Set Apart (Romans 1:1-7)

But open up to Romans.

So it's Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, and then Romans.

And we're gonna be reading chapter one starting in verse one.

Wait until I stop hearing the pages turning.

Let's all stand for the reading of God's word.

It says, Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, who was a descendant of David according to the flesh, and was appointed to be the powerful Son of God, according to the spirit of holiness by the resurrection of the dead.

Through him we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the Gentiles, including you who are also called by Jesus Christ.

To all who are in Rome, loved by God, called as saints, grace to you, and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let's pray.

Father, we thank you so much for this new book that we get to jump into.

Lord, I pray that we would approach it from day one here with open hearts that are softened by you, with open minds and ears and eyes to see all that you have for us.

Lord, I pray that we wouldn't go through this book and come out the other side unchanged.

But we would allow you each week to carve on us and to chip away at us and to mold us into the people that you've created us to be.

Lord, I pray that you would do all of these things and it wouldn't be through our own effort.

Lord, I pray that you would fill each one of us with your Holy Spirit, Lord, to understand your word.

That you would move here this morning through your word.

Lord, it's powerful and it's living.

And I pray that we would see that here today.

God, this is all for your glory and for your honor.

Give us understanding, we pray.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

So let's start off with talking about the book of Romans.

And since this is the first letter that we're going to be teaching through, I want to spend some time talking about the structure of the New Testament.

You know, we have the Old Testament, that's the first part of the Bible, that points to the coming Messiah, who we see is Jesus Christ.

And then we have the New Testament, which starts with Jesus, and it really shows how Jesus fulfills everything that we've seen throughout the Old Testament.

So we have a slide I want to put up that kind of helps us see how the New Testament is broken apart.

So the New Testament is broken into a few different parts.

It starts with the four Gospels, which you can see right up behind me, which are the accounts of Jesus' life on earth.

And then the book of Acts comes next, which is largely a narrative.

It gives us a brief history of the early church.

And then in the middle, we see all of these books that are letters.

And that's where we are right now with the book of Romans.

Romans starts off this section of 21 letters that we see in a row in the New Testament.

The first 13 or 14 of them were written by the Apostle Paul.

And that's, I say 13 or 14 because it depends on if you count Paul as the author of Hebrews or not.

And that's much debated, but you'll see that's why it's in a different color green behind me.

So we have Paul's letters, and like I said, this is the first that we encounter as we go chronologically through here.

Then we see everybody else's letters come after Paul's, and then we see Revelation, which is the prophetic book that is at the end of the New Testament.

And like I mentioned last week, this is a letter written by the Apostle Paul to the church in Rome.

So our first step in studying the book of Romans, in studying this letter, will be first to answer the question: what was the original author's intent to the original reader?

We won't just read it and say, okay, what does this mean to me?

What do I get out of it?

We'll read it and say, what was God's heart for what was being communicated to the original reader?

And then we're going to ask, how can we apply this to our everyday life here today?

And because Paul hadn't been to Rome yet, this letter is a bit different than the other letters that we see him writing in the New Testament.

And the other thing is, Paul didn't know if he would ever make it to Rome or not.

And he didn't know if he was going to be able to get there and actually communicate the things that he wanted to communicate to them.

So we see that Paul's trying to actually get to Rome for a while, but the Holy Spirit isn't allowing that to happen yet.

So Paul may be thinking, I may never get to Rome.

So I should write them everything that I would want them to know if I were able to get there and see them in person, just in case I'm not able to ever get there.

So we end up with really a very long letter that's packed with a lot of really good stuff.

But before we jump in, I want to take a look at the author.

Take a look at the Apostle Paul.

And we learn in Acts that he was once called Saul, if you remember that from what we've been going through in our home groups.

And I think the best thing that we can do to acquaint ourselves with the Apostle Paul is if we read his own testimony that he gives in Acts 22, 6.

We're going to be turning to a lot of different passages as we introduce this book.

So if you want to turn there, you can.

But if you're a note taker, just be ready because I'm going to be referencing a lot of passages.

But if not, I'm just going to read it and you can sit and listen.

You can write down what the verse is and you could check it out at home if you would like to.

But we're going to start off with Acts 22, um, six.

Well, actually, no, we're going to start in verse 1.

Acts 22, 1.

It says, brothers and fathers, this is Paul speaking.

Listen now to my defense before you.

When they heard that he was addressing them in Aramaic, they became even quieter.

He continued, so this is Paul speaking.

Educated at the feet of Gamaliel, according to the strictness of our ancestral law.

I was zealous for God, just as all of you are today.

I persecuted this way, that's what they called Christians, this way to the death, arresting and putting both men and women in jail, as both the high priests and the whole council of elders can testify about me.

After I received letters from them to the brothers, I traveled to Damascus to arrest those who were there and bring them to Jerusalem to be punished.

As I was traveling and approaching Damascus about noon, an intense light from heaven suddenly flashed around me.

I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

I answered, Who are you, Lord?

He said to me, I am Jesus of Nazareth, the one you are persecuting.

Now those who were with me saw the light, but they did not hear the voice of the one who was speaking to me.

I said, What should I do, Lord?

The Lord told me, Get up, go into Damascus, and there you will be told everything that you have been assigned to do.

Since I couldn't see because of the brightness of the light, I was led by the hand of those who were with me, and went into Damascus.

Someone named Ananias, a devout man according to the law, who had a good reputation with all the Jews living there, came and stood by me and said, Brother Saul, regain your sight.

And in that very hour I looked up and I saw him, and he said, The God of our ancestors has appointed you to know his will, to see the righteous one, and to hear the words from his mouth, since you will be a witness for him to all people, of what you have seen and heard.

And now why are you delaying?

Get up and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name.

So this is a man, as we learn from here, raised with the highest standards of education, holding dual citizenship both as a Jew and as a Greek.

He's a student of Gamaliel, a highly respected Jewish theologian.

He was a Pharisee, who was an expert in the law.

And Paul was an opponent of Jesus and the church.

It says right here in the testimony, he was arresting and participating in the execution of those that followed the way, of those that were following Jesus Christ.

And then Jesus shows up with this bright light on the road to Damascus and just puts Paul in his place.

And then we see in Acts 13, we see that the Holy Spirit told the early church to set apart Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.

And they were sent out, Barnabas and Paul were sent out to preach the good news of Jesus.

Good news, gospel.

Those words are interchangeable.

So they were sent out to preach the gospel to the world.

And part of that work that Paul was sent to do is the letter that we're holding in our hand today, the book of Romans.

And we're gonna see the gospel message, the good news of Jesus, clearly laid out in Romans over and over and over again.

Outlining what Jesus did for us, outlining how to accept that gift from Jesus, and how to live a life that's filled with faith and holiness and the righteousness that only Jesus can give us.

Now, Paul wrote this letter somewhere between 53 and 58 AD.

Some people tell you it was the spring of this year, you know, to that, but it's really unclear as to exactly when it was.

But to give you reference, it's about 25-ish years after Jesus ascended back into heaven.

It's about 15 years before Rome invaded Jerusalem and destroyed the temple and everything around it.

And Rome at this time, where this church is that Paul's writing to, was very pagan.

And at this time, they did not look upon Christianity in a good light at all.

In fact, the Christians got blamed for a lot of things that they actually had nothing to do with.

And this letter is interesting in that Paul is writing to a church that he hasn't visited.

He mentions that he wants to visit and he's tried to get there, but it just hasn't worked out yet.

Which actually I'm very glad for that.

Because if Paul had it, uh if he had gone to Rome, we might not be holding this letter in our hands here today, because he wrote it in advance, just not sure if he was going to get there or not.

So we're gonna just jump in now to verse one, and we're gonna kind of be unpacking a little bit more history as we go, but let's just start off with the first half of verse 1 of Romans chapter 1.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

It says, Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle.

So Paul mentions servant of Christ first here.

Some of your translations may actually say bond servant of Jesus Christ.

And the Greek definition is actually a slave.

And it means somebody that gives themselves up completely to the will of another.

And Paul is communicating this complete submission and this devotion to Jesus Christ, and that's like the first thing that he wants them to know.

This is my name, and this is who I serve.

And this is Paul's self-description of who he is.

This is how he starts off his conversation in this letter.

I am a bondservant, I am a servant, I'm a slave of Jesus Christ.

He gets that in first before he goes on.

And really, that's my prayer that we could honestly say that about ourselves.

I'm one that has given myself up completely to the will of Jesus.

And if you can't say that, I think that is the new prayer that we need to start praying.

Lord, please help me to be given completely to your will.

That's what God desires from all of us today.

And that's what Paul is saying here.

That's who Paul is saying.

This is who I am, but that is what God desires in each one of us.

That would be completely submitted to his will in every way.

And then Paul goes on and he mentions next that he's an apostle, which literally means a delegate or a messenger, one that's sent forth with orders.

And Jesus sent him forth with the gospel as his message.

Those were his marching orders.

Here is the gospel, go spread it to the world.

And the order in which Paul gives us the first half of verse one here is not a mistake.

Paul is first a servant of Jesus Christ.

And secondary is what he does for Christ, what his calling is.

You know, so often I think in our culture especially, we identify ourselves so strongly with what we do.

You know, when we meet somebody new, that tends to be the first question, right?

So what do you do for a living?

Or what do you do with your days, or whatever that might be.

But I think the question should be, who do we serve?

That's what Paul starts off with, who do we serve?

So the next time you're at a party, just walk up to somebody and say, Who do you serve?

See how that goes.

You get some strange looks.

I don't know quite what you mean, but really that should be the question that believers ask each other.

Like, who do you serve?

I serve Jesus Christ like fully with my whole life.

And then maybe ask, oh, what's your calling?

What do you do, you know, during the day?

But so often we find our identity in what we do.

And not just work, but what we do maybe at church or in ministry.

And sometimes that can start to define us.

And that's a very unhealthy thing to be defined by what we do for Jesus instead of being defined by Jesus.

So Paul gets this.

He says, I'm a servant of God, and God called me to be a messenger of the gospel, to be his delegate.

That's what that means here in the first half of verse 1.

Look at the second half of verse 1.

It says, And set apart for the gospel of God.

So set apart from everything else for the task of sharing the good news of Jesus Christ.

And we see this setting apart in Acts 13.

And we I already read it to you in the introduction, but where it says, set apart Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.

And that work was spreading the gospel and starting new churches and writing letters like we're holding here today.

Look at verse 2 with me.

He continues on.

This is a really long sentence, by the way.

That's Paul.

Verse 2, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures concerning his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

So this is referring to all of the prophecies that God gave in the Old Testament, telling of the Messiah that was going to come to Israel.

And this is Paul introducing to the Romans that the gospel actually isn't something new.

That the whole Old Testament had been developing the concept of the Messiah and God's plan for salvation.

And now Paul's going to start unfolding how Jesus fulfilled those prophecies from over a thousand years prior.

And he's conveying to the Romans that this is not some new religion.

It's a fulfillment of scriptures that had been around for a really, really long time.

And he's going to go on to show them how those scriptures point to God's Son and then prove that God's Son, the Messiah, actually is Jesus Christ.

That the gospel is actually an Old Testament truth.

And we're going to see that Paul uses a lot of Old Testament references to prove that salvation comes through faith, and that being faith in the Son of God, which is Jesus the Messiah.

And then he goes on with a bit more history, referring to Jesus in the second half of verse 2 here.

He says, who was a descendant of David according to the flesh.

So Jesus was foretold to be from the physical line of King David that we see in the Old Testament.

So the part of him that is fully man, the physical part of Jesus is from the line of David.

Whether you follow Jesus' legal lineage through his stepfather Joseph or his biological lineage through his mother Mary, they both lead back to David.

Joseph through David's son Solomon, and then Mary through David's son Nathan.

But they both, so you can't look and say, oh, he actually wasn't from the line of David because his stepdad was, you know.

No, they both, the legal side and the biological side, both point back to King David.

So Jesus' proof of being human was being born of a woman in the line of David.

And in verse 4, it's going to show us the proof that he was fully God as well.

Verse 4.

And was appointed to be the powerful Son of God according to the Spirit of Hiness by the resurrection of the dead.

Now the part of him that is fully God is from his conception through the Holy Spirit.

And proof of that he is God was his resurrection from the dead and coming out of the tomb.

And an easy way to remember this is Jesus' proof of being human was coming out of a womb, and his proof of being God was coming out of a tomb.

It's an easy way to think about that.

Now, the word appointed here in verse 4, it's a tough one to translate.

And most translations in English land on the word appointed or declared.

But even still, and the translators actually admit this, those words kind of fall short in English of fully conveying what that word means.

And it means in the Greek definition to define, to mark out the boundaries or limits, to determine or to appoint.

And the phrasing of verse 4 here, at least on the first pass, can make it hard to know exactly what's being said here, you know, in a nutshell, because the sentence is kind of created interestingly.

But basically, here's what it means it was determined that Jesus is the Son of God because of his resurrection from the dead, which happened through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Like we were talking about, Jesus' resurrection proved to all and helped those on earth to define the parameters of who Jesus is, which is he is God, he is the Son of God, and He's the second part of the Trinity.

And it was through everything we just saw in verse 4 that that proved that to humanity and allowed them, this as a point, but to draw those parameters, okay, this is who Jesus is.

Look at verse 5 with me.

It says, Through him we have received grace and apostleship.

So we just spent the last 11 months in the book of Mark seeing how Jesus' disciples, now turned apostles, received grace from Jesus.

And grace being that unearned favor that can only come from God.

They kept messing up these disciples over and over again.

And God just kept giving them grace upon grace upon grace that they did not deserve.

Even when they were hard-hearted, even when they were hard-headed and forgetful, even when they didn't believe that Jesus actually did resurrect from the dead, he kept extending grace and grace and more grace.

But what about Paul?

Because Paul wasn't one of those original twelve disciples, like the other apostles.

Well, we saw in Paul's brief testimony that he did nothing to earn God's favor leading up to his conversion on the road to Damascus.

He was working against God and against the church and against the gospel that was going forth.

He was an enemy of God.

And keep that in mind, because we're going to talk about that a little bit more later.

But Paul was an enemy of God.

Yet God showed incredible grace to him, incredible grace to his enemy, and placed a calling on his life to be his delegate and messenger of the gospel.

So Paul could say here in verse 5, through him we have received grace.

I don't know if anybody knew that better than maybe Paul and maybe Peter.

But through him we have received grace and apostleship.

It's only by God's grace that anybody is called to any type of ministry or position within a church.

And Paul sees that very, very clearly.

Let's look at all of verse 5 now.

It says, Through him we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all.

All the Gentiles, including you who are also called by Jesus Christ.

Now it's because of God's grace and because God has called him and the other apostles to that ministry that they're able to bring others to faith in Christ through the preaching of the gospel.

And Paul's making it clear that his ministry has not been successful because of his talent or because of his ability or because of his persuasive speech or persuasive writings.

It's by God's grace and God calling him to be an apostle that then he's able to see others brought in to an obedience in their faith to Jesus Christ.

And then he says, for the sake of his name.

That's the name of Jesus that he's talking about here.

And name in this culture doesn't really mean the same thing that we think about in our English way of thinking of a name.

Because in this culture, your name was everything that came to mind about you when it was talked about.

It was really your name was who you were.

So here's an exercise.

When I say Abe Lincoln, are you thinking A B E L I?

You're not thinking about the letters, you're not thinking about the actual name.

What's the first thing that popped into your mind?

Maybe it was 16th president, you know, tall, beard, Gettysburg address, emancipation proclamation, civil war, assassination.

You know, that's what comes to mind when we think about a figure like Abraham Lincoln.

So when we see here that Paul says, for the sake of Jesus' name, Paul is saying they're bringing the gospel as apostles for the sake of God, the sake of the Son of God, for the sake of Jesus being our Savior and our mediator and our compassionate high priest and our creator and our friend.

It's for that sake that they are doing all of this, because of all that Jesus is.

It's for the sake of Jesus' name, through the grace of God, that they are spreading the good news of Jesus and seeing people, specifically Gentiles at this point, come to an obedient faith in Christ.

That's verse five, basically in a nutshell, what's going on here.

And it ends, uh, Paul ends this really, really long sentence in verse 6 with, including you who are also called by Jesus Christ.

So now he's speaking directly to the Romans and recognizing that they are also called by Jesus just as Paul is called.

So this is the first time that we see the word called used in this way in Romans.

And this word is really controversial.

So we're actually gonna talk about it here a little bit because it's the first time that we've seen it.

And it might get a little bit technical, but we kind of have to lay a good foundation here of this word because we're gonna see it so many times.

I don't want to spend a ton of time on it every time I come across it.

So right now, if it gets a little technical, it's overhead.

That's okay.

But for those of you that have really thought about these things, um, hopefully this will speak to you a little bit.

So we're just gonna hit it right on the head and go from here.

This word's controversial because it leads to the topic of predestination and free will.

And I want to start off with giving you the definition of this word, called, in the Greek dictionary.

So let's put that slide up there so you can actually see the definition.

The Greek word is kletos.

And it this is straight out of the Greek dictionary.

It says, called, invited as to a banquet, invited by God in the proclamation of the gospel to obtain eternal salvation in the kingdom through Christ, called to the discharge of some office, divinely selected and appointed.

And we're just gonna leave that slide up there for a little while so you can kind of see it, or if you want to write it out, you can as well.

But I'm gonna make the case this morning that the word called can mean invited and divinely selected at the same time.

Because when we look at the word called, that brings up a lot of questions when you start digging in a little deeper to some deeper theology.

Because when we look at the word, um, it brings up these questions of did God create humans knowing exactly who would go to heaven and exactly who would go to hell as he was creating them?

And do humans really have a choice or was this all predetermined back when God created us of if we would follow Jesus or not?

And if he did predetermine all of this, does that mean that he created people just for the purpose of suffering in hell?

And some people just for the purpose of enjoying him forever in heaven, which leads to the question of how could a loving God do that, you know?

Now the other side of this, the invited side of this word called, is free will.

That God somehow created us to where we actually do have that choice in our lifetime to follow Jesus and spend eternity enjoying him, or reject him on earth and spend an eternity in torment and hell.

And free will believes that we're not created for one or the other, but that God, in some way that we can't fully comprehend, created us to freely choose him without knowing what the outcome was going to be.

So the fancy word for these schools of thought are Calvinism and Arminianism, respectively.

And we're only going to scratch the surface of these two schools of thoughts because we could spend 10 weeks just talking about this and still not know the answers at the end.

But it's good for us to know these things and to come to a place of personal understanding for ourselves, for our own theology.

So we know what we believe, or at least we can come to a place of saying, you know, I've I've looked into it and I really don't know.

And I'm going to give you my thought.

This is where I've arrived with all of this after a lot of thought and a lot of studying and a lot of looking into the word.

Um, so let's start with the word Calvinism.

Calvinism, in its purest form, or what's called a five-point Calvinist, believes that God in his sovereignty had everything planned out from beginning to end, made some humans for heaven and some for hell, and that when Jesus died on the cross, he didn't die for everybody's sins, but just for those that were created for heaven.

That's called limited atonement.

That's the most staunch form, and I don't know a ton of those that are like the strict five-pointers.

But that's Calvinism.

And if you've heard the term reformed theology, Calvinism is one of the main tenets of reformed theology.

And if you don't know what these definitions mean, that's okay.

But for those of you that do, this is for you.

And these groups refer to those that God created for heaven as called or elected or predestined.

And we see these words in Romans, so that's why we're talking about all of this stuff right now, because for Calvinists, Romans is the book to prove their five points of Calvinism.

And in my opinion, the five-point Calvinists end up kind of painting God as almost like a puppet master, which, if you're interested, is called fatalism.

And that's the view that God set all of this into motion, and humans don't really have a say in where they're going after this life.

It's already been decided from the beginning how all of it was going to play out.

And they chalk that up to God's sovereignty.

And they trust that in God's sovereignty, He did this all justly.

And then you'll hear some people say, Well, I'm not a five-point Calvinist, I'm a four-point or I'm a three-point Calvinist.

Where they, no, really, you know, and and it's legit, um, where they don't believe all of it, but some of the main points of Calvinism they do.

And in my opinion, one of the issues that I see regarding the five-point Calvinism is that if you believe God created some for heaven and some for hell, then what's the point of evangelism?

You know, if God already knows who's going to get saved, that doesn't give us a lot of motivation to try and spread the gospel, you know, and it kind of gives a different light on the Great Commission, kind of sheds a different light on the Apostle Paul and his calling that he's talking about about being an apostle, of spreading that good news for the sake of people coming to faith in Jesus Christ.

And like I said, this is how I see it.

You can feel free to disagree.

Uh, but like I said, we're gonna stay surface level.

We could go way deeper on Calvinism, but we're just gonna, for our purposes this morning, we're just going for there.

Now let's look at the other side.

Those, and it's those that are on the free will side of things, or the Arminius is the extreme free will side of things.

And they believe that God was able to create humans and set aside his foreknowledge for a moment in the creation of humans, so that he was not creating them for heaven or for hell, and that it's completely up to humans whether they accept Jesus or they reject him.

And that and that alone will decide their eternity for them.

Basically, that humans were created neutrally, and everyone has the same opportunity to be saved by Jesus and the same opportunity to reject him as well.

Now, the problem I have with this view is that it negates a bunch of scripture that teaches predestination.

And the few people that I've known that are true Arminius don't have security in their salvation.

They knew, you know, I knew one couple years back, and it felt like daily they were freaking out of whether they were saved that day or not.

Because they believe that as easy as they were saved and accepted Jesus, that they could accidentally lose their salvation without even knowing it and walk away from Christ by accident.

And that doesn't sound like anything I see in scripture.

So you might be wondering at this point, okay, so where do we sit as a church?

Well, you know, when I look at scripture, I see verses that support predestination, like Romans 8 28.

We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called, there's a word again, according to his purpose, for those he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son.

And then I see verses that support free will, like 2 Peter 3.9.

It says, The Lord does not delay his promise, as some understand delay, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.

If he doesn't want anyone to perish, he wouldn't create somebody for hell, would he?

And there's a good amount of verses that will support both sides of Calvinism and Arminianism.

So the question really is, how can predestination and free will both be taught in Scripture and not contradict one another?

How can they exist together?

You know, God knows who's going, you know, that God knows who's going to follow him already, yet they still have a choice that they can make in their salvation of whether they're gonna follow Jesus or not.

So I want to do an exercise with you real quick.

Handa, let's throw that slide, that last slide up.

Not a trick question.

Is a triangle a square?

You can answer.

Okay, not a trick, okay.

Is a square a triangle?

Okay.

So I want you to look at that screen behind me.

These shapes represent when you take either one of these schools of thought to the very extreme.

You know, because in our finite minds, we think it's gotta be one or the other.

It's gotta be the triangle or the square.

And in our minds, in our finite minds, we can't comprehend that these two schools of thought can actually exist together.

But the problem is we do not know the mind of God.

We don't see things in the same dimension that He does.

You know, we're gonna see in Romans 11, uh, probably in about five years once we get there.

No, I'm just kidding.

Hopefully we're moving faster than that.

We're gonna see in Romans 11 a hymn of praise that Paul, the author of Romans, interjects, and I'll read it to you.

It says, Oh, the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God, how unsearchable his judgments and untraceable his ways.

For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor, and who has ever given to God that he should be repaid?

For from him and through him and to him are all things.

To him be the glory forever.

Amen.

So, like I said, the problem is when we claim that it's a square, or when we claim that it's a triangle, we're claiming that we understand how God did all of this.

When God never told us how he did all of this, he just wants us to have faith that he did it all.

He wants us to have faith that he's good.

Because that's where faith comes in.

Trusting God in the things that we don't fully understand, but understanding enough to know that we can trust him.

Because God wrote the Bible through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and God doesn't contradict himself.

Yet we see these two schools of thought taking place at the same time in Scripture.

So he looks at the square, and he looks at the triangle and says, You're looking at it from the wrong dimension.

These two things can exist together.

And I got a little illustration.

We say square, we say triangle, and God says, No, it's a pyramid.

There's a square, there's a triangle, they're existing together.

We're just trying to look at it two-dimensionally, and God just flips it on his axis.

He says, No, the way I see things through my mind, like those things can exist together.

Just in our finite minds, we can't bring it all together and make sense of it personally.

But God's sitting there, he's like, No, I put both of those verses in the Bible, they can exist together.

But like I said, in our earthly minds, we're not seeing it from the same dimension that God is.

So if somebody asks you if your church teaches the doctrine of free will or predestination, just say, yes.

Because regardless of where we are in the Bible, when we see a square, we're gonna teach about a square.

And when we see a triangle, we're gonna teach about a triangle.

Just knowing that we can't know the mind of God, but we do know that he's good.

Amen.

So I'm comfortable saying that I worship a God that I don't fully understand.

Because if I did fully understand him, that would put me on equal playing field with it, right?

And I don't want to worship my equal, I only want to worship a God that is almighty and all-knowing and exists everywhere at once, and that I know is good.

Any other God is not deserving of our worship.

So, with all of that said, when we see the word called, it can mean invited and divinely selected at the same time.

Okay, got it?

Everybody?

It's a lot to go through.

You hung in well.

So Paul's introduction is over now as he finishes uh verse six, and now he's gonna address his audience in verse seven.

He says, To all who are in Rome, loved by God, called as saints, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

So he addresses the letter to all that are in Rome and following Jesus.

So we don't know much about how the church was started in Rome.

There's no evidence that tells us that it was started and planted by an apostle.

And all we do know is that during Pentecost in Acts 2.10, that there were visitors from Rome that witnessed all that took place when the Holy Spirit fell down on the disciples.

And then we see Peter's famous sermon that takes place immediately after that, and 3,000 people come to faith.

So some of those had to be Romans as well, that were onlookers that were visiting Jerusalem for Pentecost.

So some speculate that those visitors went back to Rome and organically started this church there, and that it just kept growing.

But what we do know is that Paul greets a lot of people and a lot of households at the end of Romans 16 as he's closing out his letter.

So the Roman church had people going back and forth from Rome to Jerusalem and the rest of the world, and Paul had a lot of friends and a lot of co-workers and a lot of acquaintances that were in that church.

You know, this church had been going, presumably, for about 25 years or so at this point when Paul writes this letter to them.

And Paul knows a good number of them, even though he hasn't been there yet.

But he greets all the saints in Rome here in verse 7.

And then Paul says to those that are loved by God and called as saints.

Now the word saints has been used in some odd ways in church history.

So I want to bring a little bit of clarity to that.

And this isn't to pick on the Catholic Church in any way, but the idea of sainthood and praying to the saints has caused a lot of confusion as to what a saint is and who a saint is.

But all it means to be a saint is that you're a follower of Jesus Christ.

It literally means holy one or most holy.

It's those that are washed in the blood of Jesus and made holy by him.

Those who eternity is secure in Christ Jesus.

And if that's you, which I hope we can all claim, then you are a saint.

If you've been washed by the blood of Jesus, if you've been made holy, then all of us hopefully can say that we are saints.

And then Paul goes on in his greeting, extending grace and peace.

Grace being how the Greeks would greet each other, and peace being how the Jewish community would greet each other.

And Paul combines them in this greeting: grace and peace.

And notice this isn't grace and peace from Paul, but grace and peace from God and from Jesus Christ.

Which makes this so much more than a standard greeting.

It's not just somebody saying, Hey, hope you're doing well, and then jumping into a letter.

Paul gives us uh this great explanation of what's being extended here to the church.

And we see that in Romans 5.

So why don't you flip over a couple pages to the right to Romans 5, and we're gonna talk about grace and peace.

Uh so flip there, and we're gonna end with this this morning.

Romans chapter 5, we're just gonna read verses 1 and 2.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

It says, Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ.

We have also obtained access through him by faith into this grace, there's a word, in which we stand.

And we boast in the hope of the glory of God.

You know, we all so badly want peace in our lives, don't we?

Whether it's mental peace in our minds, whether that means peace in our home, whether that means peace between Russia and UK and uh the Ukraine right now.

But none of that is attainable until we have peace with God.

We, much like Paul, were his enemies.

And you'll see that if you look down a couple verses in chapter 5 and verse 10, that we were the enemies of God.

We were in a place deserving of God's wrath.

And Jesus made a way that we could be justified by simply believing and confessing him as our Lord and our Savior.

We are justified by our faith in Jesus.

And all of this is possible because of God's grace, which we already defined as the favor that we've received from God that we have not earned and that we do not deserve.

And when you look at it in this context, this is the unearned favor of God that he extends to his enemies.

Just like we saw him do with the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus.

So when Paul says, Grace to you and peace from God our Father and Lord Jesus Christ, Paul is greeting them with God's grace and God's peace that he can understand as well as anybody because of the place that.

God brought him from.

And then Paul, we're going to see, is going to go on for the next 16 chapters through Romans, unfolding what God's grace is and what peace with God looks like and what a life lived in that way looks like.

So my question to you is this this morning.

Are you experiencing God's grace?

That unearned favor that He extends?

Or do you think maybe that you're too far gone to experience that grace?

Or are you here this morning and you just realize for the first time that you are an enemy of God?

Or maybe you're experiencing peace with God.

Or maybe you're not.

Maybe you've tried to find peace in everything else that the world has to offer.

Maybe with drugs or alcohol or relationships or protests or world peace or whatever it might be, but you've found no peace.

Or maybe you are a follower of Jesus Christ, but you're not living in peace.

That peace that surpasses all understanding.

Because you're not surrendering all.

Because you're not surrendering all of your thoughts to the Lord, or all of your actions, or all of your time.

God wants us to live in grace and peace, which can only truly come from Him.

And this world is so broken and it is so fallen, and sin is so damaging, yet God has an eternity waiting for us that doesn't have all the junk that the world has without the sin and without the fallen nature and without the damage that's been caused by sin.

Our eternity with God is going to be marked with perfect grace and perfect peace.

But we can start experiencing that now.

And God wants us to be experiencing that grace and peace now as well.

But we just need to be willing to surrender all to Jesus in order to fully experience that grace and that peace.

And if that's you today and you're saying, I don't experience that grace, and I don't experience that peace, or maybe you're saying, I am an enemy of God, and I just realized it and I don't want to be anymore.

Would you pray with me right now?

Lord Jesus, I realize that I am your enemy.

But I want to accept that grace and that peace that Jesus has extended on the cross.

That peace with you.

So I confess with my mouth and I believe in my heart that Jesus Christ is Lord, that he died on the cross, that the blood that was spilled was spilled in my place, the death that I deserved.

Lord, would you wash me and cleanse me of my failures and my offenses and all that, the ways that I have failed?

And would you make me new, a new creation in Jesus Christ, where I can take on the righteousness of Jesus Christ, where I can be called a saint, a holy one in your kingdom.

Lord, would you do that for me here today?

And Lord, for for all of the rest of us that have been walking with you for various amounts of time, Lord, we admit that we do not always walk in grace, and that we do not always walk in peace, that we get stirred up by the things that are happening around us, that we get distracted, that we take our eyes off of you.

So Lord, would you help us to walk in grace and to walk in peace as Paul extended to this Roman church here?

Only you can provide those things.

But most importantly, God, we thank you that we can have peace with you because Jesus stands as our mediator, the one that that paid our debt, and that brought that peace between us and God.

And we thank you so much for that gift of salvation that was so freely to offer to each one of us.

Lord, show us how to walk in these ways.

We pray.

In Jesus' name.