ROMANS: The Results of Romans

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Let's pray together.

God, that's a scary prayer.

We're honest with ourselves.

We're honest with what we're singing and saying.

Take me deeper than what I can handle, than what I can sustain, only to find your presence.

Are you kidding me?

That's a scary prayer.

Thank you, Lord, for putting it on the screen and for putting it in our hearts.

Not just to read because it's up there, not just to sing because Clyde's singing it, but hopefully, prayerfully, because we believe it.

We believe that even if we're over our heads with circumstances, if you're there underneath the water, then our lives are better in your presence.

How countercultural can you get than that?

God, we uh take heed to what you said to your disciples on the on the lake that night.

Take heart, be of good courage.

It is I.

Do not be afraid.

So we're not afraid today because of whatever we face.

Instead, we are encouraged and strengthened and challenged by your presence in our lives.

Would you speak to us?

Would you be with us?

Would you move and nudge?

And if need be, just slap us.

Because we know that whatever comes from you is good.

Because you're good.

We trust you, Lord.

It's in Christ's name we pray.

Amen.

You can be seated.

Uh, my name is Lance Williams.

I'm the spiritual formation pastor here at Grand Parkway.

It's my privilege to be before you.

Uh, and even better is that I get to end what we've been talking about for, oh gosh, almost two years, right?

Romans.

Uh, and so we are in the last uh three verses of Romans chapter 16.

Romans 16 · chapter mention

So congratulations, you finished something in your life.

Uh, as have have I.

We've actually finished a book.

We actually read it.

Uh so congratulations, you made it.

Um as we as we finish uh Romans, if you don't have your Bible, there's one at the end of your row.

Uh slap somebody, nudge somebody, throw a quarter at somebody, and they'll pass one over to you.

We are on page 951 of that Bible at the end of your row.

And as you're turning there, let me just give you the title of what we're going to be talking about today.

Just the result of Romans.

The result of everything that we've been studying, everything that's been preached upon, everything that we've been focusing on in the life of this church for a year and a half or so, uh, now finds its results in these three verses.

The result of Romans, Romans chapter 16, 25 to 27.

Romans 16 · chapter mention

Um, and here's basically, if I had a summary statement for the entire sermon, it would basically be this: the result of Romans is for us to be focused on glorifying God, the only wise God, through a faithful obedience to Jesus to proclaim him to the nations.

That's what this is going to be all about.

As we dig into this and you hear that, and you just kind of go, okay, I'm already checked out and done.

Let me just ask you, let me ask you this question up front.

It'll kind of weave its way into the story as we keep going on.

Whose kingdom do you build?

You're building a kingdom.

You know that, right?

You are building a kingdom from Monday to Sunday.

You are building a kingdom.

The question is, whose kingdom and who's the king?

Is it my kingdom?

A lot of days I would say if I look back on a week, I might pursue my kingdom a little bit more than Jesus' kingdom.

Unknowingly, perhaps, maybe more knowingly than I like to admit.

Whose kingdom are you building?

We are building a kingdom.

Are we participating with God and bringing his kingdom to earth?

Or are we kind of sitting out on the sideline because we like the kingdom that we have?

It's pretty comfortable.

We've got cable, we've got AC, we've got this, we've got that.

Whose kingdom truly are we pursuing?

Are we building?

And are we participating in?

It's a great question to kind of start us off with because here's the deal is that Paul uh is gonna basically have this huge summary statement in uh 25 to 27.

And here's what he's summarizing.

I'm not gonna put uh uh all that the list of doctrines that Neil put up there uh last week, although that would be great.

Uh instead, Romans 1 through 11, uh man, Paul unpacked depravity of man, he unpacked uh the sinfulness of man, he unpacked that we all fall short of the standard and the glory of God.

And oh, by the way, God didn't leave you in that, instead he's pursuing you, coming for you, and and that's all Romans 9.

He's chosen us before the foundation of the world.

Uh huge statements about God's character.

And what I went to a conference on Friday, and what I learned there that I don't think I ever heard, or at least don't remember, somebody said, hey, Romans 1 through 11, God doesn't give one command.

Huh.

And all of a sudden Romans 12 hits, and he's just hitting us and hammering us with command after command after command.

And you know it's true, and you know it's right, and that's why back up on the screen, all you see is everything, because man, it has felt like he has said everything for us to do in the Christian life.

Romans 12 to 16.

Up until today, you have what to believe about God, you have how to live with God, and now why is it?

What are we going to do?

We are now called to praise God, to give God glory.

It's the reason for Romans, it's the result of Romans, it's the why of Romans.

And so there's a lot to be said about all that, but let's just read it.

This one beautiful sentence.

Uh Neil asked me, this is how he asked me to preach today.

He put it in front of me and goes, Hey, read that sentence, that right there.

I said, Okay.

He goes, What do you think about it?

I go, it's beautiful.

He's like, Yeah, it is.

All right, well, you you should preach this.

Okay, I'll preach it.

It's beautiful.

Uh, this is what it says.

Now to him.

To him.

All these things that were said before, the things that we know about God, that the reason or the ways that we should live for God, now to him.

Here's the reason.

Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages, but has now been disclosed, and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith to the only wise God, be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ.

Amen.

First observation, Paul writes in run-on sentences.

His English professor was not happy with the way he wrote some days, but he uh jammed it all in.

Most commentators are basically reading this and going, he gets so excited he can't even contain himself as to what he's talking about here in these last three verses.

And he is so excited, and we could talk about a lot of things that he says, but basically just three things that we want to point out from the text.

Number one is this you and I are only strengthened in Christ.

Verse 25, we are only strengthened in Christ.

It says here right here, now to him who is able to strengthen you.

You know God's able to strengthen you?

We know that.

And yet we many days run to other things for strength.

At the end of a long day, some of us run to ESPN, some of us run to nothing, some of us run to gardening, not all bad things, all good things, but just not the best thing.

And so Jesus would say for all of us, hey, oh by the way, we are strengthened only in Christ.

Verse 25, that that that uh that word there for it, he is able to strengthen you.

That word for strengthen, to establish, it basically means this.

It's the Greek word steridzo.

Steridzo.

Now you're impressed, right?

Here's why I'm saying that.

It's the same word that we get for steroid.

Now let me unpack that just a little bit.

Steridzo, this is what it means.

It's to have a settled or stable spiritual condition.

It is a settling in your spirit that God is able to give you.

We'll get to how he does it in just a minute.

But it is a doctrine settling.

If you don't know what to believe or how to believe or what to do, this, he says, I will settle you.

I'm able to settle you both in what you believe and what you experience.

It's to cause you and I, to cause you and I to be inwardly firm and committed.

I feel like I'm on a spelling bee all of a sudden.

Sterizo.

Can you give me the uh word of origin?

Greek.

It is a settled spirit that's committed to believe the truth, to live the truth, to obey the truth.

Like I said, it's where we get steroid from.

Uh but the beautiful thing about this steroid is that it doesn't come in a needle.

Uh, it came through surgery.

When God took out your heart and gave him your, gave us his by his spirit, all of a sudden he's able to strengthen us.

There's no side effects, it's not temporary, we don't have to run to our dealer.

Instead, we just run to Jesus and find everything we need for all of eternity.

And this is what I mean by that is that we're going to be able, if because he's able to strengthen us, let's just list out a few things that what that means for us, so that when our anxieties, when things don't work out quite like we hoped, or maybe something happened and now we're just fearful of everything, when our worries and our anxieties blind us into fear, the God of peace says, Hey, oh, by the way, you are worthy of my provision.

When we just freak out, when our circumstances don't just seem impossible, but are impossible, God will bring to light the promise that with him all things are possible.

When our emotions are so overwhelming that you skip angry and just go straight to crying, our strength is found when we look to a God who walked on this earth and wept.

Because people didn't believe.

Even when he was about to raise his friend from the dead, they still were ready to kill him.

And it made him weep.

When our hormones, if you're a teenager, maybe on the other side of life, when your hormones are raging like rapids, God will bring you to even keel with a belief in the Son who slept through a storm and had to be woken up.

When our weaknesses are being exploited by our enemies, our strength, we can be strengthened in the God who tells us that when you and I are weak, so we are strong.

This is what it means when God says, Hey, now to Him, we're gonna live all these things to Him who's able to strengthen you, because that is where we find our strength in Christ.

And so no matter what, no matter what you're going through, no matter what you might go through, no matter what you're heading into or what you just came out of, Paul's reminding all of us it is only in Christ that we can find these things, this strengthening.

And so why do we look other places?

Maybe it's because we don't know what God's gonna use to strengthen us.

And so if we were to just keep reading in the text, he lists out four things that we he's gonna strengthen us in, the means of God's strengthening.

The first one is this He says, He will strengthen you, He's able to strengthen you according to my gospel.

Paul believed the gospel so much that it was his.

It was a personal gospel.

He didn't just, you know, lock it up tight and just store it away and say, Well, I don't really talk about my faith, that's really me between me and Jesus.

Nah, not a biblical faith.

Instead, it was so personal to him, yet so big, he gave it away at any chance that he had.

This gospel that we were once dead, but that God came into the grave of our souls and started beeping, beating our hearts alive again, brought us out of the grave, now we're alive, all of a sudden we live in newness of life.

That's what we believe as Christians.

It's Ephesians 2.

Not just in the gospel, but also in preaching.

In preaching.

Do you ever think that you'd be encouraged and strengthened by the gospel and of Jesus Christ by preaching?

Many of you would, because you're here, right?

2 Corinthians 4, but what is it that we're preaching?

Not just in the act of it, but what is the content?

2 Corinthians 4, 5 says this for what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ is Lord.

With ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake.

So when I opened up today with whose kingdom are you building, who who's whose life are you proclaiming and how we live and the habits that we have and how we treat our spouses?

Whose life are we really proclaiming?

Is it my life that I'm proclaiming or is it Christ's life that I'm proclaiming?

Now all of a sudden, I'm your servant for his sake.

Well, that flips everything around.

That's the preaching.

That's what we're talking about, and that's what Paul's talking about.

Um our life proclaiming in both our words and in our deeds.

Who are we proclaiming, both of those things, words and deeds?

Most of us in this room, if we're really honest, uh, we would probably say we're better at either a words type of a faith or a deeds type of a faith.

But what the Bible calls us to is to be really, really faithful and obedient to both words and deeds.

Uh, like many of us, uh, some of us, I lived this life before I went to seminary.

I was in the business world, a mortgage company, before it all went downhill in a major way.

Uh that was not my fault.

I left before all that.

Um so don't blame me after this.

But but here's the deal, right?

Is uh when I was there, I used to think this, and then I all of a sudden started to walk differently because I just got convinced that this is not the way to do it.

I used to think, I'm gonna live faithfully, I'm gonna do things differently, I'm gonna treat people differently, I'm gonna not do dishonest things.

If I haven't done something and my boss tells me, asks me if I've done it, I'm just gonna say, you know, I didn't do it.

I'm sorry.

If I did blah, blah, blah, I'm gonna do all these things differently than all these people around me.

And then one day, if I'm really nice, they'll all ask me, Why is it that you live this way?

By the way, that never happened.

That day never came.

They never were so curious about my life that all of a sudden they were like, you must be a Christian.

Tell me more.

Never happened.

If that happens to you, God bless you, you're the exception rather than the rule.

We cannot wait for that day to happen.

Because here's the deal they're not looking at you anymore.

They're looking at their phones.

And so are you, and so am I.

We're all looking at our phones.

I mean, that's just the reality.

The world that we live in, we're completely distracted.

They're not looking over across the cubicle and going, I wonder what he's doing for lunch.

I mean, I bet it'd be so encouraging just to go to lunch with.

No, it's not happening.

Okay?

So here's the reality, both in word and in deed.

Not just being and living honest lives, but actually going out, and actually, you know, when you use your body, you actually have to use your mouth too, to proclaim the gospel of Christ.

Not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, not just as your good buddy, as Lord, master, controller.

We, the he who we submit to.

That's the second thing that he uses to strengthen us.

Thirdly, and this is where I feel like I'm at an end times conference, but it says, in the revelation of mysteries.

And all of a sudden I feel like I'm watching uh Channel 14-2 with the end times guy, and he's got the you know, the big graphics either on the stage or on the screen, and I'm going, I'm trying to pay attention, but I'm getting a little dizzy, but that's okay.

I feel like that whenever I hear in the revelation of mysteries.

It says it, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages, but has now been disclosed through the prophetic writings, as has been made known to the nations.

He's now all of a sudden disclosed and made known something that was hidden for long ago.

It's not like this jigsaw puzzle that he's kind of putting together for our sake.

Instead, he's had all the pieces and he's just kind of dropping them into place for us to see as time goes on.

I'll give you a real practical little little lesson in my own life.

This is a mystery that God has revealed in my life.

So, if you don't know this, uh my wife is pregnant and she is due in August.

And um, this is a mystery, okay?

Uh this is a mystery in our lives.

We were not trying, we were not um praying for this, uh, we were, it just, it just it just happened, right?

And so uh uh anyway, so I won't go there.

Uh so right, it just happened.

So this is what happens, right, when you're married.

Um you you you procreate.

That's what God designed it for, and one of the reasons.

So, nonetheless, it's a mystery.

Now, here's what I mean by that.

Here's what I mean by that is that God has has had this baby boy.

All of a sudden, I'm gonna be a dad to a boy, which I thought I gave up on a long time ago.

Uh but all of a sudden he had this mystery that he's had stored up since literally since the foundation of the world.

That he had this little boy that he would put in our family, that we would be able to steward his soul, to to grow him up in Christ, and 20 years from now, we'll look back, hopefully, and go, okay, that's what God was doing through this young man.

I don't know what it is now.

Uh instead, all I see now is rearranging of my house again, painting walls, putting Reese back in Ellie's room.

You must get along.

This is your life from here on out.

Maybe boy gets his own room and you get yours, and that's the way it is, right?

These are the things I'm thinking about.

But the thing that just convinced us we were thinking about lesser things is the one reality that God has had this kid planned out from ages and ages beyond.

That's the mystery.

That's the mystery that Paul's talking about, is a mystery that he's now revealed in our lives.

All of a sudden, we're living it.

We're going, okay, yeah, that dream that we had or that I had of being a dad to a boy one day, man, I'd love to do that.

No?

Okay, no, number one, no number two.

All right, well, I guess we're done.

No, not done.

Got it.

Revelation of mystery.

It's not a puzzle, but just revealing of something that was previously unknown.

And what is that thing that was previously unknown?

It's that God's had a heart for the nations since the very, very beginning.

And we'll talk to that, talk about that in just uh a few minutes.

The fourth thing that he talks about, that we're gonna be strengthened by these things.

These are the things that God is gonna strengthen us by the gospel, preaching, revelation of mysteries, because I can't say it without saying like that.

And then finally, the writings of the prophets.

When's the last time you've read the prophets?

Yes, me either.

Uh matter of fact, I was telling uh my midweek class um not too long ago that the last time I did the one year Bible, which was last year, I made a little deal with Jesus, and he was good with it.

I said, Hey Jesus, I know you uh authored Ezekiel, and I've read it many times.

I don't know what it says.

So I'm gonna skip it this year.

You good?

I got some catching up to do.

Alright, we're good.

All right, all right, the wheels and the fire and the creatures and all that.

I don't know what you're talking about.

And so sometimes you just read those big long books and you just go, I don't know what's going on there.

And some of you after this will come up to me and give me a pamphlet.

I don't need the pamphlet.

I've read the pamphlet, okay?

It's not that I don't know, I just don't get it.

Okay?

I can I've gone through seminary, people.

I it's really okay.

But uh it's just some things that I just there's just uh still a mystery, apparently.

But there's a writing of the prophets, and when he wrote these things down in the Old Testament, literally thousands of years ago, it all culminates in the person of Jesus.

Let me give you four examples from the Old Testament uh about prophets.

These are the things that are strengthening us.

First, about Jesus, Isaiah 61.

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and to the opening and the opening of prison, of the prison to those who are bound.

How do we know that's about Jesus?

Because Jesus quoted it to John the Baptist when John the Baptist was in jail, and he knew he was about to die for his faith, and he sent some of his guys, some of his disciples out to Jesus, and he said, Hey, I know we're cousins and all, and I put my life on the line for you.

Just need one last assurance before I get killed for this.

Are you the guy?

And Jesus says, Yeah.

Isaiah 61.

You come on, you know that one, John.

Isaiah 61.

Let me let me give you something that you know so that you'll be comforted because it's gonna happen.

Jeremiah 23, which can be a very long and and somewhat depressing book.

Jeremiah 23, 5 and 6 says, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous branch.

That would be Jesus.

And he shall reign as king and deal wisely and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.

Hang on.

Hang on, before you go further, go back.

He is going to deal wisely.

Very important when we get to the end of this.

Oh, yeah, by the way, you think general Jesus just comes to love on people?

He's going to execute justice, and that's how he'll love on us.

And he will execute righteousness in the land, and that's how he'll love on us.

And it keeps on going.

It says this in verse 6 In his days, Judah will be saved, the region of Judah, and Israel will dwell securely.

And this is the name by which he will should be called.

The Lord is our righteousness.

He will satisfy the demands of God on our behalf.

The Lord is our righteousness.

You've got some prophecies about Jesus.

How about a little one from the confusing book of Ezekiel?

The one chapter I do re do understand, that and the dry bones.

My daughter likes that one.

Ezekiel 36, 26, and it says this and I will give you a new heart.

Good news, guys.

Good news, ladies.

And I will give you a new heart and a new spirit, and I will put within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh, and give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within you.

You and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

One of the most beautiful things about this passage, he doesn't just do heart surgery on you and get rid of the old and bring the new.

He causes you to obey.

Even when you don't feel like it.

He'll keep nudging, he'll just keep pushing, he'll keep whispering, he'll keep kicking you in the pants, he'll do whatever it takes until eventually you succumb to the Lord Jesus Christ.

And he says, I will cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

What a beautiful promise from the Old Testament that now all of a sudden I'm pretty strengthened by.

Zephaniah 3, 15 and 17.

Last one I'll give you.

I think this is one of the verses that the ladies were probably refreshed with at their retreat.

This is now prophecy over the character of the Father.

It says, The Lord has taken away judgments against you.

Good news.

You're not condemned, not by anybody, and especially not by Jesus, the Lord and master of the universe.

He has taken away judgments against you.

He's cleared away your enemies.

Yes.

The King of Israel, the Lord is in your midst.

You shall never again fear evil.

It keeps on.

Oh, excuse me, on that day it shall be said to Jerusalem, Fear not, O Zion, let not your hands grow weak.

The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save.

He will rejoice over you with gladness.

He will quiet you by his love.

Whatever's going on on the inside, he's going to quiet you by his steadfast love, and he will exult over you with loud singing.

Now, I used to think when I read this that I'd be with Ellie or with Reese, and I'd just be singing over their cribs, or they'd be rocking them to sleep, and I'd just ex I'll just be so pleased with them.

I'd be whispering a song to them.

And then I read loud singing.

My neighbors know that I sing loud by now because when I mow the yard, I put earbuds in and I sing loudly.

I thought that the mower was drowning me out.

Not so much.

A couple years ago I had uh one of my neighbors who's uh a friend of mine, he said, Hey, uh, were you did you mow the yard this morning?

Did you were you singing a little bit?

Maybe you woke me up.

Maybe I did.

Um and then, and then um last week I mowed my yard for the first time in the springtime, and and my neighbor um who is on Facebook, I'm not her friend on Facebook, but I have a mutual friend, and then they told me what they said about me on Facebook.

Facebook is public.

You know that what you put out there, people see and read and share, and you may not ever know what's going on.

So you're you're whatever's going on, it's out there.

Uh and this person said, Hey, guess what?

Spring is here.

Sun is shining, the flowers are blooming, the birds are singing, and oh yes, my neighbor is out in his backyard singing at the top of his lungs.

Which I just said, that person, somebody uh texted me and they said, Hey, you just got outed on Facebook.

Uh, yeah, that was definitely me, singing loudly.

And then this weekend when uh my wife was away on the uh the women's retreat, um, I was we're getting chores done and just hanging out, doing some stuff at the house, and I looked over at Reese and I just started singing over her loudly.

I was going, Reese, Reese, the greatest, Reese, Reese, Reese.

And she looked at me like I was insane first.

And then she looked at me and she gave me that smile, and she goes, ah, yeah.

And then she goes, Reese, Reese, Reese.

And she joins in, right?

This is what it looks like when the father just kind of rejoices over you, exalts over you with loud singing.

We may look at him like he's crazy at first, but he just intoxicates us.

And now we're jumping around with him.

Woo! Yeah, you're pleased with me, I'm pleased with you.

Here we go.

Loud singing.

My wife has gotten to the point where when we uh go to cash registers, she she walks up there, puts her stuff on the cash register, and kind of walks away.

Because I'm singing and don't know it.

She's done correcting me on that one.

But you may say, man, that's a lot of Old Testament.

That's good.

I don't I don't read the Old Testament.

Let me just say, we may be missing out on some strengthening that God has intended for us to find in the Old Testament.

Not just big Isaiah and big confusing Ezekiel.

Maybe Genesis 3, where the first prophecy was ever given about Jesus.

Maybe it's in Malachi hidden somewhere, maybe it's in a psalm that you can be encouraged and strengthened by.

And all of that, although it may feel and seem like a lot, is all to remind us of one thing: that God's redemptive plan for humanity has culminated in the person of Jesus.

It all came to fruition through him.

And this is how thoughtful and wise God is that over thousands of years, everything, everything he put into place in this world was to show how wise he is and to show how strong he is to get glory from disobedient people like you and me.

That's how thoughtful he is.

And so all that leads us to this beautiful strengthening in Christ alone.

And that leads us to our second point.

I thought we were further along than that, but we're still on number one.

Number two, faith leads to obedience, this strengthening that comes, it comes through a faithful obedience, and it does come in that order.

Faith first, and then obedience.

Verse uh 20 uh 26.

Uh all these things has been now declosed through the prophetic writings, has been made known to all nations.

Now listen to this, according to the command of the eternal God, why?

Why did God do all this?

Why is God going to strengthen all of us?

Why is he able to do all these things?

So that to bring obedience to bring about the obedience of faith.

My friends, obedience is not optional.

My daughters think it's optional.

My soon son will think it's optional.

And oh, by the way, I think it's optional a lot of days.

He didn't just write all these things down for us to go, good suggestions, Jesus.

I think I'll take that up later.

No, he put these things down on paper, preserved them, and then put his life on the line so that we could live changed lives.

He says that he's able to strengthen you.

And basically it's this we cannot be a strengthened people without becoming an obedient people.

That's why in John 14, Jesus says some pretty amazing things on the last night before he willfully lays down his life for the ransom of many.

He says in John 14, 15, very simply put, if you love me, you'll obey me.

You say you love me, you say you're a follower of me, but do you obey me?

Do you follow me?

Not just belief, but is there a following?

If you love me, you'll keep my commands.

And what we know is that if we keep reading there, well, man, we're gonna really sell ourselves short because he starts to instruct us on the Holy Spirit.

Oh, yeah, by the way, if you love me, you'll keep my commands.

You don't think you're gonna keep my commands?

Well, here's the Holy Spirit.

He'll help you keep my commands.

And here's the reward of our obedience in verse 21.

He says, Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me.

Just basically repeating it in the same in different words.

Now get this.

And he who loves me, shows himself to love me through obedience, will be loved by my Father.

There's probably no greater reward in Scripture than to just be accepted and loved and pursued by the King and Creator of the universe.

But that's not all.

He says, Oh yeah, and by the way, I will love him.

I will love you, and I will manifest myself to you.

That word manifests, it gets confusing to me, and so I have to go look things like that up because I'm like, okay, that's a fuzzy word.

I don't know what you're talking about.

English speakers, let me go back to the Greek.

The Greek word lily means to say, to do this, to lay open, to make clear.

Are you not sure who Jesus was?

Have you lost focus, maybe a little bit about who he is, even after walking for decades?

Jesus says, hey, abide in me, come close to me, follow me, be obedient to me, and I will make myself clear to you.

The word picture here is to fillet a fish.

To fillet a fish open.

If anybody's ever been fishing, you fillet a fish, hopefully, if you caught something worth eating.

Cut it right behind the gill, or right behind the gill, yeah, and then you just fillet it open, right?

And what happens is that you have this nice fillet of fish, but the reality is if you look at the fish, it's at the center of the fish, and now of a sudden you see everything that was in that fish.

It's the same thing that Jesus is saying to his disciples, that would be you and me.

If you love me, you'll obey me.

If you obey me, I will reveal myself to you, I will fillet myself open to you, and you'll know the inner parts of who Christ really is.

And it comes through an active obedience that starts in faith.

What a great promise.

What a great picture that Jesus just gave to his disciples.

Have you looked around at this church lately?

Looked around?

We're growing like a weed.

Uh the children's ministry building.

We don't just build a building because we want to, build a building because we need it.

They're all jam-packed back there.

Matter of fact, we had to make room for them upstairs.

One of the age groups today.

Have you looked around what's going on in this service?

You can see it's pretty full.

8 30, it's pretty full, getting fuller.

11:30 getting fuller.

We're growing pretty rapidly.

Let me just say this about all that.

God didn't intend for us to just keep filling up this room.

You know that, right?

Like just, oh, well, we have three services.

Well, now we'll do four, and now we'll do five.

That's not the purpose of all this growth.

It's not just to fill the seats in here.

Instead, it's to encourage you, it's to equip you.

Hopefully, now all of a sudden you can leave big settings like this, maybe go to smaller ones, get even more equipped and encouraged to go and make an impact on this life and in this life and on this planet, serving one another, taking the witness of Jesus to home, to work, to our extended families, wherever it may be, to the bars, to the oil field, to the playground, to your play date, wherever it is.

That's the whole point of you coming today.

It's not just to check this off on any checklist that we have, but to be encouraged, equipped, to be able to go take the witness you have of Christ to your friends and neighbors.

That's the entire purpose of why you're here and what God's calling you towards.

So the question becomes at the end of all this, what is God calling you to be obedient towards?

If faith leads to obedience, then obedience has this beautiful promise at the end of it, not going to happen every time, but eventually over a lifetime of being obedient, God will just lay himself open to us.

If all that's true, then we should probably start to pursue Christ in this area.

So what area, what person, what ministry are you supposed to jump towards?

Not baby step towards, I'm talking sprint towards.

Where is it?

There's something out there, and here's how you know what it is if you just want to pass a discernment test.

This is in my life, my own experience, not always true, but this is just for me.

When I know, it just all my no's run out, and I'm and God's still saying, hey, yeah, hey, and then this, hey, hey, yeah, yep, mm-hmm, yep, still going.

Okay, all right, I'm going.

When it feels like it's impossible, and yet God reminds you of just beautiful, beautiful promises in the Bible, it's time to go.

It's time to be obedient to whatever that looks like.

No matter the inconvenience, no matter what our schedule's like, maybe we need to drop a soccer practice or whatever, whatever it may be, it might be time to start pursuing the thing so that everything else just kind of falls into place in its proper place.

Faith leads to obedience.

Finally, the last thing that Paul summarizes the entire book of Romans with, not just that he's able to strengthen us, not just that God wants us to be, live a faithful and obedient life, uh, but also all of this is for the glory of God in all nations.

That's what it says at the end of verse 20, uh in the middle of verse 26, going into 27.

It says, verse 26, but uh all this has now been disclosed, and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations.

Go down to 27.

Now all this is going to happen to the only wise God.

Be glory forevermore through Christ Jesus.

Amen.

Now we've heard this before, right?

We've heard that God wants to get glory in all nations, and as he does so, he wants to use us in order to do it, and yet somehow we remain unmoved by God's word in this.

The nations are literally coming to Fort Bend County.

And they're also literally coming to your church.

The nations are here.

We don't even have to go anywhere to be a global missionary.

They're here.

They're in Sugarland Town Center, they're over at La Senterra.

They're, I mean, just go put yourself in a public place.

You will find the nations.

But yet, what is our response?

What is my response first and foremost?

Somehow we see these things and we become unmoved and unmotivated by what God really does want to accomplish in our life.

Because somehow it's become in vogue and popular to not share your faith.

Have you noticed this trend?

That we've got this personal Jesus, but no public Jesus.

And we do so in the name of tolerance, we do so in the name of acceptance, and we do none of it in the name of Christ.

And here's what I mean by that.

I don't, I'm gonna pick a fight with some of y'all in here, and don't come and see me afterwards.

You're not gonna change my mind.

Friday night on the tonight show.

Anybody know who the guest was?

You've slept since then.

Me too.

I wrote it down.

Bill O'Reilly.

See, I told you I was gonna pick a fight.

Bill O'Reilly was on, right?

And Jimmy Fallon, they're talking about church.

I don't know if you know this about Bill O'Reilly, but he's written several books.

One of them called The Killing of Jesus.

The other one is like a children's book that he had up there and he was uh promoting.

And Jimmy Fallon uh just said, Hey, are you pretty are you a religious person?

And Bill, yeah, O'Reilly.

I almost said Bill O'Brien, that's the different guy in the Texans.

Bill O'Reilly says, Well, yeah, he goes, I'm a religious person, but here's why.

I have to go to church every week, or else I'll get behind on atoning for my sins.

Now that's probably a joke.

I pray it's a joke.

But let me just say this before I get to my point.

But if we're coming to church to atone for our sins, we're behind.

You're behind.

I'm behind.

We're in the red in a major, major way.

When Jesus came on the scene, he's like, cool, you've been obedient to all those commands.

How about your heart?

Okay, never mind Jesus, I hate you.

Bye.

He ups the ante on sin to magnify his payment.

And so if we think we're paying for sins, we will spend all of eternity paying for our sins.

Or we trust someone else to have already paid for our sin and it's done.

So that's my little note to Bill O'Reilly.

I know he listens to our podcast, so there you go.

But that's not the point, right?

Instead, it's uh he said he came on to, he kept going and he said, I go to church, but I'm not a proselytizer or anything like that.

You know what he's saying?

I don't impose my faith on people.

I don't really expect other people to believe what I believe.

Can I just say this as the church of Grand Parkway?

If you and I are become people that don't want other people to believe what we believe, then we don't believe in much.

We don't.

I mean, if we don't put a little bit of risk in this thing, then we're not, we don't believe it.

We just don't.

We say it, we sing about it, we profess it, we confess it, but it's not a part of our life.

It's not a part of our heart.

We've got to become people that move beyond somehow this in vogue trend to not push, quote unquote, Christianity.

That's exactly what God intended us for us to do.

He said we want to wants us to be on mission.

I mean, could you imagine Jesus being here for 30 plus years and just being like, I don't really feel like it.

We're good.

I know there's a demoniac, and I'm probably supposed to talk to him.

I'm gonna stay in the boat, guys.

You guys go on ahead.

I'll catch up with you.

Could you imagine?

The Bible wouldn't be the Bible anymore.

All of a sudden, it'd just be blank pages of boredom.

But instead, Jesus lived on mission, went to the demoniac, the people that they literally put him in the graves to go live, shackled in chains, and Jesus goes and finds him.

Hey! Changes his life.

The guy comes to a sound mind and says, Hey, Jesus, I want to follow you.

And Jesus says, Nah, you need to go back to your friends.

Go tell them what happened.

It's the whole point.

We have these encounters with Jesus.

Get encouraged, equipped, go witness to the world.

It's the whole entire point.

We've known all along that it's been God's plan.

We've heard that before from this pulpit, Genesis 17, for Abraham.

It said, God said this to Abraham when he made his covenant with him.

Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of multitude of nations.

No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be called Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations, and I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you.

I think God wanted Abraham to be the father of nations.

It only says it about four or five times in two or three verses.

And guess what happens at the end of all this?

When God comes back and he sets things right, he says, Oh, by the way, there's going to be a table.

You guys heard about this table?

This wedding feast of God, there's going to be a table.

Jesus said it to the centurion, the Roman centurion in Matthew 8.

He says, Oh, man, I've never seen a faith like this guy's faith in all of Israel.

And then he says this, oh, by the way, I tell you, many will come from east to west, recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.

This reclining at table.

This is what's going to happen at the end of all this when God gets glory for all nations, and we'll sit down with the people we don't prefer to be with now.

And what will be our story?

What will we say to them?

Will we have stories?

Will we have stories where we risked some things for the glory of God?

Relationally, socially, awkwardly?

Will we have stories where we kind of put ourselves out there and God filled the gap for us, all thank you, Lord, and then started to move and do some amazing things?

Or we're going to sit at that table, because at my table, at the end of the day, I'm going to ask my daughters, how was your day at school today?

How was your day at school today?

Tell me some stories of the things that you experienced today.

At the end of the day, the day.

We're going to sit around this table, we're going to be feasting.

Oh man, it's going to be beautiful, right?

Nations, tongues, tribes, you, me, my wife, blah, blah, blah.

Everybody, right?

We're going to be hanging out, everybody that believes.

Everybody's going to be hanging out, and we're going to be sharing stories.

Will you have them?

Will you have these stories?

Will you be able to just tell these stories?

And if so, how many?

Are you going to be the first one to run out?

Because we didn't risk it.

Because we weren't faithfully obedient.

We just kind of kept it right here, right at home.

We're good.

You know what happens when you go out in public.

All of a sudden, hopefully, you're learning and listening to the Spirit, and you're kind of asking him, is there anybody here that needs to hear anything or do anything?

Or do I need to help anybody?

Do we do that?

Or do you and I live a life that has risked our popularity, our salary, our security, our friendships, our statuses at work, our promotions, our raise, my family.

Oh, here's the one that's gonna hurt.

Am I able, am I willing to risk the health and safety of my kids for the glory of God?

Or will you and I simply just kind of, I wish I'd have been more brave and bold.

I don't really have any telling any stories of Jesus.

I can tell you stories of what I did my whole life.

I never put myself in a position where Jesus kind of had to fill the gap.

What will be our story at the end of all of this?

Because sometimes we just get to the point where we say, I don't know if I can do that.

I don't know if I have room for that.

I don't know if I have time for that.

And Jesus keeps whispering to all of us and maybe just kicking us a little bit in the pants, hey, trust me, I'm wiser than you.

That's why it says at the end, to the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Are you and I on mission to a point where we're ready to?

Give God glory to our neighbors.

Because I can tell you this right now.

I had a little wrestling match with the Spirit in my neighbor's backyard this week.

It was just a time of bridging the gap.

You've heard me talk about it before.

I got a neighbor who gets on my last nerve.

Not that you have a neighbor like that.

Apparently I'm the neighbor for many people with my singing.

But this this neighbor of mine has uh chihuahuas, and we've we've talked about these chihuahuas before, at least I have.

And so uh they've got these chihuahuas that bark, and then um they got these banana trees that like fill my backyard up like a jungle.

Are you kidding me?

They come up underneath the fence.

I gotta put kerosene in these things to kill them.

Uh and so I, being the gentle, loving person that I am, Al Williams, I know that's hard for you to believe.

Uh I went, uh, just peeked my head over the um the fence one day, and I said, Hey, um, if you need me to help with your banana trees, you let me know and I'll come over and help you.

And she doesn't speak English, and so her daughters were there translating.

They said, Okay, well, we'll let you know.

I said, Or we can get your lazy son out of the house and I can teach him how to cut down a banana tree that way.

And I, not good, right?

One of these days the Lord's gonna really tame my tongue.

I mean, really.

Maybe you'll have to cut it out, I don't know.

But she translated that too, and I was like, oh.

Awesome! Hey, I'm a pastor.

Cool.

So I'm bridging this gap, and so she says no, she doesn't want my help, and so then all of a sudden, um, all her about half of her banana trees appear at the front yard about a week later.

And I know what I know what she did.

She did it herself.

And so I went back there after I mowed the yard and sang, apparently to the glory of God, but not to my neighbors.

Uh, and went back out there and I was cutting down these banana trees, and I was just like, all right, well, I got like two or three of these more left, man, we're done.

We're just, you know, do this.

And then all of a sudden I heard this hey, look around.

No, I don't want to look around.

Look around.

Okay, alright.

See, before I was doing the banana tree for me, to which I shared this story on Wednesday night, and one of your parishioners, your fellow brethren, said to me, You weren't doing that for you, for God, you were doing that for you.

Yes, thank you for pointing that out in public.

I appreciate the subtlety.

Beautiful.

But God just reminded me, hey, why don't you look around?

Okay.

There's a wrestling match that goes on when I'm just trying to bridge a gap to the nations.

She's not from here.

And oh, by the way, here's the inconvenient little detail that I'm conveniently let just missing and not letting you in on.

She's a widow.

Now I can justify why I haven't helped or why I didn't do this, that, and the other.

She didn't do this, and she hasn't done this, and she got a son over there.

Why don't he get his lazy butt out there and blah, blah, blah.

And she got those dogs over there, they're driving me crazy.

And oh, by the way, those little planes, they kind of give me a little shade.

Maybe I won't go over there.

Blah, blah, blah.

The reality is, God will continue to push and pursue and cause us to be obedient one way or another.

And all I'm saying is this just risk a little bit for the glory of God.

Just pay attention to the little things that God puts in front of you and I along our way.

We're not going to go out of our way all the time to just go and do mission.

What I'm saying is, along our way.

Read the New Testament.

Jesus just finds people on the way, in the marketplace, at the temple, this way, that way.

God puts those people in your path for a reason.

It is not to go, hey, nice shirt.

Maybe it is, but probably not.

Maybe there's something more meaningful in all of this.

And so God is just calling us just to be faithful just to the little things that He puts in front of us for His glory.

I'm not saying risk everything, go blow it all in the stock market because that's what Jesus told me to do.

Probably not.

I'm just saying be faithful with the little things that God's putting in your skin in your path.

For God's glory in all nations.

You have no idea how we can change a life if we're just faithful.

Would you stand with me to your feet and hold your hands out like this?

And speak a word of blessing over you.

Now to him who's able to strengthen you because you believe.

And because you believe, you follow.

Go now and live to him.

In your marriages, as a parent, as co workers, wherever it is that God leads you this week, go now and do it unto him.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.