God's Good News

Romans chapter one is where we're gonna begin our new sermon series for June and July. With the Lord's help, we're gonna work our way through that opening block of Romans 1-4. Maybe we'll ease into chapter 5 a little bit. For those of you who've been around here for a little while, we worked through Romans 12-16 back in 2019. So it's been a little while since we worked through "Living Sacrifices." Now, we're gonna go back to the other end of Romans and lay the foundations of the "Good News" of God, the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's what we've been singing about all morning long.

And now we're going to look at Romans 1. We're going to look at the first seventeen verses. We're going to move through pretty quickly because I want us to catch the flow of Paul's exciting, life-changing letter. So, if you have your Bibles and if you're able, I'm gonna invite you to stand with me as we honor the reading of God's Word from Romans 1:1-17.

Here lately my kids and I have been watching this show from the history channel called The Food That Built America. Has anybody ever seen that before? It's about all these name-brand foods that we have lived with our entire lives: Coke, and Orville Redenbacher popcorn, and KFC, and McDonalds, and all these foods that we can't imagine life in America without. But it's taking us back in this series to the origin stories, to a world before there was KFC, to a world before there were all of these soft drinks, to a world before there was processed cheese and these little clear plastic singles packages from Kraft. And it's been really amazing to trace the origins of these huge items that have completely changed the world and changed our lives.

So last night, we watched this one about this candy maker who's trying to get his daughter to stop sucking her thumb. He's like, "little girl, I've told you to quit sucking your thumb!" And she won't do it. And then finally he says, "here, have this sucker, have this lollipop." And he hands her a lollipop. She hands him her pacifier, and he looks at the shape of this plastic base of this pacifier, and he looks at this sucker, and you can see this lightbulb moment! "I can turn this into a... ring pop" and the world has never been the same! I mean, where would concession stands be without ring pops?

And just on and on and on, there are these stories taking us back to the beginning of these world changing kinds of discoveries. And that's how we should feel about Paul's letter to the Romans, only on a much grander and more significant scale! Because Romans is the most significant and life-transforming letter that has ever been written in the history of mankind. But there was a time when Romans didn't exist. There was a time before anyone had ever written or read, "The just shall live by faith in Jesus Christ." "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved." There was a time before people had read from the Apostle Paul, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." There was a time before people had ever read, "I believe that all things work together for the good of those who love the Lord and are called according to his purpose." There was a time before Romans.

And then one day in the providence of God, the Apostle Paul sits down, and under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he writes this amazing life changing letter. Now, one thing that we learn as we read these opening paragraphs is that Paul has never been to Rome before. That's kind of surprising. Paul plants so many different churches in the ancient world, but he didn't plant the churches in Rome. The Apostle Peter probably did that. So even though Paul has some friends who are now in Rome (he greets them in chapter 16), he does not know the majority of the believers who are receiving this letter from him. But he has heard of them.

In fact, he may be exaggerating a little bit when he says, "the whole world heard about it when y'all got saved." It's like the whole world started talking about it when men and women in the city of Rome, the most important city on the planet at this time, the heart of the Roman Empire, when men and women there, right under the nose of Emperor Caesar, began to confess another lord, a greater king, the Lord Jesus Christ, crucified and risen from the dead.

He said, "when a church got started there in Rome, the whole world took notice." And Paul says, "I have been cheering you on and thanking God for you ever since! But that's not good enough... I really want to come see you. I've got to come visit you for myself! And as a matter of fact, I've made lots and lots of plans to come to Rome to have some time with you, but one thing or another keeps preventing me." He's got a busy life as an apostle. And so he can't quite make it to Rome.

And finally he decides enough is enough. I've let enough time go by. I'm just gonna sit down with my amanuensis, the person I'm dictating this letter to, the person writing down my words, and I'm just gonna tell the Romans what I want to share with them when we finally get together in person. And the result is this remarkable 16-chapter letter.

This letter, just to name a few of the people whose lives it touched, this letter is what God used to transform the life of Saint Augustine. When he heard those children in the neighbor's yard singing, "take it up and read, take it up and read." And this man who'd been on this quest for satisfaction down every broken road he could travel, opens up his bible and it flops open to Romans 13, "Put on the Lord Jesus Christ." And Augustine gets saved and the world's never been the same.

This is the letter that God used to bring Martin Luther from this tortured soul, this guilt-ridden Augustinian monk who could never feel clean before God, who could never be sure when he laid his head on his pillow that he'd done enough, that he was right with God, who always believed that God was angry with him because God was so righteous and so perfect and he knew that he so wasn't! But it was Romans 1:17 that God used to bring Martin Luther to the understanding that righteousness is not just what God demands, but in the gospel, righteousness is what God gives through Jesus Christ! And Martin Luther said, "it's like I went through the gates of paradise." It changed Martin Luther's life!

It's what changed the life of John Bunyan, my favorite author, the guy who wrote Pilgrim's Progress. We heard about him last Sunday, when he was out in the field plowing, doing his farm work, and just feeling that same kind of guilt on his conscience that Martin Luther felt, when suddenly God brought to mind the message of Romans that John Bunyan did not have to produce his own righteousness to be clean before a Holy God. God has given him righteousness in Jesus Christ. And John Bunyan's righteousness was outside of himself. It was at the right hand of God in the person of Jesus. If he wanted to feel clean before God, he needed to quit looking at himself and look to Jesus, and trust in him, and he could be righteous before God! And it changed John Bunyan's life! And that changed my life!

It's what changed John Wesley's life, the father of the Methodist movement, when he had also been this tortured soul, just looking for some rest, looking for some peace, not able to find it by being so moral, and so religious, and so disciplined, and so dutiful. It was one night on Aldersgate Street when he went to a Bible study on the book of Romans, that he writes in his diary, "On this night, at this hour, I felt my heart strangely warmed, and I knew that God loved me, and Christ gave himself for me." And the world has never been the same.

That's just a few of the more famous examples. I would bet that a lot of us have our own Romans stories to tell, about how God used this particular part of his word to implant in our hearts this message that Paul keeps referring to in our scripture reading: the Gospel.

It's one of those words we use all the time in church. Sometimes we take it for granted that we all know what we're talking about. The word "Gospel" just means "good news." It was a word that would have been used in the ancient world to talk about an announcement, like the announcement of who won this election, or who won this battle, or what's happening overseas. It's an announcement of something that has taken place that's going to have dramatic consequences for many people. And Paul calls it here in our text not just any good news, but the good news of God. God has good news for the world!

My favorite title for any Romans book is the one that John Scott wrote back in the 1980s, God's Good News for the World. God has good news to share with the world. He set Paul apart as his herald to make it known. And he wants us to receive that good news today.

Maybe we need to receive it for the first time, or maybe we need to go deeper into that good news. Because as Paul makes it clear to these Romans, the gospel, the good news of God in Jesus Christ, it's what all these lost people in Rome need, but it's also what this church in Rome needs: to go back to that good news again and again and again. We're just gonna dip our toe in the water this morning. And I want to look at this in three parts. 

First, we need to understand the message of the gospel. Now, one thing I really enjoy about our church is all of the small children who are here.

Isn't that a blessing? We love having all these little kids running around here. And one thing that I found is that little kids when you're walking around during the greeting time or before church starts, they don't observe all of the formal social graces like, "How are you doing today? Tell me about your week. What's going on with you?" Instead, they launch right into what they have to tell you. "Pastor Eric, Pastor Eric, Pastor Eric, I've got a loose tooth." "Pastor Eric, Pastor Eric, we just got a new bunny at my house." "Pastor Eric, Pastor Eric, my mom's not here today!" Whatever the case may be, they love to just launch into this news, because they're just so excited about it. They just zoom right past the, "good morning, how are you doing today?"

And that's just what Paul does as he begins Romans. These ancient letters all kind of follow the same convention. They would begin with, "from Paul to the Romans, greetings." It was very standard, kind of like your email subject line. Only when you look at Paul's greetings, when the Romans heard Paul's greetings, they would have recognized something very different. One, it's a whole lot longer, because no sooner does Paul identify himself and mention the word gospel, that he completely breaks off the greeting and launches into about a six-point mini sermon! Typical preacher, right?

And so Paul mentions the word gospel and he immediately has to stop before he ever says hello to the Romans to explain what he means. Because before anything else in this letter, Paul wants us to understand the message of the gospel. I'm not gonna give you all six points of that, but I do wanna walk through it. Look at verse 2:

#1 - The gospel is about a huge plan (v2).
This gospel, this good news is something that God promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures. So this isn't something that Paul just came up with. This isn't a totally new development in one sense. Instead, the Gospel is about this huge plan that's been in the heart of God from the very beginning. Something we're going to see in Romans is there is something wrong with our world. I mean, we all recognize that right? There's a lot that's broken in our world, but there's also a lot that's broken in us. Something's wrong with us. Something's wrong with the world. But God promised long ago to do something about it. God made a promise that he was going to fix and heal the brokenness of his very good world all the way at the beginning of history, at the beginning of the biblical narrative.

It's this huge plan that he promised as soon as everything breaks loose in the Garden of Eden. When Adam, the first man, sins and brings death and ruin on the world in separation with God, God immediately promises he's going to do something about this and God keeps on nursing hope in this promise. He keeps on revealing a little bit more light about this plan through the prophets all through the Old Testament scriptures. And that's why we can rightly say the Bible is really all about the gospel. It's all about the good news. It's all about this plan of God, this huge plan to save the world and to save sinners.

And now, Paul says after waiting so long in the fullness of time, God's done it! He's fulfilled the plan. So the gospel had a huge plan.

#2 - The gospel centers on a great person (vv3-4).
Now, if you're talking to people in the city of Rome, and you mention a great person or a great man, there's only one person they would have thought of. This one person who dominates their daily life, this person who rules over what seemed to be the entire world, who has so much power that his empire stretches from sea to sea. This one person who lives right there in Rome who is so great, so powerful, he calls himself a son of the gods. He calls people to recognize him as the Lord. And if they will receive him and bow before him as the Lord, he'll bring his peace. The "Pax Romana," the peace of Rome, into their lives. They know all about a great person. Who's the great person that I'm talking about in Rome? Caesar!

Only Paul says, "No, no, no, I want to tell you about an even greater person, the greater person who's at the center of God's plan, this greater person who's not just a son of the gods, he is the only son of the one true God. He became a man born into the ancient line of King David, because he came to be a king, a ruler, the greatest ruler. But then he did something that nobody understood. He gave up his life on a Roman cross. It looked for a second like Caesar and his empire had crushed and overwhelmed the son of God, the son of David, when he died the shameful death on a Roman cross. But then three days later, God did something for this great person that Caesar could never do. He raised him from the dead! And he conquered death! And he conquered sin! And when God raised Jesus from the dead, Paul says, "God was making an announcement to the world." "This is my son in power! This is the real king of the world. This is the real ruler of the world. This is the rightful Lord of the universe. And one day, every knee is gonna bow, and every tongue is going to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father."

That's who the Gospel is about: this person, this greatest person. It's an announcement about what God has done through his son, which leads very quickly to the next point about the gospel.

#3 - The gospel involves a glad proclamation (v5).
Notice Paul says, "through Jesus, we have now received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations." In other words, this good news, it's made to be announced, to be preached. And that's just what God has sent Paul out to do, to be his "sent one." That's what an apostle means: to make this message known, that Jesus Christ who was crucified is the true Lord of the world. He's risen from the dead. He's reigning right now at the right hand of God. And he's going to return one day to make all things new in God's broken world, to finally defeat death, and to do away with injustice and with evil and to cleanse the world of everything that remains of sin. That's what Jesus the true king is going to do!

And here's the really good news: you can get in on it! You are right now not only invited, but called, summoned, and ordered to come and confess Jesus is your Lord, confess him to be your true king, come under his rule and his authority. And this king who died for you, he will forgive you of every wrong that you have ever done. He will bring you into the kingdom of God. And the moment that you trust in Jesus and declare your allegiance to him, at least three things will happen.

Immediately, Jesus will put you in right standing with God. Gradually, Jesus will begin changing your life and aligning it with the design of God in his word, that obedience of faith. And ultimately, Jesus will bring you into his Father's perfect kingdom where the peace of God reigns forever and ever, and every tear is wiped away. That's the glad proclamation that Paul is making, not just to some people, but among all the nations for the sake of the name of Jesus so that at the end of history, one name will stand above all the rest. One name and one name alone will be worshiped and honored by all peoples. And that's Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the hero of the gospel. That leads finally to:

#4 - The gospel is for real people (v6).
This good news message, this huge plan that I've just been talking about, it's for real individual people with real lives, real problems, real pressures, just like you and me, and just like these Romans. That's what Paul says in verse 6. It includes you, who have been called to belong to Jesus Christ. We'll talk about this more in a second. But one day they're just going about their business, serving Caesar, muddling their way through life, dealing with their sin and this broken world as best they could, and then they heard this message! And they personally received it. They felt somehow within them that God, that Jesus Christ was calling them, calling their name, putting his finger on their lives, summoning them to repent and believe. And they received this message and it changed everything.

Now, they belong to Jesus Christ. They are his, they are secure in Him. They are as verse 7 says, "loved by God and called to be saints". And what a description of a Christian believer? Talk about turning your world upside down! I can know if I trust in Jesus that I am loved by God, not because of anything that I have done or promised to do in the future, but because of what Christ has done for me, which I receive by faith. And I know that I am called to be a saint. He's going to change my life and set me apart to live for his glory. That's my new identity.

I've heard some people say that's what the book of Romans is all about it. It's summarized in that statement. The first eleven chapters are about what it means to be loved by God through Jesus Christ, and chapters 12-16 are about our call to be saints, holy ones through Jesus Christ. And when you receive this message, you can live in the true grace and peace of God.

Caesar offers peace. He offers his grace. The world offers all kinds of peace to us. But there is only one grace and one peace that lasts, that sticks. And that's the grace and peace of belonging to our Lord Jesus Christ in the kingdom of God. So the question is, do you understand that message about what God has done in Jesus? And have you received that message? Has it come to you? Do you know that you are called to belong to Jesus Christ? That he wants a personal response from you right there in all the messy details of your life? God knows you. He loves you. He wants you. He calls you into this kingdom through his son Jesus.

Well, that's what the letter to the Romans is gonna be all about. We need to understand the message of the gospel.

Paul is still introducing himself to these Romans, many of whom have have never met him. And as Paul is telling them a little bit about himself, you note the personal pronoun "I" coming up a whole lot in verses 8-17, Paul is talking about himself and what he's passionate about and what's important to him. It doesn't take long to realize Paul is a man on a mission. Paul has got a clear purpose in life. I mentioned that silly series about food, Orville Redenbacher had a mission in lif. And that was to bring the perfect kernel of popcorn into the homes of everyday Americans. Apparently, he was like obsessed with popcorn from the time he was a little child cooking it over a campfire. And he would not rest until he produced perfect microwave popcorn.

Paul has a mission like that. He's got a clear eyed focus. He is not drifting through life. No, he's got a mission. And it's a mission that's shaped by the gospel. He says in verse 1, "I have been set apart for the good news of God." Verse 9: "I serve God with my spirit in the good news about his son." What Paul is saying, (I love that verse 9, "serving God with my spirit in the gospel of his son"), Paul is saying, "God has called me into the mission of the good news and it has given me such purpose and direction. I have found something in the good news about Jesus that is big enough, wonderful enough, satisfying enough for me to put my whole spirit into, to put my whole life into. I'm not serving little bitty chintzy cheap purposes anymore. No, I'm serving God with my spirit in the good news of his son.

And that's why Paul wants to get to Rome and can't get there fast enough, because he's on a mission. He's got this gospel-shaped mission. And there are two sides to the mission. As he walks through verses 7-13. What's the mission that Paul has that the gospel has given him?

The first part of the mission is to encourage believers. Verse 11 is wonderful: "I want to impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you." That's such a wonderful description of ministry. See, Paul knows that these Roman believers, they've trusted Jesus, they believe the gospel. He's thrilled about it. He's thanking God for it, but he knows that their faith needs strengthening. Did you realize that after you get saved, your faith still needs to be strengthened. You need to be encouraged and built up again and again in Christ, in this new life that God's given to you. And Paul knows these Romans, they need to be strengthened, and he knows that Jesus has gifted him to supply that strength. It's not because Paul is so smart or brilliant or special or holy. Jesus has put in Paul a gift to give away to other believers that strengthens them and builds them up. And Paul says, "I just want to give it away. I just want to impart the gift to y'all."

That is all that ministry is. It's the Lord Jesus Christ gifting and empowering his people to strengthen one another through his own power, through his own strength, through his own gifts. And that's what Paul wants to do. He wants to strengthen their faith. He can't do it in person. So he sits down and writes Romans 1-16 to strengthen them by letter, but he wants to pour into them. And I want you to notice in verse 12 that this strengthening ministry, this encouraging ministry to believers, it's not just for apostles, it's not just for professionals.

Verse 12, Paul is saying, "really what I want is that we may be mutually encouraged." It means both of us, there's a give and take. It's a two way street. I want to be mutually encouraged by each other's faith, both yours and mine. See, Paul wants them and he wants us to understand: There are not two classes of Christians, there are not ministers and receivers, there are not those who are gifted to encourage and help and build up and those who aren't. That's not how this works. Jesus has gifted every one of his people to encourage, to strengthen.

Now, we're not all gonna write the letter to Romans. We're not all gonna preach a sermon. We're not all going to be able to sing like Pastor Jeremy. We're not gonna be able to do all the exact same things, but we are gifted to encourage the faith of the other believers in our lives. The Bible tells us so. Paul is gonna unpack this in great detail in Romans 12.

But right now, all I want you to see is that every one of us needs spiritual encouragement. Even the Apostle Paul needed spiritual encouragement. He said, "I just want to spend time with y'all so that you can build me up." Every one of us is equipped to give spiritual encouragement. You know, sometimes when you come to a church, our church has gotten a little bit larger, it can be hard to kind of break in, and find your place, and find a way to serve. Let me encourage you with this. There are endless opportunities to serve every single day if your heart is to encourage another believer. If you simply come before the Lord with this attitude, "Lord, would you give me a gift to impart to someone else to strengthen their faith? It doesn't have to be big, showy, flashy, dramatic. I just want to strengthen someone's faith a little bit in what I say to them." If that's your heart, you will never lack ministry opportunity. The Lord will use that in explosive, dramatic ways.

What if we all showed up to Sharon Baptist Church on a Sunday with a Romans 1:12 mindset? "Lord, let me impart a gift today. I don't just want to receive and take and consume. I want to give a gift away. I want to build somebody up. I want to point someone to Jesus. I want to love them in your name. You wanna talk about living on mission, giving you a sense of purpose? The Lord has called you to that mission through the gospel.

There's another part of this mission too, not only to encourage believers but to evangelize unbelievers, right? Paul wants to get to Rome to build up this church and love on them, yes, but also to tell other people about God's good news. Verse 13: "I want to reap a spiritual harvest among you as well as among the rest of the gentiles." I mean, there may have been a million people in Rome at this time. It may be that 100, or 150 of them have named the name of Jesus and received the good news. Paul wants to tell the rest of them what God has done.

In verse 14. He even says he's obligated. He says I'm obligated. I owe it to every person that I meet to tell them about this good news of what God has done: Greeks and barbarians, wise, foolish, everybody. I mean, I owe it to them to give away God's good news. And that mission, that sense of purpose, it shapes his entire life.

Later in Romans 15, we're gonna see that Paul is already making these plans to carry the gospel all the way to Spain to preach Jesus where he's never been named and he wants this Roman church to help him get there, to be like his launching pad for the next phase of his mission. But the big point is Paul is a man with a purpose, right? Every single day, Paul gets up with a sense of purpose. "Jesus wants to use me today to encourage other believers and to evangelize unbelievers, to point everyone I meet to Jesus by word and by deed.

And I just want to say before we move forward, this gospel mission is not just for apostles, it's for us too! I think one reason (the older I get the more convinced I am of this), one reason why so many Christians are so unhappy, so dissatisfied, so anxious, so restless, always looking for something to plug into that's gonna satisfy them, that's gonna bring them joy, that's gonna be exciting, that's gonna be exhilarating is because they've not found this gospel purpose, this gospel mission. You were made to find your purpose in something so much bigger than yourself and so much bigger than anything this life can contain.

You were called to find your purpose in the mission of God. You can be a part of his work. You don't have to spend your life aimless, bored, unfulfilled, living for the next little distraction that our world sends our way. Your life can count. You can be used by Jesus Christ to strengthen someone else's faith. You can be used by Jesus Christ as you go to all these places where you go, to be on mission for the Lord Jesus, introducing people to him, strengthening the believers who you meet. We want to be in on this gospel mission.

So if you find that you are unhappy, or dissatisfied, or anxious, or you don't like our church, or you don't like your life, or whatever it is, you might start there. Am I living with the purpose, the mission to give Jesus away to everyone that I meet? I think that might go a long way for many of us.

And so we close:

By might, I mean power. But I just needed another "m." You know how it is?

I've been watching these documentaries with Candace at night after we watch The Food that Built America. Maybe I watch too much TV? Maybe I need a purpose? I don't know. We've been watching these documentaries about these ultra-marathoners. So a marathon is 26.2 miles. An ultra-marathon is just beyond that. So it might be 50 miles, 100 miles, 200 miles, 250 miles. And there are some people who are so crazy, they sign up for this Grand slam of ultra-marathons, which is four ultra-marathons in this 6 to 8 month window.

This one lady named Sally McRae is this ultra-marathoner and she's an absolute legend. And t's remarkable to see what they put their bodies through, to drag themselves through 250 miles of torment to get to the end. You think to yourself, what would make you keep going? I mean, their feet are raw by like mile 30. And they're just getting started! They don't sleep for days. They're falling asleep while they run. It is nuts! What would make you do this? What would make the pain worth it? And if you read about the Apostle Paul in the book of Acts, he is like a spiritual ultra-marathoner. Because he keeps dragging himself from one city after another, enduring all kinds of resistance, and push back, and alienation, and often physical attack, verbal attack. What would make you keep going? What would make you keep preaching the gospel, making it known? I mean, he used that word obligation in a verse 14. But so is it just the sense of duty? Like, oh, I've got to do this? That sounds like kind of a negative term. No, Paul goes on to say in verse 15: "Actually, I'm eager to preach the gospel." He goes on to say in verse 16, "I'm not ashamed of the gospel." And he makes that clear because a lot of people are ashamed of the gospel, because it does bring difficulty.

This good news about what God has done in Jesus Christ makes people uncomfortable. Paul has seen it make people mad. He's seen it enrage people. Because before we can get to the good news of what God has done, we have to talk about the bad news of the mess that we're in because of our sin. And people don't want to hear that. And Paul has seen this good news make people uncomfortable and make people angry. And yet, he says, "I am not ashamed of this gospel. I can't wait to share it here in Rome, not knowing what's gonna bring it to my life."

Why is he so eager? Why is he unashamed? Very simply, it is because he knows that it is the gospel that God has chosen to unleash his saving power into the world. Paul has seen it again and again and again. He goes to these different towns. He gets an audience, he preaches the message, he announces the good news. "Here's your problem. Here's who God is. Here's what he's done about it in Jesus Christ." He makes this good news announcement and there are all kinds of people out there, right? There are Jewish people, there are Greek people. There are really strait-laced, moral, religious people. There are smug, self-righteous people. There are wild, irreligious, hell-raising, heathen people. There are really slick, successful people. There are down-and-out, addicted people out there. There are people who are bitter and hate God because of the bad hand they've been dealt.

I mean, there are all kinds of people out in the audience, and Paul preaches this good news about how this righteous God, who because he is righteous must punish sin, he nevertheless, is also a faithful God who's promised to rescue unrighteous sinners and to put them right with himself. And he's done it at the ultimate cost, at the cost of His son, bearing his righteous wrath in our place on the cross and raising him from the dead. And Paul makes the announcement that if you will simply believe, just open your hands and receive the gift of what God's done for you in Jesus, he will make you right. He will put you in right standing, the right position before God forever. And He will bring you into a world that God makes perfectly right forever and ever all by faith, all through the work of Jesus.

Paul makes that announcement and he's seen it again and again, power breaks out! God's saving power. People who 30 seconds before look bored to tears now can't tear themselves away. And they break. And they not only want it, they've got to have it. And they reach out empty hands and take the gift of God's salvation, God's righteousness won for them through Jesus Christ, and they receive it. And it completely changes their lives. In that moment, when they simply receive it by faith, there's nothing for them to do. There's nothing for them to promise to do. There's nothing for them to undo from the past. They just simply receive it by faith alone. In that moment, God makes them righteous before him. There's an exchange that takes place. Jesus takes all the worst about them at the cross and he gives them all the best about himself.

When you trust in Jesus, he doesn't just take you back to square one so you can try again. How well do you think that's gonna go? About the same way with the first 80 bazillion times in your life. So he doesn't just forgive you. He clothes you in the permanent perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ, which is unfading, unfailing, eternal before God. So you're secure before him in your position.

But then God's saving power does go to work inside of you and it begins to change you. You become a different person. You want God. You want to please Him. You know you're called to belong to Jesus. You're called to be a saint. And there's something inside of you that strains after this sainthood, this change, because you want to live for this God who saved you. It is incredible. It's the power of God.

And Paul says, "I've seen it again and again and again. And that's why I can't stop talking about it. I'll never be ashamed of it. I'm eager to share it. I don't care how many times I'm beaten or run out of town, or people yawn in my face, or spit in my face, or whatever it may be, I know it and it alone is the power of God to save. So I will keep preaching it." "And I'm going to call you," Paul says, "to exhibit the power of God in your lives." And the way we show the power of God is saving us is by this little phrase that Paul uses way up in verse 5, the "obedience of faith." I promise this is it: the obedience of faith. New lives of obedience to Jesus the Lord, not because we're trying to earn anything before God, not because we're trying to secure our position with God, Jesus has already done all that. No, it's obedience to Jesus that flows from faith in Jesus.

That's what shows the world the power of God in the Gospel. Is that what your life is showing the world? If you profess to believe the good news about Jesus Christ, does your life show God's explosive power to save is at work in you? Because you're obedient to Jesus and seeking to increasingly be obedient to Jesus? That is what puts God's power on display. That's what he calls us to. We're loved by God. We're called to be Saints. This is the good news. And Paul's going to spend the next several chapters unpacking it in great detail.

We're gonna learn a lot about it this summer, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. If you've not personally received this message by faith, maybe God's power is at work in you right now saying, "Don't trust your grandparents, faith in the gospel. Don't trust your church's faith in the gospel. No, you put your faith in the gospel. You reach out and personally receive Jesus right now. I'm calling you. I'm talking to you."

If that's what Jesus is saying to you. Let's not waste any time. You receive that good news today. Let's pray. 

Sermon by Eric Smith
Senior Pastor, Sharon Baptist Church