Recovering Righteousness (part 1)

Reading: Todd Prissel Romans 1:1-17 (4 minutes)

Romans 1:1–17 (ESV)

1 Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, 2 which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, 3 concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh 4 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, 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, 6 including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, 7 To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

8 First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed in all the world. 9 For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I mention you 10 always in my prayers, asking that somehow by God’s will I may now at last succeed in coming to you. 11 For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you— 12 that is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine. 13 I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that I have often intended to come to you (but thus far have been prevented), in order that I may reap some harvest among you as well as among the rest of the Gentiles. 14 I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish. 15 So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome.

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. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

Introduction

Alright, Thank you Todd. Good Morning Church how are we doing on this Labor Day weekend. I know many people are out of town this week and so that is why we pushed out Sunday School and Table Talk groups to next week but Todd has started us out on one new element of our Service that we are trying out this year in the public reading of the text by various voices from the Church.

Of course you have heard Todd’s voice from up here before because he is one of the Overseers here and that is why he is leading us out in this but my hope to hear many more of your voices reading the scripture each week and today is the first day to sign up for that if you would be so bold.

I know that many of us have varied backgrounds in different Church experiences and so this may be a foreign idea or an all too familiar one. Depending on if that was a good or bad experience you may be welcoming or lamenting this new change.

So I wanted to make sure that you knew that we aren’t changing things up just for the sake of having some thing new or to follow some other Church’s traditions. We strive to follow God’s Word in everything we do an so let me give you the Biblical basis for why I think this new way of engaging with the Scripture is a God honoring endeavor.

We are beginning today a new series on the Epistles of the New Testament. These Epistles are formal letters written by Apostles to the various congregations in the early days of the Church. In Corinth, the Church gatherings were going really off track and the Apostle Paul writes to them to help them to see how to “order” their services in the best way to honor God and to effectively communicate His Gospel. Among other instructions, he says in chapter 14 verse 26...

1 Corinthians 14:26 (ESV)

26 What then, brothers? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up.

The idea being that the gathering of the Church was not to be just a few elite people talking and then everyone else listening and then going home. The local leaders were needed to keep things on track so all things were done for building up, but those “all things” were not to be done just by them. The interaction was to be communal, reciprocal and familial. In that just like a family, each person will gain from the experience only as much as they give into it.

I am not sure that is a good description of what we have grown the western Church into over the past couple of decades and I believe we are seeing the fallout from that mistep. Of course, you can see that the wording here is not implying that we will all give all of these things, but each member of the body, as it says later in 1 Corinthians, must play their part, but every part is to build up the gathering.

So along with the many Ministry Teams that we already have operating here, I have been challenging us all to a deeper lever of involvement in at least 4 different ways. You may have thought of others, but I have laid out 4 that everyone here can participate in.

1. Pre-read the text for each Sunday This is printed at the bottom of the notes page each week so you can be come in here each week better prepared to hear from the Lord Jesus on what he expects of us.

2. Participate in the Table Talk Groups These are processing groups where you can take what you have read and studied over the past week and what you have challenged with in the service and work to apply them in your life and encourage others in their goal to do the same.

3. Volunteer as a Monthly Mentor in the Children’s ministry You don’t have to be a “kid person” to do this, just someone who loves like Jesus did. Remember how he called the little children to come to him. Many other rabbi’s just didn’t have time for Children…don’t be like them. You can share one hour a month with these kids and I believe that you will be surprised how much more they will teach you than you can teach them.

4. Volunteer once this next year to do the weekly reading in front of the Church Todd gave us a demonstration of that already this morning so I encourage you all to sign up for that too.

For the last two “sign up” ones I will be out in the lobby during the fellowship time with clipboard in hand so get to me quickly before all the spots fill up.

So that is something of the New Format, but let me introduce you to our New Series for this year. If you have been with us for some time then you may have noticed that we have been progressing through the whole of the Bible over the past several years

3 years ago we worked through the Old Testament, Genesis to Malachi finding the prophecies and promises of the message of the Gospel in something called the Gospel Project.

2 years ago we had a series called “CHRISTOS” where we did a deep dive into the life of Jesus in the 4 Gospels and beyond.

Then last year we tackled the story of the Early Church, called Ekklesia as it was laid out in the book of Acts.

So this year…we are going to tackle these Epistles in a year long series called Treasuring Christ. Again, these “Epistles” are the formal letters written to both Churches and individuals by the Apostle Paul and others.

So you can see the progression here in the History of God’s working in and through His people. From the prophecies of the long awaited Messiah in the Old Testament, to His arrival as the Christ who lived a perfect life, taught his followers, was opposed and executed and then rose again to defeat sin an death. He appeared to his followers before he ascended and this ignited the unstoppable movement of God called the Church, the Ekklessia.

As the message of the Gospel, the good news of what Jesus Christ has done, spread throughout the Roman Empire these local gatherings or Churches were formed…but now they need to know what is next. They need to know how to now live in light of the Gospel, and so Paul and the other New Testament writers wrote them letters. Letters that we still have today and that we can still learn from today.

Tension

The reason that they wrote letters was because:

1. Travel was so difficult so being their in person was quite a commitment

2. Something close to 70% of the people in the Roman Empire were functionally illiterate. They did not read.

So these letters would be read out loud at the Church gatherings. They were formally written, but they were written in the common vernacular, something called Koine Greek or New Testament Greek today. In this way everyone in the Church could understand and be impacted by what was being read.

This morning we are going to look at probably the most impactful of all of Paul’s letters. This letter is said to have changed the course of Church history so many times. Towering figures across the ages like St. Augustine, Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Stott all the way to John Piper today all credit the book of Romans as being more instrumental than any other book in bringing them to faith and sustaining them in it.

Needless to say, this makes the book of Romans a bit intimidating for me. Not that it is not accessible, but because this book is something like the Apostle Paul’s Doctoral dissertation on the Christian faith. This makes covering it in just 6 weeks, as we are planning to do, virtually impossible. The only way I know how to do it is to elevate that which Paul clearly elevates over all else and focus on that.

So what does Paul elevate over all of the other deep and significant themes in the book of Romans? The same thing he elevates everywhere else. From the very first verse we see that Romans is all about the Gospel.

Probably the theme verse of the entire book is found in chapter one verse 16 where Paul says:

Romans 1:16(ESV)

16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, (or has faith) to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

This is the continued mission that God has given His Church. This is our mission. “To communicate the life-giving message of Jesus Christ” . This “message”. This “Gospel”. This “good news” is what every aspect of Paul’s life, ministry and mission has always been about.

So as he writes to these young Church gatherings, he leads them to the deep well of the Gospel. He invites them to dive deeper into it and to draw out all the implications and the applications that can be found there. And this well will never run dry!

I know that is a long introduction, because I was introducing the series and not just this message, but with what’s left of our time today, we are going to look at how prominent Paul’s focus on the Gospel is even in the opening statements of the letter, and then we will put a bookmark there and return to it next week to finish Romans 1.

So hopefully you already have read this chapter this past week and you have your Bibles open to Romans 1, on page 939 in the Bibles in the chairs. I will pray and then we will start into the opening of this letter together.

Truth

I am not sure if they still teach this in school, but some of us remember having to learn how to correctly write a letter. There is probably an App’’ for that today, but it used to be that we learned the correct form of a formal letter. Anyone else remember this?

We were taught that your address in the upper right, then the recipients address on the left, then your greeting or “salutation”, the body of the letter, the closing and then you sign your name at the bottom. Everything had to be in the right order and in the right place on the page for this formal letter.

Well the writers of these letters in the New Testament also followed the form of a formal letter in their day. It is quite different from today, but we can still clearly make out the very intentional format. They began with a detailed description of Who it was from, then a summary of what it contained and then who it is to. All this was before the body of the letter.

Who it is from

Starting with “Who it is from?” it says

Romans 1:1 (ESV)

1 Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God,

As this was a formal letter, Paul opens not only with his name but with his credentials. They didn’t exactly have business letterhead back then, but He wants them to know that he is not writing on his own behalf but this is a company letter. He is a servant writing on behalf of his King.

Whenever we see the word “Christ” we should think “Ruler”, “Messiah” or “King”. Christ is not one of Jesus’ names it is his title. Paul also gives us his title: an “apostle” or sent one. Specifically one who was set apart to deliver the “good news of God” the “gospel of God”.

When we hear the“gospel” we immediately think about Jesus, and rightly so, but that word was not an exclusively “Christian” word. In the Roman world it was used when anyone was sent with “good news”.

Often it referred to a herald that was sent by the ruling leader, king or emperor to announce “good news” to the people. For example, lets say the people in a region of the kingdom were were threatened by a neighboring kingdom. They would petition the King, he would send in his military and take care of the problem. If the Kings men were victorious, then the King would send “messengers” with the “good news”. He would send apostles with the Gospel.

This is not the “gospel” of an earthly leader, this is the “gospel of God” and it is What this letter is all about.

Romans 1:2–6 (ESV)

the gospel of God,2 which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, 3 concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh This is what we studied in the Old Testament Gospel Project...

4and 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, This is what we studied in the story of Jesus in the Gospels, the Christos...

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, 6 including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, The foundation of the unstoppable movement of God, the Ekklesia.

You see the Bible is not a series of disconnected story. It is “His-story”, God’s story. It is about how He is working to restore all of His good creation back to the good that He created it to be. Including the pinnacle of his creation on earth, mankind.

This is the beauty of zooming out and seeing how all these detailed stories fit together. You can see how God, the author of this story is weaving all of time into this incredible ending that will culminate in our greatest good and His greatest glory.

But in the meantime, we have this tendency to make this world all about us. From our first parents on, this has been our response to God’s good Kingdom. We impose our lesser Kingdoms into this world thinking that somehow we can take His place. To make the story about us. To call the shots and make the rules and we just end up destroying things…but we keep trying.

This was especially easy to see in the Roman Empire. Being the most powerful empire on earth they figured they could make their own set of “gods”. The “Roman Imperial Cult” as it is called today was the democratic declaring of a Roman Emperor as a god after he had died. This was a way to continue the rule of the good emperors and quickly dissolve the rule of failed ones.

While a ruler was still living however, and he did mighty works, he could be referred to as “The son of god”. He would also commonly be called “lord”. This makes Paul’s opening remarks about Jesus very provocative. Declaring Jesus to be “the Son of God,... Jesus Christ our Lord,

This would have gotten the attention of any audience in Rome, which is Who this letter was written to:

Romans 1:7 (ESV) 7 To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Don’t miss this, Paul wrote this letter to the Church. Even with the “His-story” lessons and the constant focus on the Gospel message, this was for the Church.

And unlike most of the other letters, Paul had yet to meet most of these people. We see in the next verses that Paul longed to go to Rome but he was prevented. Last week we read of how eventually he did get there, as a prisoner, but at the point when he wrote this letter he had not yet been there.

But he had heard of the faith of the Church there and he desperately wanted to go. And he tells us why. Moving down to verse 11 he says:

Why Paul wrote the letter

Romans 1:11 (ESV).

11 For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you—That is great Paul, but even the Apostle Paul knew that the Church was not just about some people giving and other people gaining. He continues to say...12 that is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine. Paul longed for true Christian fellowship with the brothers and sisters in Rome. It wasn’t just about enjoying a Roman pot-luck, although they may have, but true Christian fellowship is about both giving and gaining from each other in what Christ is doing in each of our stories.

But Paul was still an evangelist at heart, so he adds...

13 I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that I have often intended to come to you (but thus far have been prevented), in order that I may reap some harvest among you as well as among the rest of the Gentiles.

14 I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish. 15 So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome.

J.D. Grear has a great teaching on the book of Romans that you each can access on our RightNow Media page. The access to that is still printed there in the bulletin and out on the bulletin board. One of the points he makes on verse 14 is that the wording of “under obligation” means that he carries a debt that he has to pay.

Debt is a hot topic in our culture today. We typically thing of debt as something that we borrowed and then need to pay back. But there is another way to be in someone’s debt. You could be indebted to someone because someone else gave you something to give to them.

Like when we collected funds for Hope Gospel’s “Change for Kids” campaign. We can’t keep this money. It doesn’t belong to us. We owe it to Hope Gospel to deliver these jars to them which I will do his week if you still have a jar at home.

This is the same kind of being in debt that Paul is expressing here. He is the messenger of the Good News, he is “under obligation” to deliver this news to the everyone he can. Greek Speakers, Barbarians or foreigners who don’t speak Greek, wise and foolish alike. This is why he longs for Rome. He is not looking forward to a vacation, like someone might long for Paris or the cabin on the lake, he longs to pay his debt, to fulfill his obligation to Jesus Christ to share the Good News of the Gospel.

Guys this where we need to be. Remember the theme verse for last years series was Acts 1:8

Acts 1:8 (ESV)

8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

This is our obligation. This is our debt. To be His witnesses all the way to the end of the earth. To share what we have been given because it was not given just for us. We are to give it to others and if we are not then we are not fulfilling our “obligation”.

Gospel Application

How are we doing paying off this debt? Paul longed to go to Rome to share in the mutual Fellowship of the Church there. I hope you experience that here. I hope that you long to come back each week to share in the family life of Friendship Church. I love being here. I love that my family can be a part of what God is doing here at Friendship Church and it is sweet to be here with you: that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine.

But it can’t stop there. As individuals and as a Church we have an obligation, a debt, to take the message that we have been given and share it with the rest of our world. In this way we will be able to say along with the Apostle Paul:

Romans 1:16–17 (ESV) 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.

And this is an inspiring evangelism verse, we would do well to come back to it again and again to remind ourselves of our obligation and to not be ashamed…but Paul gives us more than just a call to share the good news, He also wants to help us take the next step in the faith. So in verse 17 he says:

17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

Landing

This is where we are going to put our bookmark for Chapter 1 of Romans, but as we do I want you to keep this verse in mind because next week is going to focused on fleshing this out. In the Gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

Let that verse simmer in your mind this week, even as you consider how you are going to fulfill your debt to play your part in sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ to the world.

Invite the Worship Team up as I pray.