ROMANS: Faith, Gifts and the Gospel

This podcast is the Ministry of Grand Parkway Baptist Church.

For more information on our church, please visit Grandparkway.org.

Well, good morning.

Glad you guys are here.

As you guys are getting seated, uh, we will continue on in our uh our series on the book of Romans.

We are uh only in our second week, so if you're new to our church, welcome.

You've you've jumped in right at the right time.

Uh we're still in Romans chapter one, and we'll pick up, actually in verse eight of Romans chapter one.

If you don't have your Bible with you, uh there's one on the end of your row.

Ask your neighbor to pass it down, and we are going to be on page 939 of that particular Bible.

Uh, and I just want to jump right into the text this morning, excuse me, uh, because we're just in our second week.

And that if you remember last week where we left off, uh Paul is a man of great strategy, and he is writing from Corinth in kind of the mid to late 50s, not in his age, but in the years uh of time, in the mid to late fifties, and he's writing from Corinth and he's writing to a church in Rome, and and we find out in Romans about 15 uh that he is going to use Rome as kind of his jumping off point to get to Spain.

Uh, and so he's very strategic in how he thinks.

He is a missionary, he's a church planner, uh, he's a saint more than anything else.

And so he is just like you and me, and that we've been purchased by a good and faithful God.

Uh the thing is that he's got a beautiful calling, he has an understanding of that calling, and he is going to be set out purposed to reach the world for Jesus.

And purpose to reach the world with Jesus' gospel.

And so we pick up in our second week of Romans, right where we left off, if you remember, uh we talked about the lens of Romans last week, and that lens of Romans really is in verse 7.

And I'll just read verse 7 quite quickly.

To all those in Rome who are two things loved by God and called to be saints.

That's it.

That's the lens through which we should see Romans, that if we don't see that, that these are the people that are believers and they are called to be saints, and they are loved by a good and gracious God that would include you and me, we may miss a lot of what the point of the book of Romans is.

And so we pick up where we left off by reading verses 8 to 15.

And as we do so, we'll understand that Paul really sees these three beautiful characteristics of the people in Rome that they are a people of faith, gifts, and the gospel.

And that's today's subject or today's uh sermon titled Faith, Gifts, and the Gospel.

These are three things that Paul understands as absolute paramount.

And so let's read verses 8 to 15 as we dig in to God's word together.

Paul says this to the people and the believers in the church of Rome.

First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed in all the world.

For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his son, that without ceasing I mention you always in my prayers, asking that somehow by God's will I may now at least succeed in coming to you.

For 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 want you to know, brothers, that I have often intended to come to you, but thus far I have been prevented, in order that I may reap some harvest among you, as well as among the rest of the Gentiles.

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

We read that and we could probably glean fifteen points from it, but thank God there's three today.

Uh and so as we look at that, let's just put our minds' affection on these three points as we uh just just read God's Word, observe what it says, and then just try and figure out how it applies to our lives.

Uh the first one is this uh faith is powerful.

Faith is powerful.

When we read that, we kind of maybe even come and sing songs like Jesus Paid It All, and it just becomes like a laundry list and a grocery list of things to do or things that have been done, and we read, faith is powerful.

We might go, okay, yeah, I get it.

That's cool.

Uh, but what does it mean and how does it really work itself out?

There are three ways in this little point here that Paul just says, hey, this faith is unbelievably powerful.

It has supernatural power associated with the faith that God has given you and the faith that God has given me.

And it doesn't matter in what measure, it just matters that it exists.

Paul says this in verses 8 to 10.

Let me just read those again.

This is the reason why faith is so powerful.

First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed in all the world.

God is my witness, to whom I serve with my spirit and the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I mention you always in my prayers, asking that somehow, by God's will, I may now at least succeed in coming to you.

The first way that faith is powerful is that it fuels thankfulness.

Faith fuels thankfulness.

God gets a whole lot of praise and a whole lot of thanks because Christians have faith, plain and simple.

That's it.

It doesn't matter what we do with it to that point, it just means that if you have faith in Christ Jesus, the Father is getting unbelievable amounts of thanks and praise.

Faith fuels thanksgiving.

It fuels thankfulness.

And here's why I know this because the Bible says it, but also here's the reality.

Paul has never really probably never met most of the guys and the girls in the church of Rome.

He's never met them.

Instead, he just writes in a city called Corinth and he looks out at Rome, yes, with strategy, but also with a beautiful heart that we'll read here in the next couple of verses.

But he reads this and he writes this to them.

He's never met most of them.

And Rome is a church, uh, it's pretty rare.

We don't really, can't really associate with it today because we all woke up today and we just thought, you know what?

I think I'm gonna go to church today.

And it was really no big decision.

It was it's Sunday, we're gonna go to church.

My daughter asked me last night, are you gonna be here tomorrow?

I said, no, tomorrow's church day.

She goes, Okay, that's cool.

It's church day, I'll see you after.

See you after.

It's a routine, it's set up in our lives, no big deal.

But for the church and the Christians in Rome, it was a huge deal.

Every day they went to church, their life was on the line.

Why do I say that?

Just to give us a good picture of what the church in Rome was truly like.

If we know anything about Roman culture, and this book was written right about, I don't know, maybe five to ten years before the great persecution broke out against Christians.

And this church, and one of the things that captured my imagination about this text is that somebody, it wasn't Paul, and we don't know, they're not, they're not mentioned in the scriptures, we don't know their name.

Somebody planted a church right underneath the nose of Caesar.

And that is a huge deal.

Why?

Because Caesar was going around commanding and obligating people to call him Lord.

And so when the gospel comes around and Jesus starts to proclaim, and his followers start to proclaim that Jesus is Lord, he alone is Lord, he is God.

All of a sudden, what will be used against them later and will be used against Paul to kill him and Peter to kill him and many other Christians to kill them is that they claim Jesus Christ is Lord, and not Caesar.

So somebody has the moxie and the guts to go right into the belly of the beast and plant a church.

Now that that is reason for unbelievable thankfulness to God.

We partner with people all over the world, uh perhaps in India, that every day they go to work, every day they go do what they're gonna go do, and their life is on the line.

It's not a question of if they're gonna go, they're gonna go.

It's a question of if they're gonna come back.

And so for all of us, I think it it begs the question: there's a lot of things that kind of keep us from coming to church, whether it be the weather or whether it be who's playing football, uh, but for them, it didn't matter.

And let me just, we always say this here, but be where you need to be.

If you got a beach house, go do that.

But let me just also add the caveat, but not to your own spiritual peril.

And not to, and here's the great part that the text will begin to kind of flesh out for us, not to our spiritual peril either.

Not just you and your Bible, but what does the community of God have to get from your presence here?

And so we'll talk about that here in a little bit.

But the Roman church is planted in the belly of the beast, and the primary thing that God wants to tell them and Paul wants to tell them is, I have so much thankfulness in me for you.

And God is getting so much praise for you.

What a great encouragement! Could you imagine yourself being in Rome, going to church, as Mark said earlier, sneaking in, because those liberties aren't there.

Sneaking into whatever house church you're going kind of going, and they're not letting you in unless you know the secret passcode, and you finally get in and you worship, and all of a sudden someone says, I have a letter.

And it's from Paul.

The man that you've always dreamed of meeting, the man that you surely he you've heard about, but he doesn't know you exist.

And he starts to write this, and he says, the first and most important and primary thing that I want you to know is that I'm thankful for you.

What great, unbelievable encouragement.

Your life is on the line, and God is getting thanks because of me.

Begs the question whose whose faith are you thankful for?

And have you given God thanks for it recently?

Whose faith is it that you're thankful for?

Is it maybe you've read a biography and you're like, wow, that guy, that gal did amazing things.

I'm thankful, God.

Thank you for just setting the world on fire by them.

And then having somebody write about it, and I pick it up centuries later.

Or maybe it's someone that shared the gospel with you.

Whose faith are you thankful for?

The second way and the second reason, manner in which faith is powerful is that it can catch the world on fire.

Verse 8b really, it says this, because your faith is proclaimed in all the world, faith in the belly of the beast.

But really, for us, in any measure, can catch the world on fire.

Back in Roman times and when Paul wrote this, uh, as you all know, there was no internet, right?

No Facebook, no Twitter.

These are all things that kind of put everything and all the information we want at our fingertips, at our phone.

I mean, I was watching the AM game on my phone last night and then beamed it to my TV.

Are you kidding me?

God is amazing.

I was sitting there going to my wife, look at this.

Are you kidding me?

Look at this, it's on my phone.

I just, I'm going to bed and I'm watching the AM game on my phone.

Got passion there.

But there's no internet, there's no Facebook, there's no Twitter, Twitter, whatever that is.

Apparently I can't say it.

There's no email.

Remember when fax used to be fast?

There's no fax.

There's no Morse, no Morse code, no phones, no, no little cups with a string on it, none of that.

Just a lot of roads.

And a lot of donkeys.

A lot of people willing to sweat it out for the faith.

And walk along these roads and tell the people that they encounter in the marketplace, in the fields, about this church in Rome that's bursting at the seams in the belly of the beast.

Faith can catch the world on fire.

Finally, the reason why faith is so powerful.

Faith is attractional.

Faith is attractional.

It's the reason why Paul writes in verse 9 and 10, hey, I can't wait to come see you.

As a matter of fact, God is my witness.

Now that's a phrase that he doesn't use very often, but he's saying, hey, I'm so passionate about this.

If if I'm a liar, God strike me down.

God is my witness.

I can't wait to come with you.

I can't wait to be with you.

Their faith attracts what we call a super saint.

Could you imagine?

What kind of people are in Rome that are stirring up in Paul this unceasing desire for him to just go be with them?

Not just to use Rome as the jumping off point, although that's true.

But while he's there, he can't just wait just to be there.

What kind of people are in Rome?

If you think they were super saints, you were probably wrong.

In fact, most of them were most likely new believers or newer believers.

What I mean by that is five, seven years old in the Lord?

Maybe less than that.

I mean, the world is catching on fire in Rome.

And new believers are coming into the church in droves.

You'd probably be wrong if you think they're super saints.

In fact, there's no indication that these Christians were really of any strong faith at all.

Instead, they just had, say, the size of a mustard seed.

There's no indication that they were these super saints.

Instead, Paul is eager because Paul is eager to preach the gospel to them.

He's eager to preach the gospel.

And then he goes on to explain in this great book of Romans in 16 chapters the basics of our faith.

Which continues to indicate to us that these guys and girls in Rome were probably not all that old in the Lord.

They weren't super saints, but they did understand the reality of faith and the power that comes with it.

Faith is attractional.

I mentioned that.

I was at Starbucks maybe three, four, or five weeks ago, and me and a friend of mine were kind of cornered up in Starbucks, and we had our backs to the rest of Starbucks, and we're kind of sitting there and we're talking about life, we're talking about faith, we're talking about sin, we're talking about decisions, we're talking about honoring God with all of our decisions, and we're in the middle of it, right?

And we're just talking, and I'm not talking very loud.

I mean, he's not talking very loud.

Uh we're not going, and Jesus, let everyone know here, Jesus is the Lord.

No, none of that.

Instead, we are we're simply having a conversation.

And we're living out life and this faith the best we know how.

And he is and I him, and we're talking about all these decisions, and kind of the point comes where we go, you know, there's about four decisions ahead of you.

Three of them don't honor God, one of them does.

And before my friend can answer, uh, somebody comes up from behind us and says, Hey, where do y'all go to church?

Where do y'all go to church?

Because I don't know what just whatever y'all are talking about.

I've been out of church for a long, long time.

But wherever you're going, I want to, I want to just at least go try, and I I wanna I want to go try that out.

Faith is attractional, whether we realize it or not, who's watching and who's listening, because there wasn't a time that went by in that entire conversation that I thought, well, I better be careful about what I say here.

And there was not an ever, there's neither a time where I was like, I'm gonna say this a little bit louder so my neighbors can hear it.

Instead, it was just talking, and he was just talking, and all of a sudden somebody approaches and said, Hey, wherever y'all are going to church, I've been missing that.

I just I want to go experience whatever that is.

As far as I know, they've been coming to church here uh for the last two, three, four weeks, which has been great, praise God for that.

Uh, but faith is attractional.

You never know who's listening, you never know who's watching.

And how you conduct your life, how I conduct my life, maybe the very thing that calls this deep desire for God out from someone, out below life's burdens, and brings it to the surface where all they can do is go across Starbucks, which no one does, and go, hey, ah, whatever, I just I need to go and experience that.

I've I've been in church, I haven't been in church for years, haven't found a decent church anywhere around here.

Can I just come and experience that?

Yeah.

Why not?

Faith is attractional, and there is unbelievable power in that.

The second point that the text makes for us today.

It's not even 10 o'clock, we're on our second point.

Come on.

I'm just saying.

Yeah.

Uh yeah.

Uh the second point today is that gifts are fruitful.

Gifts are fruitful.

They are strong, they are encouraging, but more than all of that, they are fruitful.

And so uh verse 11, and I'll read through 13 on this.

Uh Paul says this for 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 want you to know, brothers, that I have often intended to come to you, but thus far have been prevented in order that I may reap some harvest among you as well as among the rest of the Gentiles.

Paul is writing to the church in Rome, and he says, I can't wait to reap a harvest.

Whatever fruit that is, I can't wait to go out into the fields and reap the harvest of fruit.

What in the world is he talking about?

He gives us great clues in verse 11 and 12.

He says, I can't wait to come see you.

I long to see you.

I anticipate seeing you.

It's been years since I first thought about going to Rome, and now I can't wait to go.

Why?

That I may impart to you some spiritual gift.

How countercultural is that?

I mean, truly, we don't show up places and go, I can't wait to impart my spiritual gift to you.

You're not going to Starbucks to do that.

You're not going to like a baby shower.

I can't wait to impart my spiritual gifts to you.

You're not going on vacation and meet with friends and go, oh man, I'm going to give you my spiritual gift.

More than likely, we're going, I can't wait to be encouraged.

I can't wait to consume.

I can't wait to dump all my problems on that other person.

They have such a good listening ear.

So counter-cultural is Paul.

And the reality is this, we don't really know what spiritual gift he's talking about.

There's not one that's mentioned.

I think that's for our mystery, but also to kind of get our imagination going.

But the reality is this, everybody, I believe everybody in the Bible would teach this, and we'll get into this in Romans 12, but everybody's got spiritual gifts.

If you call upon the name of Jesus for salvation as your Lord and your God, you have a spiritual gift.

Or perhaps a spiritual gift set.

And so you may have three or four that you kind of got in your tool bag that every once in a while, depending on the situation, you just pull out and start using.

And Paul goes to Rome and he says, I can't wait to use the spiritual gift to strengthen you, to encourage you.

Who does that?

Unbelievably counter-cultural, but it got me thinking.

Uh my wife and I went to a uh a birthday party not too long ago of a little one-year-old.

And uh it was across town, and we were on our way, and I just kept thinking to myself, how long is this gonna last?

How long do we have to do this for?

Uh what uh how can I get out of this?

Ellie, will you be my victim today and I will pinch you?

Uh you you get over things a little bit faster.

Uh well how can I do this?

I'm I'm I'm strategizing and I'm scheming on the way.

Uh don't shake your head at me.

You I see your judgment.

Uh and so uh and so we get there, right?

And we're the first ones there.

Yay! Yay! Super.

Uh and so we get there and um and no one else is there, which is fine.

And then you know, Reese and Ellie kind of just destroyed the living room of this little bit smaller house.

And uh and so we're there and it's fine, it's it's great, um, super.

And then um everybody starts to show up, and it was like super trendy Christian night, apparently.

Uh, and so I just kind of was like, all right, I think I'm done.

I just think I'm done.

And uh I just kind of looked at Melissa and I was like, hey, uh, how long do you think we need to stay to be like, you know, what's the threshold here between being rude and polite?

And can we grab a cupcake on the way out?

Because they're not getting a cake for a long time.

Uh and so um, we did.

We ended up leaving, and it was fine.

We we uh but here's the thing that I kind of left with, and we kind of walked out the door.

We were like, whoo, man, all right, well, let's take the 40-minute drive home.

Uh, but here's what I thought of when when preparing for this I thought, what would that have looked like if I went into that situation eager to impart them with my spiritual gift?

Seriously.

What would that have looked like?

What would that party have been like if I wasn't just sitting around babysitting, waiting for them to get cranky, and instead encouraging them?

Hey, how's it been being a new mom?

Or what's it like being a new dad and you've been in ministry and you've been doing X, Y, and Z?

How are you holding up with all this?

None of that happened.

Instead, the juice was good for my kids, the cupcakes were good on the way out.

What would it have looked like if I had the heart of Paul?

I'm just eager to go.

And what would it look like for you if you couldn't wait to impart your spiritual gift in whatever social setting you said yes to?

And that includes, by the way, church.

What would it look like if you woke up on a Sunday morning but prepared for this?

Maybe Wednesday, Thursday, and thought, I'm gonna give my spiritual gift to that place this week.

And instead, I think we come and we go, I can't wait to understand or get something out of this this week.

Oh, it's gonna be the fuel for me for the rest of the week.

How counter and opposite has God intended it for us, for us to be able to give.

That's what worship is.

It's a response to God's goodness, and we come and we make our offerings before the Lord.

So it kind of just begs the question.

And really, there's and don't sell yourself short before I get to my question.

If you're a believer and you've got the faith of the size of a mustard seed, these people in Rome are barely believers.

And Paul is saying, I can't wait to be mutually encouraged by you.

Which kind of gets to the two really big reasons why spiritual gifts are so important.

Let me read Ephesians 4, 11 through 14.

You don't have to turn there.

You can maybe market it on your bulletin.

But Ephesians 4, 11 through 14, these great purposes of spiritual gifts that maybe can shape our mind and our heart, because I think sometimes we may go, man, I'm just not feeling weak.

I'm feeling weak.

I'm not feeling strong, and I'm definitely not feeling encouraged.

What do I have to give?

And Paul would tell us that maybe the very way that you get strength is by giving it.

That may be the very way that you get encouragement is by giving it.

Mutual encouragement, mutual strength.

Verse 11 of Ephesians 4 says this about spiritual gifts.

He says, and he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry.

To equip the who?

The saints.

As we learned last week, that would be you and me.

Not the super saints, not the people that are called to ministry.

It's to equip the saints for the work of ministry.

Why?

For building up strengthening, for building up the body of Christ.

Let's continue to read.

Verse 13.

Until we attain the unity of faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness, in deceitful schemes.

Could it be that the way that we are all, you and me, are going to be strengthened and built up in the Lord is by you using your spiritual gifts here.

By me using my spiritual gifts here.

Which kind of begs the question, I finally get to it.

Do you know what your spiritual gifts are?

You do have one, or two, or five.

There's a gift set that you can pull from that the Holy Spirit has uniquely given to you like he will not give to anyone else.

That's the beauty of personality, that's the beauty of our backgrounds, that's the beauty of our talents, our passions.

They all come together uniquely in whoever you are, and then God gives you a spiritual gift on top of that to use for the equipping of the saints.

Do you know what your spiritual gifts are?

We're going to talk about it in Romans 12 because there's a whole litany of things to talk about there.

But if you don't know your spiritual gifts, you hopefully got a bulletin today.

If you didn't, ask your neighbor for theirs.

On the bottom of it, there's a tear-off strip.

If you don't know your spiritual gifts, we want to help you.

Would you fill it out?

And then just write on the lines there, spiritual gift.

Tear it off, put it in the offering box as you leave today, and we'll get back with you in the next couple of weeks because we're about to teach a class on spiritual gifts, part of the next step class for our new members.

You can jump right in.

It's no big deal at all.

In the next couple of weeks.

Get you plugged in.

You'll learn how you're created uniquely, then be able to go and use that for the strengthening and the mutual encouragement of the saints, much like Paul was so eager to do.

Spiritual gifts certainly are the fuel for strength and encouragement.

All that is fueled by our ongoing necessity for the gospel.

The good news.

And so it brings us to our third point, really, and that's this.

We are obligated by the gospel for the gospel.

You say that again.

We are obligated by the gospel for the gospel.

That sounds redundantly redundant, but it is not.

And so let me read Romans 1, 14 and 15 and help us understand why that is not redundant.

It is just simply the truth.

We are obligated by the gospel for the gospel.

Romans 1, 14.

I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish.

So I'm eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome.

Now Paul starts to use some language here that kind of loses us some many, many years later.

This Greek and this barbarian.

The reality is this, he's writing uh from Corinth, which is in Greece, and the Greeks would have considered themselves as kind of the only true people, and so they are the Greek.

And anybody else is the barbarian.

And so that is what Paul is saying.

I'm called not just to the Greek, but I'm called to all sorts of people.

The wise, kind of the source of all thought was in Greece, and to the foolish, anybody else.

And so that includes you and me.

And so Paul is just basically saying, hey, I am obligated, I am indebted to everyone.

Why?

For the sake of the gospel.

Greeks, barbarians, fools, wise, every kind of person.

And in him there's this eagerness to pursue them with the gospel.

And you may say to yourself, well, I've been coming to church for a long time.

I don't, if I had to ask, or somebody asked me what is the gospel, I'm not really sure I'd be able to tell them.

Good news.

I will tell you now.

In one verse, you could just go to Romans 5.8.

While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

And so you could read that verse and you could go, all right, what's the worst sin I've ever committed in my life as I judge it?

What's the worst sin I've ever thought of or I could ever commit in my life?

And then you can just go, all right, while I was committing that sin, Christ died for me.

You could just go Romans 5.8.

That's a beautiful passage.

We'll talk about it in our series in Romans.

You could also go to Colossians 1.

I've actually preached here before, and I also preached down at the border before.

But Colossians 1, and I'm going to read it in the NIV because it kind of brings out a little bit more than the ESV.

But once, here's what Paul says about the gospel.

He says, this is the gospel.

This is it.

Plain and simple.

NIV, Colossians 1, 21 to 23.

Beautiful.

Mark that down because I'm going to ask you to do something with it here in a minute.

But this is the gospel.

Once you were alienated from God, separated.

And you were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.

Now, if we don't understand that as the gospel, that there's no such thing in the Bible.

There may be such a thing in your experience, but not in the Bible of just someone who's not that bad.

Apart from Christ, we are his enemies.

We are separated, alienated.

Why?

Because we're evil.

So so much for the theory of, well, I'm just not that bad.

Because the Bible clearly says we are.

And when I preached this passage down in the border, I asked them who their greatest enemy was.

And they said, the Zaytas.

The Zaytas are a drug cartel down at the border.

And I said, Well, you're a Zaeta to God.

And they didn't like that.

And so I'll test the waters here and I'll say, You're Al-Qaeda to God.

You're his enemy.

Sworn enemy of God without Jesus coming to rescue us.

I say that not to charge us politically because that's not the point.

It's to charge us to understand who we are and the depth of our depravity because we never understand that, then we'll never appreciate verse 22.

But now He has reconciled you.

He's brought you near, He's pursued you, He's left the majesties of heaven to come and get you and rescue you from your alienation and from your evil behavior.

To bring you near.

Can you imagine a God that does that?

He's reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy, perfect, in his sight, without blemish, and free from accusation.

No one can accuse you.

That's the truth.

You may hear things otherwise, you may seem things otherwise or sense things otherwise, but the truth of the gospel is that no one can come against you.

Continues.

If you continue in your faith, the language there is really assumptive.

It's since I know you're going to continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel.

It's the foundation of which all that other stuff makes sense.

And he says, this is the gospel that you heard and that has been preached to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.

In Colossians 1, he says, I, Paul, have become a servant.

In Romans 1, he says, I am obligated.

I'm indebted to this.

To whose gospel are you indebted?

To whose gospel are you a servant?

Is it your own?

Perhaps it's your own gospel.

There's a self-help method to your gospel, that if I do enough good things, then God surely will honor that and reach down and pluck me.

No?

Or perhaps, and I think this is kind of the wave of an American future, uh I think as modernism or as as rational thought kind of dies down, this whole idea of relativity, uh just relative thought that hey, there's no right, there's no wrong, that could be the future of our country.

And so new age will all of a sudden begin to pop up.

I was on Facebook this week, hard to imagine.

Uh, but one of my friends from high school, actually middle school, I think maybe even elementary school, uh, just put a quote out there from a very famous uh new ager.

And I can't stand him.

And uh and so I've read a little bit about him, and and I just I couldn't hold it in anymore.

And so I just uh she was like, you know, you know, there's no bad choice, there's no right or wrong.

Instead, the universe isn't mad at you, and I thought, why is the universe so important?

Why does the universe get a say in this whole thing?

It's created for crying out loud, it's an adamant.

I didn't say anything like that, but I really wanted to.

And so I had to, you know, you don't do this on Facebook.

This is like a no-no, but I couldn't help myself.

And so uh so I just entered into it to a theological discussion there on Facebook, uh, which again is a no-no.

Do not do that.

Uh there is risk involved.

Um, but I knew her and I knew people were watching, and I thought, all right, I'm gonna do this, we're gonna we're gonna go for it.

Uh and so I just asked her a bunch of questions and and she just quit.

She just quit on me.

And I just and I wrote on, I wrote back to her.

Lame, you can't quit.

Lamo.

But she's indebted to a gospel that's false.

Who would I be if I didn't try and correct it?

If I saw that as absolutely false and just sat by and thought, well, I don't want to kick the hornet's nest.

When I said, I know I'm kicking the hornet's nest.

But we'll go for it.

She didn't hate me afterwards.

She's like, love you, heart you, but you're ridiculous.

You're not listening to anything, nor do you understand it.

Of course I don't understand it.

It's crazy.

That's the gospel that she's indebted to.

What gospel are you indebted to?

That you were alienated, enemy, enemy, uh alienated, enemy, and evil, and then reconciled.

That's the only gospel that Paul will tell us over and over and over again worth living for, worth dying for, because he did.

And this gospel indebts us, obligates us to all sorts of people.

Not just the ones that we prefer, not just the ones that we feel comfortable with.

Or quite the opposite.

I was uh at Randall's and I was talking to the Starbucks girls there, and uh one of them I just feel drawn to share the gospel with.

Why?

Because she just seems depressed, and she seems down and out.

And when I first met her, I remember going, Hey, how are you today?

Great.

You know this is Starbucks, right?

Like you there's coffee to fix this problem.

Uh, but she she didn't care and she just kind of looked at me like I was foreign, and I just started to engage her.

What's your story?

Tell me about you.

Tell me what are you gonna do with your life?

Is Starbucks the highest goal you got?

And that's fine if it is.

But just tell me about you.

I just started over months, just started talking to her.

She's blossomed.

I mean, just hey, I mean, she sees me in the grocery store.

Hey, hey, Lance, how you doing?

What's up?

How are you?

And then there's the other girls that that that meet there that work there, especially during the summer, and they're in high school and they're kind of more put together, whatever that means.

Uh, but when you ask them how they're doing, great, super, how are you?

I'm like, okay, you don't need Jesus, apparently.

But here's the thing that kind of hit me when I was sitting there, and I never asked this girl about Jesus, I never asked her about her faith, never talked to her, never engaged her, and I thought, why don't I do that?

Because she's got it more together?

Because she doesn't seem like she needs it as much?

What a crock.

We all have a need for the gospel, and my my personal preference is to go to those that are down and out.

When God is saying, hey, how about the girl that thinks she has it together?

She needs the gospel too.

Got it.

My bad.

All kinds of people Greek, barbarian, wise, fool, believer, unbeliever.

So I add to this.

The gospel is not just for non-believers, that you just don't share the gospel with people because you you think they're lost.

That once all of a sudden we become believers, we don't have a need for the gospel anymore.

Quite the contrary.

We all, if we're gonna mature in this life, we need to be reminded over and over and over again of the simple truth of the gospel.

Alienated, evil, enemy, reconciled.

Not because of anything we've done, but because everything that Christ came to rescue.

It's for believers too.

It's rooted in the love of God, which we talked about, and I love that Mark brought the word that he brought to welcome us all in.

There's no height, there's no depth.

From east is to the west is God's love for each one of us.

And so if we're gonna mature in our journey, we cannot ignore the gospel.

Jerry Bridges, who wrote a bunch of books that are great, one, The Pursuit of Holiness, the other one I taught on here a couple of years ago now, called Respectable Sins.

And I think I may have even mentioned this in my previous sermon, but it bears repeating.

Jerry Bridges said in his book called Respectable Sins, and this isn't a quote, it's just kind of a big idea, but he says, we need to preach the gospel to ourselves every day.

Have you preached the gospel to yourself lately?

Because that kind of sounded hokey to me, and then I started to do it and I was like, oh yeah, this is, oh yeah, this is good.

Preach the gospel to ourselves every day and do it in such a way so that it's personal.

It's for me.

That God died for me.

Last week, this past week on Friday was my spiritual birthday, and uh I just always remember where I was at about 10.05 on a Tuesday night.

Uh I was at breakaway in college station, and uh God landed on me.

Can't say you landed on the place because I have no idea what anybody else was doing, because I was sobbing.

Landed on me, broke me, and said, Here's all your sin.

You think you're good, you ain't good.

Here's all your sin, but I don't care.

I want you.

I want you from me.

Okay, I'm gonna cry a little bit, make a fool of myself here in the third row.

It's a personal gospel.

And I just thought, man, on Friday night when I was just thinking about it, I was like, man, where would my life be without your intervention in my life?

Reese, absolutely not.

Melissa, absolutely not.

Ellie, absolutely not.

Whole bunch of jacked up relationships?

Yep.

Nail those no reconciliation, just a bunch of chaos, no purpose.

The gospel is for everyone.

And he's gifted us to give it to each other.

Not just with a gift, but with a faith.

Doesn't matter how big, don't sell yourself short.

Instead, he's just charged us out and said, hey, we're obligated, we're indebted, not to God, but to each other.

And the only way we're gonna even try and start paying this little debt that we have with each other is by working through grace for the people that need grace.

And that's everybody to reach them with the gospel of Christ.

So not only whose gospel are you a servant to, but finally and lastly, who is the gospel indebted you to personally?

Could it be your husband, your wife, your kids, your brother, your brother-in-law, your ex, father-in-law.

Who is the gospel indebted you to?

Who has who's God just said, hey, you know what?

Now that I've done this for you, I want you to go and pursue them.

And don't just use your life.

Use words.

I think we're kind of captured with the preach the gospel and use words if necessary.

They're necessary.

People aren't looking at you and going, oh, I know he's a believer.

I know he's a Christian.

They're not doing that.

They're going, that's a good person.

And it's up to you to go, the only thing that's good in me is Jesus Christ our Lord and his Holy Spirit who lives in me.

We need words.

That's part of living life.

We talk a lot.

I more than some.

Who has the gospel indebted you to?

It's all those that need grace, all those that need the Spirit, all those that need the gospel.

Who's everyone?

Everyone.

So let's stop now and let's think and let's pray.

Let's ask God to reveal Himself in such a way that we can respond in faith, which is powerful, which bears fruit, no matter what we believe, and no matter what we think, and no matter what we feel.

Let's just think about who this has indebted us to and what we should do about it this week.

Because here's a beautiful charge for each one of us.

What if we took this week?

Let's start tomorrow, and we started every day by either reading Romans 5.8 or Colossians 1, 21 to 23.

What if we started each day with the gospel?

And then the lens through which we see the world, our jobs, our kids, our husbands, our wives, our brothers, sisters, the traffic, whatever we see, we see that through the lens of the gospel, that while we were still sinners, while we were alienated, while we were enemies, while we were evil, Christ died for us and reconciled us to himself.

What if that was the lens through which we saw everything?

Just this week.

Just try it one week.

See what happens.

Can you do that?

Some of you are going, yes, and others of you are going, mmm.

That's okay.

That's the beauty of the gospel.

It hits us where we're at.

Sometimes we're ready for it, and sometimes we're not.

But let's pray.

Let's ask God to make us ready no matter what.

So, with that, would you guys hold your hands out like this?

Let me speak a word of blessing over you.

May your redemptive, rescuing God fill you with all hope and all joy.

So that you can live freely out of that today and this week.

Live with joy, live with purpose, and with a faith that can rescue your neighbor.

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

Amen.