Roman 15_22-33 When God's Will Rewrites Your Plans： Paul's Final Mission
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Summary
In this episode, we discuss the need for unity in the church, and how that unity is a vital witness of the church to the world. Today's sermon is from Pastor Ken's sermon series "Out of the Box Church" from the 2019 General Conference, "Out Of The Box Church."
Transcript
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Over the past few weeks, we have seen Paul push for unity within particular groups of people.
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First, it was between strong and weak Christians, calling the strong to limit their liberties for the sake of the weak,
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and calling secondarily for the weak to limit their sensitivities for the strong.
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Next, we saw the unity between Christ-believing Jews and Christ-believing Gentiles.
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And we worked through the prophetic evidence of the legitimacy of the Jews,
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even though they were persecuting Christians and the vast majority of them had rejected the Messiah.
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and the legitimacy of the Gentiles, who had no right to the kingdom of God outside of God's mercy.
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And again, this effort was to bring a oneness and a unity in the early New Covenant church.
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Now, I want to just spend a minute before I start just talking about unity, just for a minute.
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Unity is a vital witness of the church to the world.
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Jesus in John 17 says that our unity is the means that the world will know that God sent the Messiah.
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And in fact, I've even found to the pagan world, unity is often more convincing than truth.
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which is a weird thing to say but it's why the cults are so extremely attractive
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it's why people run to mormonism it's why people have run to islam
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unity is powerful it's why many people right now are running to roman catholicism or eastern
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orthodoxy. There's a perceived sense of unity in a chaotic world. There's a perceived sense
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of order in a world that seems so divided. There's a perceived sense of unity where you
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feel like you have no place or belonging. Unfortunately, Protestants struggle with this
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our application of the doctrine of sola scriptura, which is an
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the execution of sola scriptura, it's created a kind of a
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we have gone to non-denominationalism. And number two, it's driven people away from these historic
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confessions into more of what I would call doctrinal minimalism. Now, as a result,
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it's left many of the Protestants autonomous, unaccountable. It's left us to interpret
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scripture for ourselves, and it's nearly impossible to cultivate unity among all these denominations.
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Instead of producing reformed Catholicity, we produced reformed cannibalism.
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The Baptist calls the Presbyterian a heretic, and then the Bible church guy over here calls
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the Lutherans false teachers, all because they lack this kind of unifying church authority
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and a shared confession of faith in which they can align on primary matters
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and then also work together around secondary and tertiary matters.
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Now, this is why Kingsway is a confessional church.
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And we don't simply hold to Sola Scriptura, but we also hold to the Westminster's interpretation of Scripture.
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Because if we all just have our Bibles, try to find unity without a confession of faith.
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Every one of us is going to come to our own emotional response and interpretation based off of our own experience and maturity.
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But when you can unify under a confession, it allows us to be unified even while we might not all understand every dimension of that confession.
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In essentials, unity. In non-essentials, liberty. And in all things, charity.
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I think that is a great quote to remember as we interact not only with other churches, but with one another.
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Now, as we get into the content of the sermon, I began preaching through Romans in March of 2022.
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And it was just a few families, a few of you were there.
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And it was in our house in Cottonwood, Arizona, as we planted this church.
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And I say that because today we start the closing discourse or the epilogue of Romans.
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And in fact, I expect that we will complete Romans within less than six weeks.
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And I just thought it would be helpful to give you a brief overview of Romans since we've gone through nearly 15 chapters.
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Chapters 1 and 3 focused on man's need to be righteous.
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Being totally depraved and in need for righteousness.
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Chapters 4 and 5 addressed justification through Christ alone, by faith alone and Christ alone.
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And chapters 9 through 11 discussed the doctrine of election.
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I think about all those sermons that I preached through those sections, and what a blessing that was.
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In chapter 12, Paul's transition from belief to behavior.
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And we saw in chapter 13, he was dealing with the Christian conduct towards civil government.
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And chapters 14 and 15 are conduct with unity between one another.
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And then the remaining chapter, verses half of 15 all the way through 16, will be on the closing discourse of Paul on this epistle.
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Now, during my study over these three years, I have listened to many sermons from other pastors, including R.C. Sproul, including John MacArthur,
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Some of the other great reformers, commentaries, Charles Hodge, lots of stuff from Banner of Truth.
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But I probably listened to the most of Martin Lloyd-Jones sermons, who preached 366 sermons through the Book of Romans.
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Which, if you calculate how many years that is, it's what?
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There we go. Now, what's interesting is that Martin Lloyd-Jones stopped preaching at Romans 15, verse 4.
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He just ended right there. So, my sermon two sermons ago would have been the last sermon.
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Why did he stop there? Now, in his own words, he felt that he had already addressed the major
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theological and doctrinal matters of the book of Romans and that the rest of the book was really
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just dealing with closing remarks and discourses on the epilogue. Now, I believe the doctor,
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as he is affectionately known in theological circles, got this wrong. And I believe that
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as we finish these final sermons, you're going to see what great beauty there is,
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even in these closing discourses on chapter 15 and 16. Now, before I read verses 14, I want you
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to see that it doesn't function without the context of verse 13. So go ahead and open up
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your Bibles, and we are going to read chapter 15, verse 13 and 14. So in verse 13, Paul says,
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May the God of hope fill, keep that word in your mind, fill you with all joy and peace in believing,
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So that by the power of the Holy Spirit, you may abound in hope.
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Then in verse 14, Paul says, I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness,
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filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another.
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Now, I want you to notice Paul's use of fill in verse 13, and then his use of full and filled in verses 14.
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So what Paul is saying here in verse 14 is that he's content.
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He's even pleased with these Gentiles that God has filled them with all joy and hope and believing.
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full of goodness. What that really means is they're full of the fruit
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And that they are likely filled with knowledge, which
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means they're able to understand the fundamentals of the Gospel.
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But even in their fullness, they are still lacking
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something is what we see in verse 15. It says, but on some points I have written to you very boldly
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by way of reminder, way of reminder, because the grace given by God to be a minister of Jesus
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Christ to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God. So that there's your purpose
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clause, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy
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So here, Paul explains that even though the Romans are full of hope, they're full of
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goodness, they're full of knowledge, able to instruct one another, that there is still
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In other words, Paul is clarifying the entire purpose of why he wrote this letter.
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He wants them to know it's not because he thinks that they're spiritually immature or incompetent.
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It's because he wants to remind them of vital, important truths that will strengthen them.
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that's why he wrote romans it's not because they don't know anything it's because they know a lot
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but they need a reminder now this is an important pastoral distinction because
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to emphasize certain points not because i don't believe that the congregation
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knows the content, but because the congregation
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calling as a pastor, Acts 20, verse 28, it's one of my
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favorite verses. It says, pay careful attention to yourselves
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and to all the flock. This is speaking to the elders in Ephesus, in which the Holy Spirit
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has made you overseers to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own
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blood. Proverbs 27, 23 also says, know well the condition of your flocks and give attention to
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your herds. It's a pastor's job to know the condition, spiritually, of the congregation,
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which is hard to do when you have a thousand people. And another reason why we want to keep
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this church somewhat small, and we have put even limits on our
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not only what the Christians in Rome already know, but
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what they need to be reminded of. And now this is an excellent
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What do they already know that they might need a reminder?
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Men, how often do you fight battles with your wives
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without thinking about washing her mind with the water of the word?
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Sometimes fixing your marriage is actually just opening your Bible
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So according to the Apostle Paul here, the purpose of this entire epistle is to remind the Gentile believers
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in the largest and most influential city on earth at this time,
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the fundamentals of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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Then in the latter part of verse 15, we see this word because.
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Now we're smart Bible interpreters here, right?
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We're not going to be 20 years in and still not understand how to interpret scripture.
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Okay, it says, because look at the latter part of verse 15, because is a causal clause.
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It gives you the ground, the reasoning, the cause for why he said what he said.
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It says, because of the grace given to me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles
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in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that, purpose clause,
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the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.
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okay first i want to point out paul's recognition that his ministry is not a burden but a grace
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his ministry is not a burden but a grace now if you've ever read second corinthians
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where paul talks about his burdens it's a pretty amazing statement what he's saying here
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now this is personally convincing or sorry convicting for me
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because as a minister at times ministry can feel like a thousand pound weight not like a grace
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but when you step back when i step back and i look at the impact the lord has made
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through my ministry through this church you can see the grace you can see the grace
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To use a fallen instrument, fallen instruments, the other pastoral staff here, to bring about redemption or order in a broken world is a real mercy, especially when you know my story and my past.
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Now, R.C. Sproul caught something really beautiful in this text.
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But the apostle goes on to say that by grace, he is a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles and the priestly service of the gospel of God.
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Now, I know I could feel like eons ago that we were in chapter one of Romans.
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But Paul wrote this letter likely in a couple of days.
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Now, I'm a writer, I've written several books, and I often try to do a mention in my conclusion or a call back to my introduction.
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It's pretty common in writing, is that you bring the end back to the beginning.
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The last time the apostle used this term gospel of God was in verse 1 of chapter 1.
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He didn't use it the entire time in all 16 or all 15 chapters in between.
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But he mentions it in chapter 1 verse 1, which is the prologue.
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And now he's mentioning it here again in the epilogue 15 or chapter 15.
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So, what this signals is that the wraparound theme of the book of Romans is the gospel of God.
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And second, I want you to look back just a few words before gospel of God.
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And you're going to see this really interesting phrase, priestly service of the gospel of God.
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All of you with a Catholic or Anglican background are going, there it is.
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Now, much of the Reformed world rejects the idea that pastors are priests.
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We use the term bishop, pastors, overseer, elder, minister.
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but the word priest outside of the Anglican tradition generally is not typically used,
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So first, I want you to point out, or I want to point out to you,
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that this term is what's called a hapax legomena.
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It's a Latin word, and it means that it's only used once in the New Testament.
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So there's a handful of these words that are only used one time in the New Testament.
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And every time I see one, I go, I want to do a word study on this.
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He chose to use this word that doesn't exist in all of the rest of the New Testament.
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And it is the Greek usage of the Hebrew word to describe the intercessory work of a priest.
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In other words, Paul is trying to communicate the mediatory aspect of his ministry to the Gentiles.
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So what does that mean to us as Protestant, Reformed Christians?
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Paul uses this word to speak of his ministry of preaching
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the priesthood of the Old Testament end quote okay
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great quote I don't buy it I think there's something deeper than that
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that was the beginning of my study of this and I thought oh that's pretty good that's a great
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answer. It's not, actually. I think that that's something significantly more, and we're going to
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get into that. So let's just read all of verse 16 again. So look down your Bibles,
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down your Bibles. Paul says, to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly
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service of the gospel of God, so that, pay attention here, why is he doing all this? So that
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But the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.
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Paul does not view himself as a priest by identity.
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not offering animal sacrifices to the lord on an altar but as he is offering the gentiles
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as a sacrifice on an altar that's what's being said here one scholar said way better than i
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could have he said quote though he is involved in the dusty mundane business of traveling the
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ancient world on foot, suffering from exposure, threats, beatings, and rejection. In Paul's heart
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of hearts, he sees himself in priestly garb in the temple, lifting up the souls of the Gentiles
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on the altar, which then ascend as a sweet-smelling fragrance to Christ. Fully apprehended and
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appreciated, this is a dazzling picture, end quote. Now, I thought that was beautiful. And
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what is really being said here? That's the question. What is really being said here?
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Paul is writing this epistle as a reminder, by the grace of God, as a priestly service
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Now, I'm going to give a little bit more explanation
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that says, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, present your bodies as a
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living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. In other words,
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Paul sees his ministry. This is very fascinating as a pastor. It might not be as fascinating to
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you, but here it is. Paul sees his ministry as more than evangelistic labor.
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He sees it through this priestly lens where each soul is gathered, it's sacrificed,
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it's a burnt offering, which means the burnt offerings were that you would burn the whole
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thing up. It's a complete sacrifice. As a fragrant offering upon the altar of his ministry.
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It's very rich in Old Covenant language and would make total sense for a man like Paul who understood the Old Covenant practices of the Pharisaical and the Levitical rites.
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And so, notice how it closes, though, in verse 16. I want you to look at it for a second.
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He says, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable.
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Paul makes it clear that even though he views his ministry as a priestly way,
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he's not like the old covenant priests who were responsible for making the sacrifices acceptable to God.
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instead he points out that it's the holy spirit who does the real work he understands that the
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holy spirit is making his sacrifice of the gentiles sanctified the holy spirit does the
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cleansing the holy spirit sets them apart to be holy the holy spirit makes them acceptable
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Which is why he says in the next verse, verse 17,
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he says, in Christ Jesus, pay attention, the emphasis is on the first part of the sentence.
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In Christ Jesus, then, I have reason to be proud of my work for God.
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But by word and deed, by power of signs and wonders,
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so that from Jerusalem and all the way to Illyricum,
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I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ.
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And therefore, I make it my ambition to preach the gospel.
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Not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else's foundation.
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But as it is written, citing a passage from Isaiah, he says,
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Those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand.
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It's the principle of ascribing glory and absorbing fault.
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It's the principle of ascribing glory and absorbing fault.
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This is the heart of a true minister, of a true priest.
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They understand that their work is only effectual
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When the fruit comes out, they look out the window towards God.
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Paul reminds us in 2 Corinthians 10, 17, he says,
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Now, the book of Romans, the book of Romans is considered the magnum opus of the New Testament.
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Even secularists counted as one of the most magnificent pieces of literature to ever cross the earth.
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It is truly a literary and theological masterpiece.
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So for Paul to close this epistle in the epilogue by reminding his audience that any fruit-bearing words spoken by him are truly the work of Christ in him.
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To me, it authenticates his ministry and it verifies his motives.
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And it gives us a great example of how we ought to be as Christians proclaiming Christ.
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Lastly, he closes by saying, therefore, I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named.
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But as it is written, those who have never been told of him will see.
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And those who have never heard will understand.
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Because the force behind his ministry is God, Paul makes it his ambition to preach the gospel.
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When I became the idea that God is sovereign over salvation.
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And that when I preach the gospel, it's not me persuading him into the kingdom of heaven.
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But it's God who through my words, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ,
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I remember when I learned that lesson, I wanted to go tell everybody about Christ.
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I'm batting a thousand because anybody who is intended to be saved through my ministry will be saved.
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Instead of turning to some pragmatic pageantry garbage
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where I'm going to try to apologetically convince you
0.97
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and that you should maybe believe in him because you're a sinner.
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No, you're not going to persuade people into the kingdom of God.
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In fact, the good news is only good because the bad news is bad.
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There's nothing that builds more confidence in a preacher
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than knowing that if I'm just faithful, the Lord's going to do the work.
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Who knows that he doesn't have to make the seed grow.
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No, just water it, plant it, water it, and wait.
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Now, a lot of you maybe are striving and toiling over loved ones.
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All you do is you just tell them that they're sinners.
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Show them the scriptures that tell them that they're sinners.
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The reality that God does heavy lifting shouldn't make us lazy, it should make us bold.
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People always go, if you're a Calvinist and you believe everybody's predestined,
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If God isn't sovereign, why would you ever evangelize?
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If God's not sovereign, it's up to me to persuade somebody
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I'm not going to evangelize because I'm not going to be able to do it
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In every letter, in every book, in every sermon, in every conversation, every act of evangelism
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and some random layman got up because the pastor couldn't make it in the snow.
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He starts delivering a message that you would never, ever believe is evangelistic.
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And all of a sudden, Charles Spurgeon, the great evangelist of London,
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is sitting there and boom, the Lord resurrects him
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It levels the playing field when God is doing the work.
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And then he qualifies this, and we'll get ready to close here in a second.
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He says, I aim to preach not where Christ has already been named.
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If you've ever met a missionary, especially a young man.
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they want to reach those who have never been reached
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The Greek word for apostle is apostolos, and it just means sent one.
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They're not coming into territory that is already chopped up.
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they're the ones doing the chopping. I always think there's a quote
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and they find out that roads have already been built.
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They don't realize that the pioneers are the ones that had the arrows in their back.
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America and you go, wow, this is already kind of a Christian town. We sing
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Christian Christmas carols for the courthouse lighting
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every Christmas. I'm building here, in a sense, on generations before us, their faithfulness.
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Now, in another sense, we planted this church in our home. And so there's a little bit of
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pioneering and there's a little bit of settling. But Paul says he wants to build where no one else
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has. Now, this aligns with Paul. 1 Corinthians 3.10 says, according to the grace of God given
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to me, like a skilled master builder, I laid a foundation, and someone else is building
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upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. End quote. So again, you can start
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to see the systematic nature of Paul. He knows what he's talking about. He is consistent
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throughout all of his corpus or his group of letters. 2 Corinthians 10, 15 through 16,
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it says, we do not boast beyond the limit of our labors of others, but our hope is that
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but Paul reveals that this desire for unreached territories
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actually his ability or his call to fulfill the prophecy
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in Isaiah 52 15 that says those who have not been told of him will see
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so Paul is saying my work is actually fulfilling that prophecy
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i'm that guy it's pretty amazing imagine seeing yourself as the fulfillment of an old testament
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prophecy so what's the takeaway what's the takeaway it's kind of a interesting passage
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of scripture what's the takeaway well i'll say it's this it's both man it's the man and the model
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i want us to pay attention to both the man and the model
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all of us are in some degree of ministry formally and informally but all of us have
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some ministry some of it's just ministering to those toddlers at your feet and those little
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kids in your house some of it is ministering to those men at your work some of them is
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it's actually something I think that it's even faithful
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Now, we can learn from the man, Paul, just the character and who he is.
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What's unique about Paul is that he boldly preached Christ where he was not known.
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He sought no glory for himself and all that he did.
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He built carefully on the foundation of Christ alone.
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And he continued to build out that foundation around Christ that cornerstone.
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He ascribed all of the glory and the fruit of his ministry to God.
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The word Gentile is just the Greek word for the word nation.
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literally go preach the gospel to every other nation but israel
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go and preach the gospel to the entire world and so let's learn from the man and from the model of
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paul as we continue through his epilogue over the next few weeks of this beautiful book of romans
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for your blessing that we would apply some of the principles