the eternal son condescended and became truly human. He took on a body. He came from the bloodline of David. He got tired. He got hungry. He bled. In other words, Jesus was not pretending to be human. He was human. Fully God and fully human. Paul says the promised king came in real flesh and blood. And in third, Paul says he was declared to be the son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead. And that word declared here, it carries the idea of being appointed or installed. Paul is not saying Jesus became the son at the resurrection, but that he always was the son. But that at the resurrection, the crucified son was publicly enthroned in power. At the resurrection, the Father announced to heaven and earth, this is my son, this is my king, this is the Lord. And what this means, family, is that the gospel Paul preaches is not simply religious advice. It is a royal announcement. The king has come. The king has died. The king has risen. And the king reigns. And this king’s name is Jesus Christ the Lord. That is the gospel. It’s not a method. It’s not a movement. And it’s not simply a shift in your morality. It is news, the greatest news about an actual person, Jesus Christ. Then verse 5, Through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations. Notice the order Paul uses here. Grace, then apostleship. Grace came first. The mission came second. So Paul was not an apostle who received grace because of how hard he worked or how much he understood about the Old Testament. Paul was a sinner who received grace and then was sent out because of grace. So it’s grace before mission always. Grace before calling. Grace before usefulness. Grace before Paul ever preached a sermon or planted a church or wrote a letter. Christ met him with grace and then Christ gave him work to do. And what was that work? The obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations. So for Paul, faith and obedience are not enemies. Faith is the root and obedience is the fruit. They are not the same thing, but family, they’re never separated. And what this means principally is that the gospel does not call people simply to admire Jesus from a distance or to respect him as a kind of spiritual guide. It is to trust him, to belong to him, to bow before him in his word and to follow him in faith. Paul says the aim of this mission is not about the greatness of Paul. It’s not about the fame of Rome. He says it’s for the sake of his name, meaning the name of Jesus Christ among the nations. This family is the horizon of Romans. The gospel made clear so that Christ would be worshipped among the nations. That Christ would be obeyed among the nations. That Christ would be named as Lord among the nations. At the very end of this letter in Romans chapter 16, Paul closes with the same phrase, obedience of faith. Which means the whole letter of Romans is bookended by obedience and faith. And everything in between is teaching us what gospel faith and gospel obedience looks like for the name or glory of Christ. Then in verses 6 and 7, Paul turns from the gospel that he carries to the people he’s writing to. He says, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, to all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints. You notice that word again, called. Paul is called and the Christians in Rome are called. And not just called. Notice what else he says. They are loved by God. That they are saints. Both passive by the way. Both gifts. Neither one of those things earned. They did not name themselves loved. God named them love. They did not declare themselves to be saints. God did that. What this means for us is that Paul gives them instruction. Before he gives them instruction, he gives them identity. That they are loved by God. They are called to belong to Christ. And they are called to be saints. And family, this is not just true of Rome. This is true of every Christian in this room. You did not name yourself loved by God. God did that. You did not make yourself a saint. God did that. Later on in chapter 8, Paul tells us how secure that love is. He says this, nothing in heaven, nothing on earth, nothing in life, nothing in death, in fact nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. So the love named in Romans chapter 1 is the love that holds in Romans chapter 8. It’s the same love. Same God. Same gospel. So this is the author and this is the gospel he carries. A converted Pharisee, broken on the road, rebuilt by a king, owned by the Lord, called by grace, and sent to the nations to carry a message older than Abraham but as fresh as the breath in your lungs. That is the author of Romans. Okay. So now let’s meet the audience. We see this in verses 8 through 15. And this is important family because if you miss the audience, you will miss the force of the letter. Family, one of the most important principles of what we call hermeneutics or the way we read our Bibles is remembering that the Bible was written for us but it was first written to a particular people in a particular place and time. That means before we ask what does this mean for me? We must first ask what did it mean to them? Meaning the audience. Because if we understand the original audience, the historical setting, and the purpose of the author, we are able to read our scriptures more faithfully, clearly, and carefully. Okay. So imagine Rome around AD 57. This is not a quiet city. Rome is the capital of the Roman Empire. It was the largest city in the western world. Every road led to Rome. All the money flowed from Rome. And all culture bent to Rome. And in Rome, Caesar was not simply a ruler. Caesar was treated like a god. The emperor was called Curios, which means lord. In fact, coins from the Roman world spoke of Caesar as the son of God. So to walk into Rome and say Jesus is lord is not simply a private religious opinion. It was a public act of defiance. To say Jesus is lord was to say Caesar is not. To preach a crucified Jewish messiah as the risen king in the imperial city of the world was dangerous. It was costly. And it was considered treason. And in just a few years under Nero, this danger would move to death. Christians would be burned to light the emperor’s garden for making that kind of statement that Jesus is lord. So when Paul writes to the church in Rome, he’s not writing to comfortable Christians in a spiritually neutral city. He is writing to believers living in the lion’s mouth. Now, where did the church in Rome even come from? Paul did not plant it. I mean, he had never been there before. So how did the gospel even get to Rome? Well, most likely it goes back to Pentecost. In Acts chapter 2, when the spirit is poured out and Peter preaches in Jerusalem, Luke tells us that there were visitors from Rome in the crowd. Now, we don’t know their names. We don’t know how many were there or how many believed, but we know this. Somebody carried the gospel home to Rome. And by the time Paul writes Romans, the church was already about 25 years old, almost as old as the church in Jerusalem. Now, at first, the church in Rome was largely Jewish believers and Gentile God-fearers connected to the synagogues. Okay? That’s what was going on in Rome. But then around AD 49, something happened. The emperor at the time, a man named Claudius, decided to kick out all the Jews in Rome. And the reason, most historians believe, is because of the constant conflict between believing and unbelieving Jews that were clashing in the synagogue. Okay? Claudius’ solution was simple. Kick all the Jews out and there’ll be no more conflict. It’s kind of like what parents do to siblings. Move them into different places and there’ll be no more fights. And this is confirmed in the book of Acts, chapter 18. Aquila and Priscilla had come from Rome to Corinth because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome. So for several years, the Roman church became largely Gentile. Gentile believers kept gathering. The church kept growing. So naturally, the leadership shifted. The customs and the culture shifted. Which means the entire feel for the church shifted. And then when Claudius died and Nero took the throne, the expulsion of the Jews was lifted. And the Jewish believers ended up coming back home to Rome. But they came back to a totally different church. They no longer felt like the church they had left. The Jewish believers returned with their history, with their scripture, with their food laws and holy days and their covenant identity. And the Gentile believers had spent years learning how to follow Jesus without the Jews. And now they’ve come home to become one church again. And family, that is the tension that’s bubbling the surface of this whole letter. When Paul gets to chapters 14 and 15, he starts talking about the strong and the weak, about food and consciences, about not despising one another. This was the world underneath those words. Jews and Gentiles. Old wounds. New habits. Different backgrounds. Becoming one church again. And Paul writes the most thorough exposition of the gospel ever written because both sides need to remember there is not a Jewish gospel and a Gentile gospel. There is only one gospel. One Christ. One Lord. One people. Saved by grace through faith for the glory of God. That is the audience Paul is writing to. A mixed church in the imperial capital pressed from the outside by political power and political worship. Stained on the inside by this Jewish and Gentile tension. 25 years into their life together and Paul tells them I am not ashamed of the gospel and by implication neither should you be. Now, look at what Paul writes to them. Verse 8 First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you because your faith is proclaimed in all the world. What Paul is saying here is that the Roman church had a reputation. A good reputation. Their faith has been talked about all across the empire so Paul does not begin by lecturing them or correcting them. He begins first by thanking God for them and their good reputation. Look at verse 9. For God is my witness whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of His Son and without ceasing I mention you always in my prayers. Paul calls God as his witness. He wants them to know I am not just saying I am praying for you I am actually praying for you. God knows constantly and without ceasing. It is crazy. Paul has never been to Rome and yet he prays for them like their family. Brothers and sisters this is why in our pastoral prayers we often pray for other churches in Portland and other churches all across the world. Even though we don’t know those members by name. Because Paul sets the example and because Paul in every way is letting us know that we are connected to them as brothers and sisters. So we pray for them and notice what he says about them. Whom I serve. This is not Paul’s church. He didn’t plant it and yet he serves them. This shows us that service and ministry extends beyond these walls. That word serve there it’s in the original language it carries this image of worship. It’s connected to temple language used for priests who served in the temple. So it’s like sacrificial language. And Paul uses that word specifically because he does not simply see his ministry to them as duty only. He sees it as worship. Later in chapter 12 he tells every Christian in Rome to present their bodies as a living sacrifice which is their spiritual worship. It’s the same word there and it’s the same idea. The apostles ministry though it is work it is predominantly marked by worship. What this tells us is that the Christian’s life is predominantly marked by worship. Worship is not something we simply do for an hour on Sunday or like two hours just being real. When I’m preaching I know. Worship is what a Christian does with their whole life. Look at verses 10 through 12. Paul says always in my prayers asking that somehow by God’s will I may now at last succeed in coming to you for I long to see you that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you. That is that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith both yours and mine. Paul says he’s been praying for years to come to these saints in Rome to give them a spiritual gift and notice what the gift is something that will strengthen their faith to build them up in their faith. He wants to give them words of encouragement. But notice verse 12 this is interesting. It’s almost as if Paul hears himself speaking. He starts by saying I want to give you something. But then he backs up and he says actually let me say this better. I want us to be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith both yours and mine. Did you see that? The greatest apostle in the history of the church says to a church he’s never met I need you. I want to strengthen you but I also want to be strengthened by you. In other words we need each other. Family there is no apostolic version of Christianity that gets to skip over the body. There is no mature version of you that no longer needs the church. There is no senior saint or gifted leader or even a pastor who gets to graduate from mutual encouragement. We don’t graduate from the body family. We only grow deeper into it. Then in verses 14 and 15 after Paul mentions that he’s been prevented from coming there he says this I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians both to the wise and to the foolish. foolish, so I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome.” Essentially Paul is saying, I am a debtor. Not because I borrowed anything from you. It’s not like Rome kind of floated him cash when he was in prison and now he feels obligated. No, he has a different obligation. His obligation is because Christ has entrusted him with something that belongs to the nations. The gospel in Paul’s hands has other people’s names on it. Greeks, barbarians, wise, foolish, the nations. And Paul cannot rest until the message is delivered. Family, this is how Paul frames evangelism. As a debt. As a burden. Not as extra credit Christianity or something that you kind of maybe want to do or maybe don’t want to do depending on how you feel. But as a debt of love. Christ has placed the gospel in his hands and that gospel belongs to others. And there are names on that list for us too. Our children. Our co-workers. Our friends. Our neighbors. Our sons and our daughters who have drifted away from the faith. The gospel in your pocket is not yours to keep privatized. It is intended by God to be given away freely to the nations. So this is the audience and the occasion. A mixed congregation living in a hostile environment, internal tension, external pressure, Jews and Gentiles learning to be one church, political and pagan worship right outside their front door, persecution on the horizon, and Paul, a converted persecutor of the church, 25 years into ministry, wants Rome to become his ministry and missionary partner. So he writes ahead of his arrival and he sends them the gospel. Do you see how relevant this is for us? Living in Portland? In the Pacific Northwest? It’s striking. It’s striking. And now we come to the heart of it all, two verses, verses 16 and 17. This here is the aim and the thesis of the whole letter. Look at verse 16. For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. Family, every single word in this verse is loaded. The whole book of Romans, 16 chapters, 433 verses, is packed into this one sentence. And the sentence starts with a confession, I am not ashamed. He begins here because in Paul’s world, there were plenty of reasons to be ashamed. The cross was not inspiring. In fact, it was created intentionally by the Romans specifically to be humiliating. Crucifixion was Rome’s way of saying that person hanging there on that cross is nothing. It was meant to be a warning, not inspiration. So to preach a crucified Messiah in the capital city of the Roman Empire was not just strange, it was offensive. It was embarrassing and it was dangerous. And Paul writes to Rome and says, I am not ashamed. The most shameful instrument in Rome has become the most precious symbol to the church. Power inside of weakness, glory inside humiliation, life through death. That is the gospel. And family, the same gospel walks with you into the conference room on Monday, into the school pick-up line on Tuesday, into your text thread with your family on Wednesday, into the dinner table this weekend. The shame is not new. The world has always given Christians reasons to be embarrassed of Christ. And Paul’s answer is still our answer. We are not ashamed. And why are we not ashamed? Because this gospel is the power of God for salvation. That’s why we’re not ashamed. The very thing that brought you from death to life. The gospel is not weak. It might look weak on the surface. It might sound foolish because it centers on a crucified man, but it is the power of God. Not advice about God’s power. Not an illustration of God’s power. Not even an invitation to find your own power. The gospel is the power of God for salvation. Meaning, when the gospel is preached, God acts. Not us. God saves. Not us. God justifies sinners. Not us. God transfers people from death to life. So you can feel free to be bold with the gospel and to proclaim the gospel knowing that none of it rests on your shoulders. It’s all on God’s shoulders. It’s His power to do the work. And it’s for everyone who believes. Did you notice that? You know that word in the original language, everyone? It means everyone. No tricks. It’s everyone. Jews and Greeks. Moral and immoral. Church kids and prodigal sons and daughters. Pharisees and pagans. The door is wide open to everyone, but the way through the door is faith. Look at verse 17. For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith. As it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. Family, this is the verse. This is the verse Paul will spend the rest of the letter unpacking. And in many ways, this is the verse that lit the fuse of the Reformation. Five hundred years ago, a young monk named Martin Luther kept reading that phrase, the righteousness of God. The righteousness of God. And he hated it. Because every time Luther read it, he thought it meant it was the righteous standard by which God was condemning sinners. And he knew that he could never reach that standard. So he tried harder. He fasted. He confessed. He punished himself. But every time he read that verse, he heard the same verdict, condemned. Do better. Try harder. And then one day, while wrestling with the book of Romans, the gospel broke open, cracked open his heart, and Luther realized the righteousness of God is not merely the standard God requires. It is the gift God gives. It’s not a ladder you try to climb. It’s a robe to be received. It’s not an achievement you create by your own effort. It’s Christ’s achievement credited to you. It’s not righteousness earned by good works, but righteousness received by faith. And when Luther figured that out, he said it felt as though the gates of paradise opened up. I remember that feeling because in the same way, the Lord cracked open my heart to reveal this truth. And family, this matters this morning because there are some of you living like Luther before the lights came on. You read your Bible, and you hear only a verdict. You look at your life, and you feel like a failure. I did that sin again. How could I do that again? You think the gospel says, try harder, clean yourself up, and then maybe God will receive you. But family, Romans says something better. The righteousness revealed in the gospel is not your accomplishment. It is Christ’s gift to you. He lived the life you could never live. He died the death you deserve to die. And he rose victoriously so that you might be raised with him by faith. And by this faith, his righteousness is counted as yours. That is the gospel. Not your debt somehow reduced, Jesus paid it all. Not your righteousness improved, Christ’s righteousness given to you. And the rest of Romans is the unfolding of what that means. Paul ends this verse by quoting from the Old Testament, specifically Habakkuk. He says, the righteous shall live by faith. Now why does Paul quote Habakkuk? Well family, that line has history behind it. Habakkuk was a prophet watching his nation collapse in real time. Babylon was coming to destroy Israel. And from his vantage point, the wicked looked secure, while the righteous looked vulnerable. The people of God looked small and outmatched. And Habakkuk stood on watching at this watchtower and asked, God, what are you doing? And God answered with one line, the righteous shall live by faith. In other words, my people are not sustained by appearances. My people are not sustained by political strength and political power. My people live by trusting me. Even when your future looks uncertain. Even when righteousness feels like it’s not going to win. Habakkuk heard that, staring at Babylon approaching him. Paul quotes it, writing to Christians in Rome, looking at the horizon of persecution. And we hear it this morning, living in Portland, Oregon and in Vancouver. One of the most irreligious places in America. Different city, different empire, but the same temptation. Into every age, God keeps saying the same thing. The righteous shall live by faith. Not panic. Not fear. Not outrage. Not embarrassment. Faith. Family, we don’t have confidence in our empire. We have confidence in Christ. Kingdoms rise and fall. Babylon fell. Rome fell. It’s highly likely America will fall. Every earthly kingdom eventually crumbles. But the gospel remains. And the people of God keep living by faith. Family, the same gospel that knocked Paul to the ground, and opened paradise to Luther, and sustained Habakkuk on the watchtower, is still the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. I want to close this morning with three invitations that I think come directly from this text. First, if you are here this morning and you have never trusted in Jesus, I want to invite you to come to Him. As I’ve mentioned over and over again, the gospel does not require you to clean yourself up first. You don’t need to build your own righteousness. You don’t need to climb a religious ladder to get to God. Christ came down. Christ lived. Christ died. And Christ rose again. And the righteousness you have spent your whole life trying to earn is offered to you this morning as a gift from God. Take it. Receive Him by faith. Come to Him this morning. He says if anyone comes, He will receive them by faith. Anyone. No matter your circumstances. No matter what you just did last night. Come to Him. He will receive you. And if you have questions about what it means to follow Jesus, ask any Christian in this room. Are you a Christian? Raise your hand. Don’t be ashamed. Raise your hand high. If you have questions about what it means to follow Jesus, ask any one of those people that raised their hand. They would love to talk to you about what it means to follow Jesus. One invitation. If you have walked with Jesus for years but the gospel has become background noise, I want to invite you to notice it again. The Apostle Paul never moved past the gospel. 25 years in ministry, he was still eager to preach it. And listen. He was eager to preach it to people who already heard it. And that should tell you something. You need to regularly be reminded of the gospel so that you notice it. So that it doesn’t become white noise. So that it doesn’t become so familiar that you forget you’re breathing it. Notice the gospel again this morning. Let it fall afresh on your heart. And may the gospel be the balm for your broken and parched soul that’s been so thirsty to hear it again. Notice it. Don’t move past it. Breathe it in again. Marvel at it again. Sing about it again. Repent again. And rest again. The breath you forgot you were breathing is keeping you alive. So notice it. Thirdly, if the rooms you walk into this week make you want to go quiet, remember the gospel’s power. You are not asking God to help manufacture courage in your life. You are asked to remember the gospel. The gospel does not lose its power when you walk into a conference room or when you meet with a client. It does not lose its power at the dinner table with your unbelieving friends. It does not lose its power in Portland and in Vancouver. The gospel is still the power of God for salvation and it has effectual power. If you would just open your mouth and testify to that power, the same power that raised you from death to life, you will witness God move in powerful ways and it will reinvigorate your faith and you will become enchanted with the gospel all over again. Speak brothers and sisters. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be ashamed. Be bold. Open your mouth and see the power of God at work. And family, as we continue this five-year journey off and on again through Romans, bring all of it to Romans. Bring your Bibles. Bring your tired heart. Bring your weekday rooms. Bring your drift and your shame and let Romans do its work to remind you of the gospel and its power. Amen? We need it, brothers and sisters. We don’t graduate from the gospel. We need to be reminded of it and its power. Let’s pray. Our Father and our God, for all of the ways in which we have forgotten your gospel because it’s become so familiar, we pray that you would forgive us, God. We pray that you would set our hearts on fire for the gospel. May that ancient gospel burn new and bright in our hearts so that we’re so overwhelmed we can’t help but want to spill it out into our neighborhoods and with our kids and with our coworkers and with our family members, especially those who have walked away from the faith. Oh God, give us a new zeal for this gospel and its power and we will entrust all of its efficacy and all of its work into your hands because it’s you who does the work. We are actively passive in the process. Remind us of the gospel again and again and again even as we sing these gospel songs now. We pray these things in Christ’s name, amen.