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Brothers and sisters in the Lord, I put it out last Sunday morning, some of you will
recall that the real purpose of the gospel ministry is not so much to make people feel better
as it is to make them better.
The purpose of the gospel of Jesus Christ is to take men and women who have been enslaved
to sin, deliver them by the power of the blood of Jesus and renew them by the power of
the Holy Spirit so that instead of living in disobedience, they now begin to live in
obedience before the face of God.
Paul puts it this way earlier in this chapter.
He says we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the
sake of his name among all nations.
The apostle Paul understood I said last Sunday morning in a way that very few people seem
to you.
That God's strategy for reaching the nations is to build among the nations of people who
have become obedient by the grace of Jesus Christ through faith in Him and who by their
alternate lifestyle begin to demonstrate the reality of life in Christ.
And God wants that gospel to be multiplied so that all the nations will have the gospel
preached as a testimony to all nations.
And because Paul understood that, all of his life since his conversion to Jesus Christ
was committed to see the reality of that gospel come to pass to bring about the obedience
of faith for the sake of his name among all nations.
Now it's no wonder then with that vision of the gospel that when Paul here in Romans
chapter 1 starts to get into the body of the letter properly, the first thing that he
begins to do is he begins to rejoice before God concerning the progress that the gospel
has been making among these Roman Christians.
He says in verse 8, I thank my God for through Jesus Christ for all of you because your faith
is proclaimed in all the world.
Your faith, he says, is proclaimed in all the world.
Paul knows that true faith cannot remain hidden.
He knows that true faith must come to expression. There's a lot of people today that think
faith is a private matter.
And they say, well, you have your private faith and I have my private faith and we live
in an age and we live in a society where people are trying to privatize faith that cannot
enter into the public arena.
That's a bunch of nonsense.
Faith cannot remain hidden because if you have a true relationship with God, it's going
to show up in every dimension of your life.
And whatever the shortcomings or the weaknesses of these Roman Christians might have been,
they have been so filled with the grace of God that their faith is being proclaimed all
over the world.
That is to say everywhere Paul goes, they're talking about the faith of these Roman Christians.
They're saying to one another, did you hear the gospel has even made inroads into the
Roman capital?
And did you hear how many converts have come to Jesus Christ and their Roman Empire and
its capital?
And have you heard how their lives are being transformed and how their lives are being
changed?
I think God says Paul that your faith is proclaimed throughout all of the world.
That's why it blesses me when people come to their own congregation and they make remarks
as many of the choir members did last Sunday morning about the vitality of the presence
of the Lord among our people and our love towards one another and the freedom that reigns
in our congregation and our desire to worship and to praise God.
I rejoice in that not because I think we're so insecure that people need to pat us on
the back all the time and tell us we're doing good thing.
But I rejoice in that because you see it shows that the gospel is doing in our lives what
it's supposed to be doing.
If God is really real, if He is really forgiven us by the blood of Jesus, if He is really renewing
our lives by the power of the Holy Spirit, then that ought to be demonstrating itself in
a tangible way.
People that walk through the door ought to feel somehow or another that God's here.
And people ought to experience somehow or another, however weekly and with however many
shortcomings, a little bit of God's love in your life and in my life.
Oh, because your faith is proclaimed in all the world, then He goes on to say that another
part of His prayer has been that somehow or another God will make it possible for him
to meet with the Roman Christians face to face.
God is my witness, He goes on to say that without ceasing, I mention you always in my prayer,
asking that somehow by God's will, I may now at last succeed in coming to you.
That somehow by God's will, I may now, may now at last succeed in coming to you.
If you read that verse in the context of Romans 15 where He elaborates more on this, then
you discover that the reason that Paul has not been able to make it to Rome is that he's
been so busy preaching the gospel all over the place.
Paul has made it his ambition, he says in Romans 15 to preach the gospel, not where other
people have already preached it, unless he be building at another man's foundation, he
wants to preach the gospel where nobody's been yet.
And he's been so busy doing that that so far he has been prevented in coming to their
Roman Christians, which is not to say that he hasn't long desperately to make it.
He says, I long to see you because you see when you have an apostolic, apostolic call
in your life, when you have a vision to see the kingdom of God come, and you hear about
what it is that God is doing in the Christian church, you not only want to thank God that
God's doing that among his people, but you want to be there and you want to be part of
it.
And then as the passage goes on, he goes on to tell us there is two reasons that he wants
to see the Christians in Rome.
And in the time that we have tonight, it's these two reasons that I want to share with you
because they have profound implications for all of our lives.
Number one, he says, I long to see you that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to
strengthen you.
That is that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith, both yours and mine.
I long to see you, he says, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you.
As an apostle who is charged with not only leading people to Christ, but leading them
to maturity, Paul knows firsthand how hard it is to be obedient to Jesus in a pagan culture
and in the capital of a pagan empire.
He knows that it takes an incredible amount of grace for people to be able to resist
to combine efforts of the devil, the world, and the flesh.
And with a pastor's heart that he has, his greatest desire is for people to be strengthened
to be able to continue to walk faithfully before God so that come the day when he presents
all of his converts before the Lord Jesus, he can present them without spot or wrinkler
blemish or any switch thing by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.
I long to see you that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you.
Now if you look in the overall context of the book of Romans, then you discover that
what he is talking about here is that he wants to share with the Christians in Rome the
unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ.
Ever since his own conversion on the road to Damascus and ever since his own encounter
with the person of Jesus Christ, Paul has but one consuming passion and that is to bring
men and women everywhere into a living relationship with the living Christ because he knows that
Jesus alone can give people what it takes to become what it is that God would have them
be.
Remember now Paul was a Pharisee before his conversion, a man who tried and his own to
be all of the things that he knew God wanted him to be.
He failed miserably.
His eyes were opened by the mercies of God because of his ignorance and unbelief to the grace
of God in Jesus Christ.
And all of the rest of his life was dedicated to taking men and women and leading them
into a living relationship with God through Jesus Christ and to help them see more and more
of what the riches are that they had in the Lord Jesus.
He wanted them to understand not only that in Christ the pasts were sins were forgiven.
Not only that in Jesus Christ had been crucified and put to death but also that in Jesus Christ
had been raised from the dead that God gave the power of his spirit and that by faith
they could rise up in the wings of the eagles and they could run and not be weary and they
could walk and not faint.
And there was an urgency and a burden in the heart of the Apostle Paul to be able to
go to these Christians and to give them everything that he had in the Lord Jesus that he could
teach them the riches of Christ that he could help them to experience the power of Jesus
so that by the power of Jesus their lives would change and that by the power of Jesus they
could be an obedient people.
I am not ashamed of the gospel he said it is the power of God to salvation for every
one, not his faith.
I believe it is important first to understand that because you know my experience has been
that one of the liabilities of the Christian community is that we forget the elements of
the faith.
I spent time occasionally with other pastors and other pastors groups and I got a number
of conferences at different times and I discovered there is a very interesting thread that
often runs through our conversations.
People oftentimes are looking for programs or for things to make things happen in the
church and we have had people come here and they have seen some of the things that God
has been doing among us and they said how can we make that happen in our own church?
And people are formulas and they want nice programs that will somehow or another make
things happen and there is nothing wrong with programs and God has strategies and He has
programs that He will give us to do with needs to be done but let us forget one thing.
No program can change the human heart.
No amount of nice technique can bring about lasting change in your life and in my life
and no amount of gizmo can make us obedient disciples of the Lord Jesus.
The only one who can do it is Jesus Christ who died and who arose and who ascended on
high and said down to the right hand of God and poured out His Holy Spirit to make things
happen in your life and in my life.
And for that reason the focus of ministry must always be taking men and women by the
end and helping them to experience the spiritual gifts that are there in Jesus Christ, all
of what Jesus is, all of what Jesus has done if we can help people to see that.
If we can help people to understand it and to lay hold of it by faith and if they can
just humble themselves before the grace of God and cry out to God for mercy, the power
of God is there and God who raised the dead will breathe life into their mortal bodies
and they become a new creation by the power of Jesus.
I long to see you that I may impart to you a spiritual gift to strengthen you.
One of the signs of maturity and faith is that when you see hurting men and women and
your hearts filled with love and your heart is filled with compassion more than anything
else you want to just put your arms around them and you want to carry them into the presence
of the Lord and you want them to experience the power of Jesus who is big enough to deal
with all the garbage and who is big enough to heal the broken hearted and to set the
captive free.
I long to see you that I may now impart to you a spiritual gift to strengthen you and
then he goes on to say this, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith, both
yours and mine, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith.
You would think would you not that the Apostle Paul, a giant in the faith, would look upon
this kind of ministry as sort of a one-way street, let me come and tell you what you ought
to be and the other is a part of that that's involved in his Apostolic ministry or by
he takes the grace of the Lord Jesus and he passes it on to his people, but ministry
in the Christian community is never a one-way street because it's in the process of giving
what we receive, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith, both yours and mine.
Paul knew how tough it was to leave the Christian life and to be engaged in ministry and to
experience the kind of obstacles that he experienced and there was something in his own
heart that leaped with joy when he saw the power of God working in the lives of other
people and he wanted to be refreshed by the rest of the church because God lived in
their lives too and God gave them grace to interred minister to him and he was humble
enough to receive the ministry that other Christians had for him.
You want to check your maturity level tonight in Christ?
And not only ask yourself the question, how much does God give me to give to others, but
ask yourself the question, when I'm in need, how ready and willing am I to receive from
others of God's children those things that God would have me give and receive so that
we can be mutually encouraged by one another's faith.
That's why it's so important for God's people to be in ministry type situations because
it's in that process of giving back and forth.
It's in that process of being with the community of believers that God ministers to our own
grace and to our own hearts and to our own lives and we can keep on walking because we
know that though I may not feel much right now and I may be going through a really difficult
time in my own life, God is still alive because look at what he is doing in the lives of
other people that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith.
So number one, he says, I long to see you that I may impart to you some spiritual gift
to strengthen you.
The number two he goes on to say, I want to see you because I want to reap a harvest
among you.
Verse 13, I have often intended to come to you in order that I may reap some harvest
among you as well as among the rest of the Gentiles.
So what are we, he says, a harvest among you?
Now there's different interpretations of that passage but surely a harvest is the product
of souling.
It is a fruit that is being born by the lives of other people and on the one hand it might
well refer to the converts that he wants to gather in the Roman city as he prepares to
preach there the gospel of Jesus Christ but I believe the context of the book of Romans
refers to more than simply that.
I believe the context of the book of Romans refers to the fact that he wants to encourage
the believers in Rome to contribute in a material way to the needs of the church in Jerusalem.
I say that because at this time the Apostle Paul had been going around among a lot of
the Gentile churches and encouraging them to make a contribution to the saints in Jerusalem.
The saints in Jerusalem had run into very difficult times because of persecution and because
of other economic factors their whole economic life was turned upside down.
Paul's philosophy to the Gentiles was you share in their spiritual blessings and they
now ought to share in your material blessings.
And on many of his missionary journeys as 2 Corinthians chapter 8 and 9 make very plain
he had been going around encouraging support for the Christians in Jerusalem and I believe
that in that context what he is saying to these people here in Rome is the reason that
I have wanted to visit you for a long time is that I want to give you opportunity to
give your gifts to the people who are in Jerusalem, who are your spiritual forebears and through
whose faith and generosity you have become Christians.
And he does that not because he wants to get something from them that's always his fear.
As a matter of fact in his letters he goes on to point out in considerable detail that
he prides himself from the fact that nobody's ever going to challenge him that he's doing
things for the money.
He says in 1 Corinthians chapter 9 I make the gospel free of charge.
I've got other people supporting me so that you can never say that I want you to become
Christians because I want you to give me your money.
At the same time he understands that being in Christ means that your life is transformed.
He begins to bear fruit, you become like the character of God.
And part of his burden in ministry is not only to strengthen people with spiritual gifts
so that they can walk in the grace of God, but he wants to harvest among them the fruit
of that salvation.
He wants to help them give of themselves in obedience to God not only financially, but
in every other possible way so that their obedience among all the nations may demonstrate
the reality of the kingdom of God.
And there is nothing that gives Paul greater joy than to watch the gospel take root in
the lives of men and women.
And to watch their lives be transformed by the power of the gospel until they become
so filled with the Lord that not only can they receive, but they can give with a generosity
that God has planted in their hearts.
On Corinthians 9, verse 13, he puts it this way, he says, "Under the test of this service,
you will glorify God by your obedience in acknowledging the gospel of Christ, by the
generosity of your contribution for them and for all others, while they long for you and
pray for you because of this surpassing grace of God in you."
I have often intended to come to you, he says, "In order that I may reap a harvest among
you, as well as among all the rest of the Gentiles."
Ministry is not only imparting spiritual gifts, it's not only enabling people to share
in the reality of faith, it's to help them and it's to equip them to transform their lives
and begin to share all that they are and all that they have with all the people around them
because you see, that's what sets us aside from the nations of the world.
And in a day and age when more and more the hearts of men and women are turning in on
themselves.
And the fear of what's going to happen in the future makes people hold on to everything
that it is.
You and I can demonstrate the reality of faith by letting God's love flow through our
lives and by remaining generous, not only financially, but with our love and with our affection and
with our kindness so that our home life and our business life and our relationships,
our church life, our life in the community, overflows with the presence of the harvest
of righteousness that comes from the gospel of peace.
And the power that makes all of that possible is the grace of God in Jesus Christ.
I'm not ashamed he says of the gospel.
It is the power of God to salvation for everyone who has faith.
Some of us here we find ourselves that are a lot of pressure.
We find ourselves holding on by our fingernails and we have very little to give to one another.
We're so busy just trying to keep it all together in our own soul and in our own heart.
And we live on the edge and it looks like we're going to lose it.
The whole burden of the Apostle Paul is to help us to grow in our understanding of who
Jesus is, to help us to see all the riches that we have in the Lord Jesus Christ so that
by faith that Him not only do we have enough for our own needs, but we've got enough for
the needs of the people that God brings into our lives so that through us God's blessings
may flow to the nations.
And the nations will see that there is a God in heaven who is our Father.
He holds us in the palm of His hand.
He's going to accomplish your life and in my life his purposes so that we in turn can
be vessels and vehicles of His purposes in the lives of other people.
And it's only when the nations of the world see that kind of reality in your life and
in my life with increasing clarity.
And many of them will come to acknowledge that Jesus is real, that He alone is the Messiah
who can change the mess the world finds itself in, that He alone can usher in the kingdom
that God has said He would.
I long to see you, He said, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you.
And I have often intended to come to you in order that I might reap some harvest among
you as well as among the rest of the Gentiles.
May God give us grace to fulfill the burden not only in the heart of the Apostle Paul, but
the burden in the heart of God and may our lives abound in so much grace that the world
knows that Jesus is alive, that He lives in and with you and in and with me.
To Him be the glory, let us pray.
Thank You Father for Jesus.
Thank You Lord that Jesus really came to forgive all our sins and to change your lives and
to make us new.
Thank You for the tangible way in which we experience that are in our lives again and again.
Thank You Father that you raise up people who administer to us your grace, to whom we
and return, administer your grace, and that Father by means of your grace, our lives begin
to bear fruit for the praise of your glory.
And Lord in the world, it gets darker and darker, help us just to be faithful.
To know that no matter how big the struggles are, that we sometimes face in our life that
Jesus is bigger, He's overcome at all and help us Lord by faith in Him to express our
love and obedience for the praise of your glory in His name we ask at Him.