Romans | Paul's Ministry and Plans | Romans 15:14-33 | Ep. 37

Welcome to Preaching from Bryanson Bible Church, located in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg, South Africa.

It is our prayer that this teaching would bless you, deepen your love for God's word, and encourage you as you follow Jesus.

And if you're not a Christian, we pray that this message would encourage you as you explore the Christian faith.

Good morning, BBC.

Such a joy for me to bring God's word this morning, and thanks, Mark, for a great reading.

Really appreciate that.

I do encourage you to open your Bibles or if you've got it on your phone or use the U version, open to the passage.

It is a long passage, so I can't go through all of it.

But as we make our way through the sermon, as you look at those chunks of scripture, I think you will see God working through the Apostle Paul.

I don't know about you, but some people have a way of really expanding your world by just being around them.

And that's true of me when I spend time with some of my friends who are particularly friends who are on the mission field.

There's something about being around people who are working amongst unreached people groups that just fires me up.

When you listen to their stories, the sacrifices they've made, the risks that they've taken, their stories about what it's like to hear the name of Christ spoken for the first time in someone's life, it reminds me that the world is so much bigger than my own.

So much bigger.

And if you're anything like me, you get busy with life and life kind of just shrink, wraps itself around you to the size of your comforts and your little world and kingdom.

And so we lose sight of God's heart for the nations.

Now, no one wants to waste their life.

Nobody wants to have a funeral that nobody attends.

We all want our lives to matter in some way.

And so I can remember back when I was a teenager just having this overwhelming sense that there must be more to life than just eat, drink, sleep, work, repeat, and die.

Now you can see what kind of teen years I had as I was wrestling with these deep philosophical issues of life.

But the author Paul Tripp says that God has placed this desire for transcendence within us.

Paul Tripp calls this the quest for more.

This is what he says.

He says there is woven inside each of us a desire for something more, a craving to be part of something bigger and greater and more profound than our relatively meaningless day-by-day existence.

And this desire for transcendence is in all of us because God placed it there.

We were never meant to be self-focused little kings ruling minuscule little kingdoms with a population of one.

Now, back in high school, around that time, I also read a profound poem by C.T.

Studd.

He was one of the top English cricketers at the time.

Not when I was in high school, because he lived in the late 1800s, okay?

So I'm not that old.

But he was a top cricketer and turned his back on that fame and fortune.

People thought he was crazy.

This was when everything was going well.

This was at the height of his career because he felt convicted by the Spirit of God to take the gospel to China.

And so he's turned his back on all of it and he penned this beautiful poem.

And the final line at the end of each stanza of this poem goes, Only one life, it will soon be passed.

Only what's done for Christ will last.

That line gripped me.

That line shaped the entire trajectory of my life right till today.

It's what led me into ministry.

Because there's something deeply satisfying about being caught up in God's grand story rather than just a little story of your own.

And so when we come to Romans chapter 15, Paul lets us see how this grand story had transformed his own heart.

Romans 15 · chapter mention

For 11 chapters, Paul has unpacked for us in the book of Romans the grand story of the gospel of God in and through the Lord Jesus Christ.

And then chapters 12 to 14, which we've been looking at over the last couple of weeks, is how the same gospel has transformed the church and should lead us to be united.

But now in Romans chapter 15, something changes.

Romans 15 · chapter mention

Something changes because Paul stops explaining the gospel and lets us see what the gospel produced in his own heart.

He's going to peel back the curtain.

He's now getting personal.

He wants us to see his heart.

A heart of a man who's been captured by something far bigger than himself, God's great mission in the world.

And so if you and I will truly listen this morning, we will hear Paul's heartbeat.

And hopefully our horizons will be expanded as well.

Because we get to see what the gospel can produce in a human heart.

And what does that heart look like?

Well, Romans 15 is going to show us four movements in Paul's heart.

Four movements in his heart.

We're going to see a worshipful heart that turns mission into worship.

We're going to see a humble, Christ-exalting heart that gives Christ all the glory.

We're going to see a visionary heart that longs for Christ to be known where he is not yet known.

And a praying heart.

Praying heart that advances the mission of God on its knees.

So let's look at each of these.

Number one, Paul's worshipful heart that turns mission into worship.

Paul says something remarkable in verse 16.

And if you've got your text open, you'll see there what he says.

He describes his ministry using the language of the temple.

Here it is.

He says he's been called in verse 16 to be a minister of Christ Jesus.

That Greek word for minister is where we get our English word liturgy or liturgical from.

It's a life of worship, it's a worshipful heart.

So he's been called to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.

In other words, Paul sees his work and his ministry as worship.

There's no compartments.

There's not worship on a Sunday and something different on a Monday.

All of life he sees himself as a priest wherever he goes, whether in the ordinary or in the so-called big things of life, and all of it, it's all of worship, it's all mission, it's all him spiritually, so to speak, wearing priestly robes, bringing an offering to God of worship.

But what is that offering?

The imagery is striking.

Because this altar that he's talking about is no longer an altar in the temple in Jerusalem, the altar is the entire world.

The gospel turns the temple into the world.

Into the world.

And the sacrifice that he's talking about is no longer an animal.

What is it?

It's an offering of the nations to God in worship.

Look at verse 16.

Paul says he's bringing the offering of the Gentiles to God.

So he doesn't see his missionary work as simply traveling or writing letters or preaching sermons or planting churches.

He sees everything as an offering to God.

And this is not some random metaphor.

Paul is bringing forth a promise from Isaiah.

Isaiah chapter 66 and verse 20.

Isaiah 66 · chapter mention

Listen how prophetic this is.

And they shall bring all your brothers from all the nations as an offering to the Lord.

And Paul believes that promise is being fulfilled right now through him, in him, in the churches that have been planted, in the believers that have accepted the gospel.

And so this is so beautiful.

It means that every time somebody comes to know the Lord Jesus Christ, they are being offered as a sacrifice to God and God's glory.

Paul's ambition was never simply to make converts, his ambition was to present worshippers to God.

That is so beautiful and so deep, which is why John Piper famously said that missions exist because worship doesn't.

Missions exist because worship doesn't.

What is Piper getting at?

He's saying mission exists because there's still places in the world today where Christ is not yet worshipped.

The goal of missions is not ultimately missions itself, it's ultimately to bring people who've never yet worshipped God to experience what you and I get to experience every single day.

And this is how Paul sees his ministry.

Just imagine how this truth can change your life tomorrow.

If you went out into the world and saw yourself as a priest, so to speak, where every conversation you have with somebody becomes a priestly moment, where every encounter you have is an opportunity to even in that moment pray, Lord, may this be somebody that I could offer to you on your altar as a trophy of grace and your gospel.

Worship is what fuels the mission.

But if that offering is to be acceptable, Paul insists on one thing, and that brings us to our second point.

Christ must receive all the glory.

Number two, Paul's Christ-exalting heart that gives Christ all the glory.

Paul could have easily boasted about his achievements.

Just glance down in the passage to verses 17 to 19.

Look at what God had done through his ministry.

Gentiles across the Roman world had come to faith.

The Holy Spirit had accompanied Paul with signs and wonders.

And then churches had been planted in this vast missionary arc, Paul says, all the way from Jerusalem around to Illyricum, a distance of around 2,000 kilometers.

So the Greek even says there was kind of a circle, the circle from Jerusalem round to Illyricum, the eastern world of the Mediterranean, 2,000 kilometers, which Paul had largely walked on foot, was what God had done through him.

He could have boasted about that.

He could have said, guys, check out my sandals.

I want you to know, do you know how many sandals I went through?

Do you know how many times I had to get these things retreaded?

He could have spoken all day.

But look what he actually says in verse 18.

He says, For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me.

Paul refuses to put himself at the center of the story.

Everything that's happened in his life and ministry he attributes to Christ.

Paul does boast, but he boasts only in the Lord.

He had a Christ-exulting heart and he understood something that every true servant of God has understood down through history.

The mission is never about the messenger.

The mission is never about the messenger.

We are just the messengers.

The message is about him.

No wonder the famous missionary Zinzendorf said, preach, die, be forgotten.

Isn't that humbling?

Preach, die, be forgotten.

That's a world away from what we see in our modern preaching celebrity culture where preachers' faces are plastered on billboards and it's all about self-promotion and fame and fortune.

Paul will have none of that.

Think of a mirror.

A mirror is designed to reflect someone else's glory.

And when a mirror becomes visible, it's because there's dirt on it, there's pride on it, it's stained by pride.

And so the attention is drawn to the mirror instead of the glory that should be reflected.

And Paul says, I don't want you to see Paul, I want you to see Christ.

Like a mirror, I want to be positioned, I want to be clean, I want to be a vessel for God to shine through.

And the remarkable thing is that God loves to work through that kind of humble posture.

When you say, Lord, I want to get out of the way and I want to point to you and I want you to be seen.

I want to challenge you.

Get on mission for God and see what He can do through you.

Maybe our lives are so ordinary and mundane because we've got off mission, and when we get on mission, we see that when God works through us, people recognize that it could never have been me, it could never have been you.

It's the glory of God at work.

A worshipful heart feels the mission mission, and a humble Christ-exulting heart safeguards the mission.

You know who it safeguards the mission from?

From me.

From you, from us.

That's what a humble posture does.

It saves it from us because the moment the spotlight shifts from the message and the glory of Christ to the messenger, then the gospel begins to lose its power because you and I have nothing to offer in our own strength.

Which leads us to the third movement of Paul's heart, Paul's visionary heart that longs for Christ to be known where he is not known, verses 20 to 29.

Don't you just love the depth and the beauty and the passion of Paul's expansive vision?

In case you missed it, here it is in verse 20.

And thus I make it my ambition.

I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I should build on someone else's foundation.

For as it is written, those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand.

Vision directs the mission.

And when the gospel has truly taken hold of somebody, it gives them a burden, it gives them a desire, a longing to see Christ known where he is not yet known.

That was Paul's ambition.

That was his consuming aim.

That's what drove him, that's what got him up in the morning.

Lord, enable me to take you where you are not known.

And notice that this ambition is rooted in scripture.

Paul could have rooted this in his personal experience.

He could have said, Well, because I'm so special and I had this experience on the road to Damascus, but no, he roots his ambition in the scriptures to remind us that we have the same scriptures that he rooted his ambition.

We also can know God's heart for the nations from Genesis all the way through to Revelation.

His calling wasn't self-generated enthusiasm, it flowed from God's word and from God's purposes for the nations.

It's about us reading God's word, reading Romans as we have, and aligning our stories with his story.

And so once churches had been planted from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, what did Paul say?

He said, There's no more place for me to work in these regions.

What did he mean by that?

Not because everyone was converted, it was because he planted churches.

There were believers, there were those that could carry on the message.

And so, because the gospel had been planted, it meant Paul could now look further.

He could lift his horizon and his gaze even further to the edge of the known world at that time.

To Spain.

To Spain.

Verse 24.

I hope to see you in passing as I go to Spain and to be helped on my journey there by you.

For the ancient worlds, Spain was the final frontier.

For a moment they almost said space is the final frontier, but that's taking me back to Star Trek.

Spain is the final frontier.

I mean, there it stood, on the western edge, looking out across the Atlantic.

And in Spain were the pillars of Hercules.

The Romans had etched these words into those pillars as they looked out across the Atlantic.

Nec plus ultra.

Nothing lies beyond.

Nothing further beyond.

That was the reality to Rome.

Spain was the edge of the known world.

And Paul looked at that horizon and said, That's where I want to go.

That's where I want to minister.

That's the next opportunity because he had a dream, a holy ambition.

He had a Spain.

The missionary David Livingston was once asked where he wanted to serve as a missionary, and he said, anywhere, as long as it is forward.

As long as it's forward.

Because the world tells us to go upward, up the corporate ladder, up in success, up in fame, up in fortune.

The gospel says, go forward towards the places where Christ is still unknown.

And friends, that work is not yet finished.

It's not finished.

Maybe I'm weird, but sometimes I imagine what it would be like if I had a time travel machine, maybe a flux capacitor, and I could get the apostle Paul to beam into my passenger seat when I'm stuck in Joe Burg traffic.

So while the rest of you are listening to podcasts and being all spiritual, I'm imagining what I would say to Paul.

I know it's a bit strange, but just bear with me.

I think Paul would be astounded, number one, at all the technology.

Like, what is the screen?

What are these gadgets?

What is this thing?

Oh my word, this thing can go so fast.

You mean you can get from here to wherever?

I mean, we're asking all these questions about travel and distance.

And then I think he would say, What you're telling me, Justin, as you mentioned, these countries and these cities, that the world is far bigger than Spain, far bigger than I ever imagined.

And please tell me, where's the gospel gone?

And as we share with Paul over 2,000 years where the gospel is gone, I don't know.

I think he'd want to get out through the sunroof or something like that.

You'd be so excited.

And then he'd ask about the places where Christ is least known.

And friends, there's still thousands of unreached people groups in the world where the name of Christ is not yet known.

Millions of people who've never heard that name, that name that you can proclaim on your lips on any given day.

The task is not complete, but here's an important truth Paul's calling is not necessarily everyone's calling.

Paul says this is what God's Spirit had worked in him.

He didn't want to build on another man's foundation, but Apollos did.

Apollos built on Paul's foundation.

Timothy strengthened churches that Paul had planted.

Peter stayed in Jerusalem with the Jews.

So it's not everybody's calling, not everyone's called to be Paul, but every believer is called to share Paul's heart.

And that's what we see coming through in this text his heart.

We have to share his heart, we have to share his passion.

Some go, some send, some pray, some partner.

But the mission belongs to all of us.

And so the question for each one of us that I want to challenge you with this morning is do you have a Spain?

Do you have a Spain?

Do you have a dream for what God could do through your life?

Do you have a vision for how the gospel might move forward through you?

And if you don't, ask the Spirit to stir that in your heart.

Because here's the beautiful irony of this passage.

Paul desperately wanted to go to Spain.

And that ambition is one of the reasons that he even wrote the letter to the Romans.

Just think about that for a moment.

His desire for Spain is the reason we have the book of Romans.

Because he writes to introduce himself to them.

He's never been to Rome before, he's never met them.

He writes to explain the gospel that he's preached.

He writes to them to win their partnership.

He writes to them to tell them, hey, I'd love for Rome to be the missionary base for my ministry to Spain.

In other words, the book of Romans is Paul's missionary support letter.

Except it's not a short support letter, it's an exposition, the greatest exposition known in history of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And here's the irony.

We don't know whether Paul ever made it to Spain.

The scriptures are silent.

Historians, theologians are divided.

There's maybe a little window in the timeline where he possibly could have gone, but my sense is he didn't make it to Spain.

But you know what?

The letter that he wrote because of Spain has gone far further than Spain ever could have gone.

It converted Augustine, it ignited Luther, it warmed Wesley's heart, it has spread the gospel throughout the world.

You could almost say Paul's ambition was Spain, but God's ambition was the world.

God's ambition was BBC in Bryanston, going through Romans for 37 weeks.

Sometimes the dreams that God gives us are far greater than we could have ever thought and imagined.

And when things take A different track, and maybe we were discouraged.

Maybe if we'd interviewed Paul, maybe he would have been discouraged he got to Spain.

I don't know.

Somehow, when you read the book of Philippians and you see him in prison there, he's rejoicing that, hey, I actually got to Rome.

Not the way I wanted to, but they brought me here free of charge.

I didn't even have to pay.

Caesar brought me here.

And I'm chained to Roman gods, and now the gospel's going there.

Okay, so I made it to you guys.

So, what does this mean for us?

It means that we need hearts that dream.

Dream forward for the gospel.

Not just our private little world.

I think of a guy I know at my previous church who wakes up every morning and says, How can I make as much money as possible by God's grace so that I can send it into missions?

So that I can train people in Africa, so that I can provide seed funding for little businesses that can support missionaries across the globe.

We should all have a Spain.

We should all have a dream, a place.

Do you have a people group that's on your heart that you are praying for on a regular basis?

What about the persecuted church?

What a joy for me.

Two weeks ago to conduct the baptism class, and there in the baptism class is an Iranian man.

Think of all that's happening in the world, and here he is, God has brought him to BBC, and here he wants to stand up and be counted.

Vision directs the mission, and yet Paul knew something else.

Vision alone is not enough.

Even the great apostle Paul, with all his smarts and expertise and experience, knew that the gospel doesn't progress through ambition alone, but through prayer.

And that brings us to the fourth thing: Paul's praying heart that advances the mission on its knees.

Paul knows that you can have a map for Spain.

But without a power source, you're just a man with a piece of paper.

Paul knows you can try and press forward in the gospel.

But if you aren't connected to the engine room of heaven, you're flapping around, you're never going to truly make gospel progress because this is God's mission.

And so after all the vision, after all the strategy, after all the ambition, Paul ends with a simple appeal in verse 30.

He says, I appeal to you, brothers, strive together with me in your prayers to God on my behalf.

That word for strive is where we get our English word agonize from.

Brothers and sisters, please agonize with me.

I mean, think of the there's no WhatsApp, there's no email, there's no EFTs.

Paul is on his own.

If they don't agonize and wrestle with them for the gospel, all is lost.

So asking for prayer is not a cliched formality.

Saying, hey, I'll pray for you, brother, I'll pray for you, sister, is not a cliched response.

It's the very engine room, it's the very thing that sustains mission.

Paul knows that the glory of God through the mission of God always advances on its knees.

Which is why the final word in this section is not ambition or strategy, but blessing.

It's in verse 33.

May the God of peace be with you all.

May the God of peace be with you all.

Why?

Because in the end, the mission belongs to God, it's not mine.

This isn't my church, it's not your church.

The blessing that flows, it's not my blessing, it's God's blessing.

Now, maybe if you were really, really paying attention this morning, you would have noticed something.

I won't put you on the spot.

But did anybody out there notice that I completely skipped verse 14?

The start of this whole section.

The thing that Paul said sets up this whole foundation, and that's why I want to come and circle back around to it.

I skipped verse 14 because when we hear about a man like Paul, it can feel overwhelming.

Lord, I can't be Paul, I could never live like that.

But listen to what Paul says right at the start.

Here it is, verse 14.

I myself am satisfied about you.

I myself am convinced about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able to instruct one another.

Paul's missionary vision leads directly into partnership.

He cannot reach Spain alone.

He needs the Romans, and you know what he says to them?

You are exactly the kind of church that can share in this mission with me.

And I believe that that's true of us today.

I believe that's true of BBC.

Do you believe that BBC corporately can share in the mission of God?

Of course I do, and I believe that personally every single person here who claims the name of Christ can share in the mission of God.

Don't be like so many Christians who live in a perpetual state of perpetual preparation.

I just need one more seminar.

I just need one more training course.

I just need one more book, one more sermon.

You know, just one more year to get my act together.

Just one more, one more, one more, one more.

Paul says something remarkable about this church.

The gospel has already done the heavy lifting in you.

You don't need one more before you get on mission for God.

Look what he says to them.

He says, You are full of goodness.

In other words, you have enough heart to already help someone follow Jesus.

He says, You are filled with all knowledge and already you already know enough.

You know enough, far more than you think to help someone follow Jesus.

I remember this guy, Alan, who'd known the Lord for a while, been in Bible study for years, and I said, I think you can disciple this young guy.

No, I don't think, I don't think I know enough.

When he got into that relationship, he came to me after one week and said to me, Justin, I have got fat on Bible studies.

I didn't realize how much I knew.

This guy is just like in awe, and here I am saying, I still need more.

Thank you for pushing me.

Paul says, You are able to instruct one another.

You've got enough wisdom to warn someone, to encourage someone, to edify them, to counsel them, to help them follow Jesus.

Because ministry doesn't begin with expertise, it begins with a transformed heart.

You don't have to be a professional.

This is ordinary believers discipling other ordinary believers.

And so Paul's challenge is simple.

You already have enough to begin.

You already have enough to begin.

Do you believe that?

Do you know the grace of God?

Is the Holy Spirit transforming your life?

Have you experienced the gospel?

Then you know enough.

As someone said, the gospel is simply one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.

I'm sure you can do that.

Paul wrote the most theologically profound letter in the New Testament.

And yet at the end, after all this theology, when we might say, Oh, I could never be the Apostle Paul, yo, look at this deep theology, he ends and says, guys, theology is not meant to make you spectators, it's meant to make you disciplers.

And so as I close, all that matters is that you reflect on your heart this morning.

Because if I can share with you pastorally, I think one of the greatest dangers in the Christian life is not open rebellion, it's quiet postponement.

We tell ourselves, one day I'll get serious, one day I'll get really give my time and my treasure and my talents.

But can I be honest, over 30 years of ministry, I have stood at the edge of far too many grow graves to know that there's no such thing as one day.

No such thing as, oh, I'm promised tomorrow, tomorrow this and tomorrow that I've seen bags packed by the front door as I've walked into a home.

Bags that were packed, ready for a cruise, but that never took place.

Because that mom tripped on that final step, hit her head, went into a coma, and passed away, and left a family and an extended family devastated while the bag sat there.

I've seen the car scared.

Just five days after Andrew wrote his final matric exam.

Five days, his car spun out.

His parents had to make that decision to switch off those machines because there was no activity in his brain.

I've run out from my office when I was at Rosebank Union Church to the corner of Santon Drive and Wenny Mandela because a man had come through the intersection, had a heart attack, and somehow managed to pull his car off on the pavement.

And I saw them gathering and I ran down there.

There he was, slumped over the steering wheel, having just come down Santon Drive.

I was there when his family arrived, absolutely distraught.

When his business partner came down the hill and with a shock on his face, he said to me, But how can this be?

We were just having a meeting in Santon.

He was just on the way to our next 430 meeting and he's gone.

And today, for me personally, the brevity of life is personal.

Last year, on this very day, I celebrated my dad's birthday with him.

Today, on the 15th of March, his birthday, I celebrate without him.

And when I arrive early at a chapel or a church, and I wait for those mourners before the funeral to come, I always look down at the funeral brochure, at that little smudge of ink, that little dash that separates a date of birth from a date of death.

And I reflect that we're all living that dash.

Squeezed into that stripe is everything you've ever loved, everything you've ever worked for, everything you've ever built, ever pursued, ever given yourself to.

An entire existence shrunk down, if it were possible, into a little smudge.

And a hundred years from now, not one of us in this room will be here.

The sad, sobering reality that even the book of Ecclesiastes talks about is that if you were to pass away within a few weeks, you will be replaced at the office.

Why?

Because we've seen it with other colleagues that have gone.

And suddenly they're replaced.

We are replaceable.

The world moves on.

And the only thing that will never be forgotten, the only thing that will not be in vain is what you have done in the Lord.

Paul says so.

Let nothing move you, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

And so don't think that the greatest tragedy is losing everything now.

Don't believe the lie that the greatest thing is to lose your comfort now, to lose your possessions now, to lose the life that you planned.

Yes, those things are painful and we'll crieve with you.

But death is the ultimate thief.

It strips away and devalues every currency that you've ever accumulated in your life.

And if you knew today that your bank was going to fail tomorrow, you would do something about it today.

You would take those assets out and you would invest them somewhere secure, somewhere lasting, somewhere eternal, where Jesus said, Store up for yourself treasures in heaven where moth and rust and steel cannot, and thieves cannot steal and destroy.

Maybe we'd look at people like my friends Martin and Petro, who were forced to flee Turkey, given up their comfortable lives in Pretoria.

He was a forensic scientist, felt God's call, learned Turkish, went to Turkey, and in that missionary office when they were out for the day, and five young guys came in and tortured and slaughtered their colleagues that were there.

That seems like a tragedy.

Martin could probably never step foot in Turkey again because maybe he'll be arrested.

I have no idea.

But that thrust him out to say, Lord, what's the next horizon?

And God led him to France.

The greatest population of Turkish people outside of Turkey is in France.

And now at least 10 churches are planted.

My previous church sends a mission team to them once a year to go.

They're meeting new believers, they're watching the baptisms to see what God has wrought.

Or maybe we'd say, My friends Arkadi and Anaker, their lives are a tragedy because they're Ukrainian.

And when the war came, they literally had to tell their kids, hey, we're locking the flat, everything we leave behind.

We've got to get out of there because their eldest son, Mesha, has type 1 diabetes.

He had to part with his coin collection that he had got from missionaries all around the world.

He was trying to get every coin from every single currency, locking it up, this little boy trying to fathom what does God's call mean for me.

And then them fleeing their home, their youngest, being three months old, no supplies.

And now serving God in Poland, where there's this harvest of Ukrainian refugees who are coming to know Christ because of their faithfulness there.

We have it backward.

It's not a tragedy to lose your life for Christ.

You know what's a tragedy?

The real tragedy is to clutch life so close to your chest, to fill it with things that cannot last and things that are going to be lost in the end anyway.

And you know what kept me up late last night as your pastor?

It's not that you may lose your comforts, it's that you might waste your life.

It's that I might waste my life.

That after almost 37 weeks in the book of Romans, having heard the glories of the gospel, that we might walk out of here and be unchanged and say, Lord, another great series, business as usual.

Will your dash matter?

Will you pray prayers that will outlast your life?

Will you make investments that go far beyond your 80 years?

Are you spending your life where Christ is not known?

Because if your life is not being spent, it is being wasted.

It's not being spent for him, it's being wasted.

Jesus said, whoever wants to save their life will lose it.

But whoever loses their life for me in the gospel will save it.

Only one life.

Only what's done for Christ will last.

So Lord, we just come before you.

We ask you to grant us hearts, hearts like Paul's that are transformed, not by manpower, not by willpower, but transformed by the gospel.

Lord Jesus, thank you that you didn't stay comfortable, that you left the comforts of glory, that you gave yourself for us.

We were the unreached people group, we were the ones that did not know about you.

Lord, it was not your nails that held you to the cross, it was your love and you came for us.

Transform our hearts, Lord, and we will gladly spend our brief lives for the glory of Christ and for the reaching of the words.

Lord, may we echo those words that Jim Elliott said as he died at the end of that spear.

That Lord, he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep anyway to gain that which he cannot lose.

Search our hearts today, Lord, and lead us forward, we pray.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

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