The Obedience of Faith

Father, we confess again that your word is but incongent page, unless and until your Holy Spirit
breathes your life into it. And, Father, we thank You that the Spirit of Prophecy in the Spirit
of the Scriptures is the character and the person of Jesus and that it is in Him and through Him
alone that we become righteous before your face and that we are restored to a life of obedience.
We pray this morning that in our own lives Lord and whatever our struggles may be, there may be a
renewed revelation of how much You love us in the Lord Jesus Christ. Help us Lord through the
power of the Holy Spirit by the blood of Jesus to enter into your very presence and there to
receive that kind of affirmation, that kind of confirmation that we need in the court of our life to
know that we are beloved of God, that our life is a meaning and that our life is a purpose,
and that Lord we have a message to give to the world. I pray that you bless your word. Help me
Lord to share it with your people in a spirit of anointing and power that just enables your word
to be received in our hearts and Lord let our hearts be open, let them be like soil well-prepared.
Give us a vision of the incredible inheritance that we have in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Bless your word Lord. Make us a blessing and we ask it in Jesus name. Amen. Last Sunday night is
those of you that were with us may recall. We looked at verse one of this particular chapter
and as we looked at verse one we saw that in that passage we have a spiritual principle that
enables us to find the specific calling that we have in life. If ever there was a person who knew
who he was and where he was going it was the Apostle Paul. He knew that God had a very special call
on his life to be an apostle to the Gentiles, but it's very interesting that when you look at the
Apostle Paul's life from the moment of his conversion on he didn't just automatically begin his
ministry as an apostle to the Gentiles rather as he says here in verse one he begins as a servant
or a slave of Jesus. Long before the Apostle Paul committed himself to a particular task Paul
knew that he had a come to Jesus and be ready to do whatever it was that Jesus wanted him to do.
One of the first things that he said when he encountered Jesus on the road to Damascus
was Lord what would you have me do? And the Lord said get up and go to Damascus and I will show
you. And then sometime later the disciple and anius came in at the command of the Lord Jesus
lead his hands upon Saul restored his vision and set him apart for the service of God and many
years went by before the Apostle Paul entered into his apostolic ministry. Acts chapter 13 the
Holy Spirit sends them out to bring the gospel to people and even then he preached only to Jews
and it was only as they rejected the message that he wiped the dust off his feet and he said
if you don't want to hear it then I'm going to the Gentiles and from that point on
Paul's ministry became more and more focused in the calling that God had on his life and I shared
with you last Sunday night there's a principle there that applies to your life and my life a lot
of people want to know the will of God for their lives but if we want to know the will of God
for our lives we cannot come to God with our agenda and with our own ideas of who it is that we
are and what it is that we want to do. We need to come as a slave of Jesus knowing that we have
been purchased by his blood and he can do with your life with my life whatever it is that he wants
and when we put it all on the altar when we present our bodies a living sacrifice to God
and God by the circumstances and the situations of our life as we are faithful in the little
we'll begin to bring us into our own specific ministries and as time goes on that will move from
the general calling into the particular calling into the very specific call. Paul a slave
of Jesus called to be an apostle set apart. Out of that flows our own sense of identity
out of that flows our sense of what it is that we are called to do and how it is that we are
to serve the Lord in the specific calling that lies upon our lives. Now having introduced the
letter to the Romans in that fashion as his custom he then begins to build upon that and by the
time you get down to verse 5 he begins to elaborate exactly what it is that that apostolic
ministry that he has received means for his life. He says in verse 5 we have received grace and
apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all nations and
in the time that we have available this morning I want us to look at those three phrases
because not only do those three phrases become a summary of the book of Romans not only are
they an indication of where Paul was going with his life but it will be a very helpful indication
in your life and in my life as to what it is that God wants us to do as we try to serve the Lord
Jesus in whatever sphere of calling that rests upon our lives. First of all then the obedience
of faith we have received grace and apostleships as Paul to bring about the obedience of faith.
There is I think a danger and certainly a tendency within our culture to reduce the gospel
of Jesus Christ primarily to our benefit you know the scenarios somebody's having a hard time
their life is falling apart and our hearts are full of compassion and we we want to lead them to
Jesus and we invite them to come to Jesus to take away their burdens and their problems and to
heal their broken hearts and that's a true and a biblical implication of the gospel.
Time and time again Jesus says to those who are hurting come to me all that labor and are
have elated I will give you rest and the world in this church too is full of men and women boys
and girls who have known that reality in their own life and in their own experience we've come
to the Lord with our woundedness and with our brokenness and discovered the same power that raised
him from the dead raised us from the dead and put a new song in our hearts and made beauty out of
ashes but we make a mistake if we think that our happiness or our well-being is the only or
even the primary focus of the Christian gospel because the reason Paul receives grace and
apostleship is not simply to go around and making people's lives happier because if anything those
that became Christians in his day as well as today begin to discover a whole host of new problems
as they try to find and follow Jesus in a world that is filled with darkness the purpose of the
gospel he said is to bring about the obedience of faith. Why is there so much brokenness in life?
Why is there so much heartache and why are there so many problems? It's because in Adam and
because of our own sin we have become dis obedient. We've lost the capacity to hear the voice of God
or in those times when we do hear the voice of God we weigh it in our own hearts and minds to see
whether it is that I should like to obey it or not but the bottom line tends to be what do I get
out of it and as Isaiah said many years ago we all like sheep have gone astray and the purpose
of Jesus coming into the world and the reason he died in the cross and arose from the dead ascended
into heaven and said down to the right hand of God was not simply to make our life better although
thank God it does that too but it is to make us obedient to the will of God. If you go through the
book of Romans you will find that in the book of Romans that's the theme the righteousness of God
shown by faith in Jesus Christ because God is wanting to bring about in your life and in my life
and obedience whereby we hear the will of God and we know the will of God and we are able to do
the will of God and the key he says is faith in the name of Jesus the obedience of faith.
You see the Apostle Paul was a man who for many years in his life tried to be obedient to God
but he tried to do it in his own strength and it must have come as an incredible revelation
when he saw Jesus to discover that what he thought was doing God a favor and destroying the
Christian church was in fact a fight against God and the anointed of God whom God had put down
in his right hand and whose name was above every day but I believe that in those three days when
he was struck with blindness before Adam and I came in to lay his hands upon him and to set him apart
for the ministry that God was calling him to you his heart must have been broken within him
as he contemplated the horrible reality that he could have been so wrong
when he thought he was so right and from the day when his eyes were opened and the power of the
Holy Spirit came into his life until the day he died he had but one vision he had but one
purpose and that was to go out and make all men everywhere know there is salvation in no other name
but the name of Jesus because Paul knew to the core of his being that he could not have been who
he was and the world itself could have never changed but by faith in Jesus who was descended according
to the flesh from David but designated son of God in holding his by the resurrection from the dead
he knew that the forgiveness of sins in it only but the power to put off the old and to put
on the new was available to the Christian church not by its own efforts and by its own energy
but by faith in the name of Jesus and if you go through the book of Romans
you'll discover that that is the theme again and again how through faith in Christ
God takes a rebellious and a disobedient people he cleans them up and he shapes them up
and he makes us righteous so that knowing and hearing the will of God we can do it from the heart
the righteousness of God he says in verse 17 is revealed through faith for faith as it is
written he who through faith is righteous shall live we have he says received grace and
apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith if you want to know this morning whether you're
making any progress in the Christian life if you want to know whether your faith in Christ is a real
faith and look at your life and ask yourself what kind of fruit of my bearing
is there something in me that makes me long to be more obedient to the Lord than before
and when I fail is there a conviction within my heart that says you've missed the mark and we
need to come to Jesus for cleansing and for renewal is there a desire within us to see the kingdom
of God come and all of its glory and all of its power and it's not something you've got to work
at yourself it flows out of union with Jesus Jesus says if you abide in me and I abide in you
you will bear much fruit and by this will be my Father glorified let you bear much fruit to
bring about the obedience of faith that he goes on for the sake of his name
for the sake of his name there is as I said a few moments ago within our culture particularly always
the tendency to look at the gospel and the effect of the gospel from a human point of view
and we talk about obedience in the context of what it will do for your life and for my life and
yes indeed thank God it pays to be obedient because the wrath of God is revealed against the
sons of disobedience and much of the heartache in life is the result of men and women's disobedience to
God and the danger and the tendency then is to say well people ought to become Christians and
the ought to become obedient because it will make them happy people and there's some truth in that
but if we make that the focal point of our ministry and if we try to call people to the Lord
Jesus Christ because it's going to make them happy then the moment they become unhappy they're
going to want to turn away from Jesus because they're not really serving Jesus for who he is
they're serving Jesus because of what he is doing for them and you might recall that's the theme of
the book of Job and the book of Job the devil comes before God and God says to him did you see my
servant job down there how righteous and blameless he is and the devil turns around and he says well
if you gave me everything that you gave to Job anybody would serve you
in the test in the story of Job is a cosmic battle between God and Satan for God to demonstrate that
his love is so great that he can raise up a people who love God not because of what God is giving
but who love God because of who he is regardless of what he gives and when Paul here says through
whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of
his name I believe that what he is trying to tell us is that the reason people ought to be called
to obedience is not simply because it will make their lives better even though thank God in the
long run it will always do that but because our disobedience brings discredit and dishonor to God
because you see God is worthy of all praise glory and honor God brought this whole universe into
being he sustains it with the power of his my day by day he gave his son to die for its redemption
on the cross and it brings him to the court of his being went all over the world there are people
who live disobediently and make mockery of the glory of God it's like in your own family when
as parents you sometimes lay it old out on the line for your children and they don't always
understand and they don't always appreciate and they will misunderstand and they hurt you
because they they just sort of go their own way and in going their own way they bring dishonor
and discredit to your name that's what sin does next time you go out and sin next time you
choose a lifestyle that you know is contrary to that which God has for you remember it's not only
your own life it's not only your own family's life it is the name of God that is being reflected
in you especially if you call yourself a Christian later on the Apostle Paul says the name of the
the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of the hypocrisy and the disobedience
of the Jewish community and God's call in your life and in my life the need for men and women
to become obedient to God is because obedience begins to reflect glory to God when people see
men and women redeemed out of darkness drawn out of a life of sin by the power of Jesus
transformed and marriages restored and lives put back together beauty risen out of ashes
God's name begins to receive glory in honor because people can see that God is alive and that
God is real and that God is at work building his church building his kingdom through whom we receive
he says grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake
of his name among all nations I believe the Apostle Paul of all the early apostles
had one of the clearest visions of what God was trying to do with the gospel of the kingdom
you may remember that one of the struggles of the early churches not unlike struggles of the
church today it gets turned inward and they had been raised in so many generations of being told
not to be polluted by the world but they had built a wall of isolation around themselves and it
took the divine intervention of God on several occasions in the book of Acts to stick some fire
into that early church to get them out of their comfortable holy animal and out into the world to
proclaim Jesus Christ of all nations and one of the reasons I believe that God raised up the
Apostle Paul was because he would become that instrument who would take that to its ultimate
conclusion and who would pride himself in taking the gospel of Jesus Christ beyond where it had
been to get it out to the nations and obedient to the great and obedience to the great commission
which was to say make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and the
Son and the Holy Spirit. Why is Paul? Why is God so anxious to get the gospel to all the nations?
I believe it has to do with the function of the gospel of the kingdom in the life of the nations
of the world. You'll recall that ever since the nations went their own way in Genesis chapter 11
after the building of the Tower of Beable the bulk of them pursued their own course and went their
own way developed their own gods tried to fire their own solutions to the problems of life we
still have that today we've just come through 70 or 80 years whereby people have said Marxism
is going to solve the problems of the world and people have discovered it's been an empty promise
now we're living in a world where especially the Western world thinks that if only we can have
democracy everywhere that'll solve all the problems of life people don't understand democracy
is only as good as the hearts and the lives of the citizens within it and time and time again
God has allowed the nations to try the things that they want to try trying to build a life to carve out
a kingdom only to discover that in the final analysis it always collapses in dust because it
doesn't deal with the hard issue which is regeneration and new life through faith in Jesus Christ
and the power of God and in the middle of all those nations everybody going is old way
God's strategy is to raise up a counterculture a counterculture composed of men and women
who have been bought by the blood of Jesus filled with the power of his spirit
and who are not afraid to live the life of obedience of faith for the sake of his name
among all the nations a people who march to the beat of a different drug
a people who don't care about all the values of the world cares for a people whose ultimate bottom
value is the love of God and the love for the neighbor and who are willing to demonstrate in
the practical realities of life what it is to be a child of God and how how to honor God and
to be obedient to the dictates of his kingdom by faith in Jesus Christ and the purpose
of God's raising up the church the purpose of raising up this counterculture
is to serve as a testimony to the nations so that the nations have got to decide will we go
the way of God or will we go the way of our own flesh because the purpose of the gospel is
that all nations everywhere be given that kind of opportunity having seen the gospel to receive
it or to reject it and then shall the end come that's why Jesus in Matthew 24 puts it this way
and we don't often understand the implication of it I think this gospel of the kingdom
is to be preached throughout the whole world and then he adds these words as a testimony
to the nations and then will the end come only when the gospel has gone to all nations
when everybody has had a chance to see it lived out in their reality
and they've made a choice to accept it or to reject it only then will the end come and that's
why Paul and others in the gospel and all through the history of missions people have been so
anxious to go out and to proclaim the gospel to the uttermost parts of the earth not only to save
the loss to the poor heathen important as that is to build the kingdom of God and to serve it
as a testimony to the nations you see that's why in Matthew chapter 25 a chapter which is very
often miscorded when the sheep and the goat does nations are gathered before the Lord Jesus
the judgment is exercised on the basis of what the nations have done
with those who are representatives of Jesus Christ a lot of people look at that passage and
they think the intent of that passage is to say if you've been nice to the poor then God will
honor you for that well it's good to be good to the poor and it's one of the demonstrations of
real faith in God but I believe it's a misapplication of Matthew chapter 25 because nowhere in
the scriptures this Jesus ever call unbelievers his brethren the brethren of Jesus are those who
share his call and who share his life in the context of the gospel of the kingdom
what God is saying is this all nations are not only to hear but all nations are to see the
testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ obedience is to come about by faith for the sake of his name
for all nations to see and the nations must choose will they embrace it
or will they reject it when they rejected
they reject Jesus and God's ultimate sense of judgment will have been indicated
if they embrace it God will honor that and the power of the gospel will permeate all of life
and will permeate all of society I believe we've seen a lot of that in times gone past
I'd be the first to say that the Western nations are not Christian in the true sense of the word
but I would also be the first to say that many of the values that we value and many of the
blessings that we have experienced in Western culture have been a direct influence of the gospel
of Jesus Christ we live in an age and we live in a society where there is a wholesale rejection
of those values on levels that run much deeper than most of us have yet begun to realize
and if ever there was a time when we're moving back into an era where the church was in a similar
situation than the church of Rome it is today as paganism abounds in the land and if ever there
was a need for the church to shine to live the obedience of faith for the sake of his name
among all the nations now is the day because you see I believe God's strategy has not changed
many of us were concerned about what happens in the nation we're concerned about what happens
in the world and if you're not then you've got your head in the sea and oftentimes we say what
is it that we can do about it and we feel so powerless and so impotent in the face of all these
obstacles everywhere we forget that whatever change is going to come about in society is going to
come about not first of all by changing the world but by changing the church because see you can
have a whole room full of darkness but all it takes is a little crack in the blind for the light
to stream in and where the light comes in the darkness gets pushed back God's strategy for
transforming the world is to shine the grace of his obedience through the lives of God's people
for the sake of his name so that the nations can see the glory of God among the people of God
and yes we may not feel very powerful we may not feel there is much that oftentimes we
can do about all the things that ale the world and us but we can walk with Jesus we can let his
word ruin our lives his glory be seen upon our faces and as we do the purposes of God will be
fulfilled the obedience of faith for the sake of his name will be demonstrated among the nations
and God's glory will begin to shine to the end of the world that was Paul's vision that's why
with everything that was within him he had but one passion had that is to bring people into a
living relationship with Jesus Christ because he knew that as they lived without guile and
blameless the day would come when they would crush Satan under their feet and that's his call
in your life and in my life 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 to God be glory let us pray
Father we confess that so often we feel so overwhelmed
and so often Lord we just sort of give up and we go with the flaw
because the price of obedience is too high
we confess that Lord is sin
we pray for our renewed revelation of the person of Jesus Christ the son of David
the son of God for all the provisions that we have in him
for the grace father to repent of mixed motives and lack of daisicle attitude and
being conformed to the world help us to love you with all of our heart and all of our soul
and all of our strength and all of our mind
help us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves and Lord let us be a people to shine
shine with your light and shine with your glory
until the day on the whole world will be filled with the glory of God
even as water covers the sea
in that hour may your name be hallowed may your kingdom come
may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven to the praise of your glory
Amen