Life Together | To Reach The Lost

Welcome to the First Preds Sermon Podcast, where each week we dive into scripture, wrestle with truth, and discover how faith intersects our lives.

God's word meets us where we are, challenging, shaping, and calling us into something greater.

No matter where you are on your journey, you belong here.

And we're praying that this sermon might help you take a next step in faith towards Jesus.

Hey, let's dive into today's message together.

Good morning, church.

I'll be reading from Romans 15, verses 14 through 22.

Romans 15:14–22

It's Romans 15, verses 14 through 22.

Romans 15:14–22

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

Yet I have written you quite boldly on some points to remind you of them again, because of the grace God gave me to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles.

He gave me the priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God, so that the Gentiles might become an offering acceptable to God, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.

Therefore, I glory in Christ Jesus in my service to God.

I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me, in leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done, by the power of signs and wonders, through the power of the Spirit of God.

So from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ.

It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else's foundation.

Rather, as it is written, those who were not told about him will see, and those who have not heard will understand.

This is why I have often been hindered from coming to you.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Let's pray.

Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe.

We thank you for the ways in which you have spoken and continue to speak to us in your word.

We pray for the Holy Spirit to move in this place, move in our hearts, we pray.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Well, as a person who moved to Colorado Springs two years ago, I finally made it over to the Colorado Pioneers Museum.

Yes, and I learned, I get it's an it's a beautiful historic building full of artifacts and artwork.

And I learned about soapbox derbies and the Western Street Breakfast and um innovative health care and grasshopper plagues.

There's a lot about the grasshoppers.

But throughout the museum, what I saw was stories of survivors and philanthropists and heroes.

I was struck by the pioneer spirit that is a part of this city's DNA.

Pioneers are people who are visionaries, they are resourceful, they are ambitious.

Pioneers are not afraid to follow their hearts and go somewhere new and blaze a path for others.

The museum made me pause and ask: what would Colorado Springs look like without the faith and fortitude of those courageous people who went before us?

Well, the Apostle Paul is also a pioneer.

His ministry left a missionary footprint that still inspires us to step into the unknown for the sake of the gospel.

But this passage really isn't about Paul.

This passage is about a God who still calls us into his plan for salvation and the good news that continues to move outward to a people who do not know Jesus Christ as Lord.

Throughout this sermon series, we have seen that Paul is leading a diverse and somewhat fractured community through instructions on how to practice life together, how to truly be those who live in unity, those who practice grace, those who love one another in what we could consider a cultural pressure cooker.

He wanted to provide them with guidance and help them stay focused on the work set before them, specifically the ministry to the Gentiles.

He begins, I myself am convinced, my brothers and sisters, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with knowledge and competent to instruct one another.

Yet I have written to you quite boldly on some points to remind you of them again, because of the grace God gave me to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles.

Now, Paul is doing a few things here.

It sounds like he's kind of trying to flatter them, doesn't it?

But what he is doing is he's justifying this long instructional letter to a church he didn't even plant.

He's also showing respect for those who currently lead the church, and he's indicating trust in their qualifications for ministry that will most likely coincide with his own.

Paul and the other apostles had been commissioned by Jesus.

They had been sent out to proclaim and to teach and to heal.

So Rome was a strategic base for this work.

It was like a launching point towards Spain and the western edge of the Empire.

Wait, which way's west?

That way now.

The western edge of the empire.

In the sanctuary, it's like this, but here it's like that.

So he wanted to be launched out of Rome into the West, into really the unknown.

He shares with the Romans here about this unique calling as the apostle to the Gentiles who were non-Jewish nations, including the Greeks and the Romans.

So he writes, He gave me the priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God so that the Gentiles might become an offering acceptable to God, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.

Now, this is actually quite bold.

It's the only place in the New Testament where an apostle describes their own ministry in priestly terms, but he uses it for a purpose.

He wants the list, the hearers of that letter, the readers of the letter, to see the work of evangelism as worship, presenting people to God so that God will receive the glory.

Have you ever looked at proclaiming the gospel in this way?

Well, John Piper explains, consider the aim of world missions.

It is, simply put, the worship of God.

The reason the universe exists is that creatures might have the joy of worshiping God.

Therefore, missions exist where worship doesn't.

Paul is actually not presenting a new concept to us.

In the book of Exodus, God called Israel to be a kingdom of priests.

And the prophet Isaiah, he saw a day when the news of God's glory would reach distant islands and people from every nation would stream to the holy mountain brought as offerings, similar to how Israel brought grain in clean vessels.

God even promised to make some of these outsiders, these other people priests.

And what this meant for the Gentiles was actually quite significant.

Gentiles were completely excluded from temple worship in Jerusalem.

They were literally contained in a section called the court of the Gentiles by a low stone wall.

And you know what else was there?

Biblical warning signs.

They said, keep out, don't come any closer to the holy spaces.

You are not allowed to cross that barrier.

So Paul serving as a priest now presents those very people to God as an offering.

The inclusion of the Gentiles was always, always a part of God's plan to unite the entire world in worship.

And what Isaiah saw from far off, Christ accomplished on the cross.

Paul says it in Ephesians 2, he says, You who were once far off, far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.

For he himself is our peace and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.

When Jesus died, the temple veil was torn in two.

The Lamb of God gave himself once for all, and the way in to God's holy presence was open to every nation.

That low stone barrier was figuratively demolished.

So the Gentiles in that moment became a holy and acceptable offering, and that was only possible through Christ's blood, through his sacrifice on the cross.

But Paul's priestly language in this chapter builds on chapter 12, this familiar passage that says, Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.

This is your true and proper worship.

At this point in the letter, Paul had spent 11 chapters telling the story of what God had done for us, reminding us of our need for forgiveness and salvation, justification by faith, and God's inseparable eternal love.

And it's only at that point that he asks anything of us.

So our offering is a simple, thankful response to a love that we can never earn.

And when our lives are offered in worship, as worship, people take notice.

Your neighbor, your neighbor who who sees how you how you care for them, your coworker who sees how you handle a really hard weak, or maybe your friend or family member who sees you overflowing with the fruits of the spirit, right?

Hope and patience and joy.

And so what I struggle with the most self-control.

Last Friday, I got to sing in the citywide worship choir.

Um, got to stand in the in the sanctuary in the choir loft and look out on hundreds of people worshiping the Lord.

And I thought of this passage.

I thought, wow, God, there are thousands of generations worshiping together, generations of living sacrifices who gave of their time or their love or even their finances so that people from all over our city could come together and worship.

And I think a great cloud of witnesses was absolutely singing along, giving glory to God right there with us.

And Paul exemplifies what it means to give God the glory in everything.

He literally writes, Therefore I glory in Christ Jesus in my service to God.

And this verse actually links that worship and witness.

Because through worship, we celebrate what God has done, and we are sent out to share the gospel.

And this isn't just when we gather for worship here.

Worship can happen anywhere.

But it sends us out to share the gospel, and then people are brought to Christ.

And then if you think about the cycle, those people are then brought to worship and sent out to share the gospel.

And I got to see that cycle, that movement firsthand.

Um, when I was leading a group of young adults in Nepal back in 2013, we were serving with Koinania Potton Church, a church who had a bold goal of planting 500 churches by 2020.

And they were well on the way to doing it, and they did accomplish that goal.

So we got to be involved in this cycle.

And we got to go visit all these church plants.

And one of the hymns that became our favorite once we knew what the words meant.

Honestly, I was like, you know, this is me singing in Nepal, right?

Like I'm just clapping along, trying to catch the words.

And then I went to our one of our hosts and said, Could you translate this for us so we know what we're singing?

He was so happy to do so because it was one of his favorite hymns.

And what it tells us in the verses and the chorus, it tells us that the gospel goes from a person to a family, a family to a village, a village to a province, a province to Nepal, and Nepal to the world.

And I hear that hymn.

I hear that hymn when I look at Paul's map from Jerusalem that goes all the way around to Illyricum and on to the ends of the earth.

Paul writes here that I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me in leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done.

By the power of the Holy Spirit, by the power of signs and wonders, through the power of the Spirit of God.

So from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ.

It's a reminder that it is only by the power of the Holy Spirit that all may know the name of Jesus.

And Pastor Tim reminded us last week of Paul's blessing and benediction in verse 13 of this chapter that says, May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Pastor Tim asked us, How are