Romans 1:8-17
Romans • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Reminder that Paul did not found the church at Rome.
Reminder that the Jewish Christians were kicked out of Rome and in that time the Greeks flourished. The Jews are now back in and so Paul is navigating throughout this letter all the different groups who have put their faith in Jesus Greeks, Jews, and Barbarians.
He has not had a chance to visit them.
He is writing this letter in preparation to visit them.
In the middle of the city of Rome, the River Tiber runs through it. There are several parts in the city that are low lying and could flood.
In Ancient Rome as is the case today the rich people lived up in the hills.
Nero was emperor when Paul is writing this letter and had a spectacular palace on the hill.
Then as is the case today the poorer people lived in the other areas around the river and that is where most of the first Roman Christians lived.
The chances are that the first time this letter was read it was in a crowded room in someone’s house in the low-lying poorer district situated just across the river from the powerful people.
8 First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you because the news of your faith is being reported in all the world.
9 For God, whom I serve with my spirit in telling the good news about His Son, is my witness that I constantly mention you,
10 always asking in my prayers that if it is somehow in God’s will, I may now at last succeed in coming to you.
Paul is thanking the maker of heaven and earth that there is a community of believers in Rome.
I thank my God through Jesus Christ
He continues to proclaim Jesus as the Christ and again I remind you under Caesar’s nose who demanded allegiance to himself.
Paul writes to the believers at Rome who have been grasped to taken hold of by a different Kingdom. Not the Kingdom of Rome but the Kingdom of Jesus Christ.
The believers have put their trust in God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead.
Imagine with me this morning what kind of faith it took to live in ancient Rome. It took great faith and trust in God who raised Jesus from the dead.
It takes this same faith today. God is still rescuing individuals out of the Kingdom of darkness and into the light and he is doing through people believing that God raised Jesus from the dead!
The news of your faith is being reported in all the world
These believers are outnumbered in a massive city. One source I read said that there may have been as few as 100 believers in a city of 1 million people.
Paul says your faith is being reported in all the world.
Verse 9
The trinity
For God
With my Spirit
about His Son
I constantly mention you always asking in my prayers that if it is some how in God’s will, I may now succeed in coming to you.
One of my goals as I walk us through the book of Romans is to give excellent application of the text. That is I want to take the text and understand it in their time. What is Paul communicating to the Romans at the time and then understand how that applies to us today.
These verses really encouraged me because I imagine Paul thinking about how their faith is spreading. One of my responsibilities as Pastor of Bridge of Faith is to write update letters to those who are not here in Rockaway. I get to tell the stories of Bridge of Faith.
This morning in an effort to apply the text I thought it would be good for us to just here a few of the testimonies from Bridge of Faith.
Tommy Jones
Camillia Rich
In a small country church, at the age of seven years old, is where I gave my life to Jesus. It was during our VBS. A small family church, my great uncle is the pastor, my two great aunts were the piano player and the song leader. My grandparents made sure that I was at church. My parents were drug addicts and were very involved in the drug trade. I was molested when I was 15 years old. After that, I was raped twice. My parents then got arrested and my brother and I were put into foster care.
We were not placed together in homes, as a matter of fact, we were actually placed
in different towns. After being moved from home to home, I finally ended up in the Missouri Baptist Children’s home in Mount Vernon, MO. I stayed there until I turned 17 and then I signed myself out that day. I was living at the time in a very non-Christian home. After 4 short months of living there, my dad’s mom actually invited me to live in the apartment that she was renting for my parents who were about to get out of jail.
I moved there and my grandmother enrolled me in Lutie High School. I met my husband Bob in Gainesville, MO at a video store that he owned. I was so far from God at this point in my life. We married in 2000, and got pregnant soon after, but lost that child to a
miscarriage. Soon after, we got pregnant and successfully delivered our daughter Makayla in
2002. We lost our home to a fire 2 months before Makayla was born and had nowhere to go. So
we moved in with my parents in Branson, MO. We then bought a property on Julie Lane in Forsyth, MO.
After realizing that we had purchased in the middle of a ton of drug homes, we began looking for other
housing and then bought the home we are in now. Still at this time, we were not involved in church. At the ages of 5 and 3, Makayla and our second daughter, Oletha, were invited to attend VBS at the Methodist church in Forsyth, MO. Soon after, I began attending there without my husband. I eventually convinced Bob to attend there with me. When we lost our son in September of 2011 at five days old, I hit a hard- depressive state. About three months in, sitting on our back porch, while I was uncontrollably sobbing, I felt a spiritual hug. I had not felt God like this in a long time, and it was there just when I needed it the most. I then decided to follow God wherever he led me. As my children grew older, we knew that we needed to be somewhere that had more of a kids program. That is when we discovered our Bridge of Faith family. We are so blessed by the people that God has placed in our lives. I will continue to follow God where he leads. My family is so blessed having been led to Bridge of Faith Community Church where we are happy to faithfully serve.
Joe and Theresa Boyd?
Dayle?
Mac and Bre Liam?
11 For I want very much to see you, so I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you,
12 that is, to be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine.
So I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you
that is
to be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith both yours and mine.
Two weeks ago as I spoke about the epidemic of THC for our youth I said that no one was coming to rescue our children.
I need to correct that because every month we have outside donors who give monthly on behalf of rescuing our children in Rockaway Beach.
Likewise we have mission teams who are coming to engage in the battle on behalf of our families and children.
I love this mutually encouraged by each other’s faith.
13 Now I want you to know, brothers, that I often planned to come to you (but was prevented until now ) in order that I might have a fruitful ministry among you, just as among the rest of the Gentiles.
14 I am obligated both to Greeks and barbarians, both to the wise and the foolish.
Gospel for everyone
I have made plans to come to you but things kept coming up until now.
I wanted to come that I might have a fruitful ministry among you.
Be fruitful and multiply
This is my heart for our time together every week that we meet. That we might grow that our lives might be fruitful.
I am obligated both to the Greeks and barbarians(nongreeks)
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is God’s power for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, and also to the Greek.
Reminder he is writing to the greatest city of the world with a very powerful leader Caesar who’s title was son of god and is birthday was said to be “good news”
I am not ashamed of the Gospel
Jesus in Mark 8:38
38 For whoever is ashamed of Me and of My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.”
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is God’s power for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, and also to the Greek.
The reason he is not ashamed
it is God’s power for salvation
God has raised Jesus from the dead
God is transforming lives we have heard a few testimonies of this and in fact Paul’s very own life was totally changed
Salvation
Not just going to heaven when you die
In Fact Paul spoke very little of this in Romans
Salvation
In the Old Testament God’s rescue of His people from slavery, from exile and from death and this worldly disasters
Salvation means rescue
God to bring about new creation. Creation itself will be rescued from bondage and decay
Resurrection life after life after death. When God rescues the whole creation
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is God’s power for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, and also to the Greek.
For everyone who believes
Believes the Gospel message that is that the crucified and risen Jesus is Lord of the world
First to the Jew and also to the Greek
Perhaps there is the struggle that the Jews were exiled from the city and the Greeks increased. Paul reminds them that the Gospel was to the Jew first. Jesus came to his own first then to the Greek.
17 For in it God’s righteousness is revealed from faith to faith, just as it is written: The righteous will live by faith.
God’s righteousness
God is the creator of the world, and longs to put the world to the rights.
Their word for justice, and similar ones like ‘justify’, and their word for ‘right’, and others like ‘righteous’, ‘righteousness’ and so on, came from the same root.
Tom Wright, Paul for Everyone: Romans Part 1: Chapters 1-8 (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2004), 13.
God’s covenant with Abraham was always intended as the means by which the creator God would rescue the whole world from evil, corruption and death
Tom Wright, Paul for Everyone: Romans Part 1: Chapters 1-8 (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2004), 14.
17 For in it God’s righteousness is revealed from faith to faith, just as it is written: The righteous will live by faith.
Faith to faith
God’s faithfulness meets our faithfulness to him
The righteous will live by faith
Paul for Everyone, Romans Part 1: Chapters 1–8 Good News, Salvation and the Justice of God (Romans 1:14–17)
Paul quotes a key passage from the prophet Habakkuk (2:4), who was faced with a great catastrophe coming on Israel and had to learn to hold on and trust God, to have faith in his faithfulness.
Paul for Everyone, Romans Part 1: Chapters 1–8 Good News, Salvation and the Justice of God (Romans 1:14–17)
That is the position he now urges on his readers. In Jesus the Messiah, God has shown himself faithful to his covenant purposes and promises, and those who believe the good news about Jesus will find that this faithfulness reaches out and embraces them with a salvation which can never be taken away.