God’s Call to the Nations

Maybe Mack is right. Maybe this missionary call, first and foremost is informed by God’s word and inspired by God’s gospel. And maybe, just maybe if the Lord might bring us to a deeper reverence for this word tonight and a deeper love for this gospel tonight, and the inevitable result would be a death defying resolve to go to unreached peoples no matter how difficult or dangerous they might be.

So I’m going to bank on that. I want to invite you to turn to Romans 1 with me. There was a day when the people of God revered the word of God. They would gather together in scenes like we see in Nehemiah chapter 8. All that would take was the word of God being opened up and immediately everybody would stand to their feet. Not only would they stand, but as the word was read, they would raise their hands in worship.

How Do We Worship God?

As the word was read, they would cry out. Amen. Amen. Amen. Nehemiah 8 says, as the word was read, the people would bow down in worship with their faces to the ground, all out worship in response to the written and declared word of God. 2,500 or so years later, things have changed. What do we equate those kinds of actions today in our worship? People standing, raising their hands, calling out maybe if they’re extreme bowing down with their faces on the ground. When do we do these things? We do these things when the music starts, right?

And all it takes in our day, in our generations is the strum of a guitar and we’re on our feet and we’re lifting our hands, we’re shouting out. Is that a bad thing? Absolutely not. Nehemiah 12:27–47 is an incredible picture of musical worship. But the question I want to ask is what if we were a people, a generation who responded to God’s word like that?

What if all it took was the proclamation of the pure and powerful word of God to bring us to our feet, send our arms into the air cause us to cry out, amen, amen. And even to bow down unashamedly in the assembly with our faces to the ground, not thinking about what people might perceive but provoked to life, prostrate before the God of this word.

And what if all it took was the word of God to inspire the worship of God? What if God’s word had that kind of authority among us? What if God’s word roused that kind of affection in us? What if we loved God’s word like that? What if we revered it and honored it and submitted our lives to it like that? So tonight, I want to invite you to hear the word of God and as you hear it, to respond to it, whether that’s sitting, standing, lifting your hands and worship and crying out, amen, amen. Or bowing down with your faces to the ground.

Romans Chapter 1 says, Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God. The gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets, through his holy scriptures regarding his son who has to his human nature, was a descendant of David and who through the spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the son of God by the resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ, our Lord.

God’s Calls Us to the Nations

Through him and for his name sake, we receive grace and an apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith and you also among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, to all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints, grace and peace to you from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being reported all over the world, God whom I serve on my whole heart in preaching the gospel of his son is my witness.

How constantly I remember you and my prayers at all times and I pray that now at last by God’s will the way they may open for me to come to you. I long to see you, so I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong. That is that you and I even be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith. I do not want you to be unaware brothers, that I have planned many times to come to you but have been prevented from doing so until now in order that I might have a harvest among you just that I’ve had among the other Gentiles.

I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greek, both to the wise and the foolish. That is why I’m so eager to preach the gospel also to you At Rome, I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes. For in the gospel, a righteousness from God is revealed a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written, the righteous will live by faith.

The Wrath of God

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth of God by their wickedness. It’s what may be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them. Since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood from what has been made so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him.

But their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools. In exchange the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like moral man and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore, God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies of one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served, created things rather than the creator who is forever praised. Amen.

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lust. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way men have been in natural relations with women were inflamed with lust for one another, men committed indecent acts with other men and received themselves the due penalty for their perversion. Furthermore, to say, do not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind to not to be done. They’ve become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. They’re full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice.

They are gossips, slanderers, God, haters, insulate, arrogant, boastful, invent ways of doing evil. They disobey their parents. They’re senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God’s righteous decree, those who do such things deserve death. They not only continue to do these very things, but also approve of those who practice them.

Pass No Judgment

You therefore have no excuse you who pass judgment on them. For whatever point you judge the other, do yourself because you who pass judgment do the same things and we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things as based on truth. So when you, a mere man, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you’ll escape God’s judgment or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience? Not realize that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance, but because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath.

When his righteous judgment will be revealed, God will give to each person according to what he has done. For those who by persistence in doing good, see glory on and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and reject the truth, follow evil. There will be wrath and anger. There will be trouble and distress for everyone who does evil. First for the Jew, then for the Gentile.

But glory, honor and peace for everyone who is good first for the Jew, then for the Gentile, for God does not show favoritism. All who sin apart from the law will be judged apart from the law. All who sin under law will be judged by the law for not those who hear the law, who are righteous in God’s sight, but it’s those who obey the law, who be declared righteous.

Indeed, when Gentiles do not have the law do by nature things required by the law, there are law for themselves as they show the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness and their thoughts now, accusing now even defending them, this will take place in the day when God will judge men’s secrets through Jesus Christ as my gospel declares.

Now you, if you call yourself a Jew, if you rely on the law and brag about your relationship to God, if you know his will and prove of what is superior because you’ve been instructed by the law, if you’re convinced that you’re a guide for the blind, a light for those in the dark and instructor of the foolish and a teacher of infants because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth, you then who teach others, do not teach yourself.

You preach against stealing, do not steal. You say that people should not commit adultery. Do you commit adultery? You have whore idols. Do you rob temples? Do you who brag about the law? You dishonor God by breaking the law as the Trent in God’s name is blasting among the Gentiles because of you. Circumcision has value if you observe the law, but if you break the law, you’ve become as though you have not been circumcised. Those who are not circumcised keep the law’s requirements.

Well, they’re not regarded as though they were circumcised. The one who’s not circumcised physically and yet obeys the law will continue. Who even though you have the written code and circumcision are a lawbreaker. A man is not a Jew if he’s won outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. A man is a Jew if he’s won inwardly and circumcision is circumcision of the heart by the spirit, not by the written code such a man’s praises, not from men, but from God.

What advantage then is there in being a Jew? Well, value is there in circumcision. Well much in every way. First of all, they’ve been entrusted with the very words of God. What if some did not have faith? Will their lack of faith nullify God’s faithfulness? Not at all. Let God be true in every man a liar. Just as it said is written. So maybe prove right when you speak and prevail when you judge.

Our Unrighteousness Brings Out God’s Righteousness

But if our unrighteousness brings out God’s righteousness more clearly, what should we say then? That God is unjust and bringing his wrath on us. I’m using a human argument, certainly not if that were so. How could God judge the world? But someone might argue, if my falseness enhances God’s truthfulness and so increases his glory, then why am I still commit him as a sinner? Why not say as we are being slander reported as saying, and some claim that we say let’s do evil, the good may result their condemnation is deserved.

What shall we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at all. We’ve already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all understand as it is written. There is no one who’s righteous, not even one, no one who understands, no one who seeks God, no one who is good, not even one. Their throats are open graves, their tongues practice a seat. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood, ruin and misery mark their ways and the way of peace they do not know.

And we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law so that every mouth is silenced and the whole world is held accountable to God. Therefore, no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law. Rather through the law we become conscious of our sin.

But now a righteousness from God apart from law has been made known. And this righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There’s no difference for all of sin and fall short the glory of God and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice because in his forbearance he left the sins committed beforehand, unpunished it did to demonstrate his justice in the present time so as to be just, and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

The God of All Nations

Where then it’s boasting, it’s excluded. What principle, that observing the law, no, but not a faith. We maintain that a amen is justified by faith. Apart from observing the law is God, the God of Jews only? No. Gentiles? He’s not the God of Gentiles. Too, yes, Gentiles too says, there’s only one God who will judge the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised. Through that same faith do we then nullify the law by that’s faith, not at all.

Rather we uphold the law. What then should we say that Abraham, our forefather discovered in this matter? If in fact Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about, but not before God. What does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. Now, when a man works, his wages are not credit to him as a gift but as an obligation.

However, to the man who does not work, but he trusts God or justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness. David says the same thing when he speaks to the blessedness of the man to whom God will credit righteous apart from works. Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him.

Is this, is this blessed? It’s only for the circumcised or also for the uncircumcised. We’ve been saying that Abraham’s faith was credited him as righteousness. Under what circumstances was accredited. Was it after he was circumcised or before? It was not after, but before. Abraham received a sign of circumcision, sealed the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. So then he’s the father of all who believed it, have not been circumcised in order the righteous might be credited to them.

And he’s the father of the circumcised who not only are circumcised, but who walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised. It was not through law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he’d be the heir of the world. But through the righteousness, it comes by faith. For those who live by law are heirs, faith has no value and the promise is worthless because law brings wrath.

The Promise Comes By Faith

And when there is no law, there is no transgression. Therefore, the promise comes by faith. Sin may be like grace may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring just he’s the father of us all, just said to him, I’ll make your father of many nations. He’s our father on the side of God and whom he believed. The God who gives life to the dead and who calls things that are not as though they were.

Against, against all hope Abraham and hope believed and became the father of many nations just has been said to him, social, your offspring be without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as was good as dead since he was about a hundred years old that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.

Rejoice In the Future Hope

This is why it was credit to him as righteousness and the words it was credit to him were not written for him alone, but for us, for us who believe in him who raised Jesus, our Lord from the dead, he was delivered over to death for our sins, raised the life for our justification. Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we’ve gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.

We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so we rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance. Perseverance, character and character hope and hope does not disappoint us because God has poured out his love into our arts by the Holy Spirit whom he has given us. You see at just the right time while we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.

Very, very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man though for a good man, someone might possibly dare to die. God demonstrates his love for us in this while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Therefore, since we have been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him. For if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his son, how much more having been reconciled shall we be saved through his life?

How long is this? So we rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation, therefore just a sin into the world through one man and death through sin. And this way death came to all men because all sin for before the law was given, sin was in the world, but sin is not taken into account when there is no law.

Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even though those do not sin by breaking of command, as did Adam who’s a pattern of the one to come. But the gift of God is not like the trespass, but the gift is not like the trespass for if the many died by the trespass of the one man. How much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man Jesus Christ overflowed the many again?

The gift of God is not like the result of the one man’s sin. The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification for if by the trespass of the one man death reigned through that one man. How much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ?

Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men. So also, the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. For just as through the disobedience of the one man, the many were made sinners. So also through the obedience of the one man, the many will be made righteous. The law was answered.

The trespass might increase or sin increase, grace increased all the more so that just a sin reigned in death, grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

What should we say then? Shall we sin? If we go sinning so that grace may increase by no means we died to sin. How can we live in it any longer? Don’t you know that all those of you’re baptized in Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We therefore buried with him through baptism in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

If we’ve been united with him like this and his death, we will certainly also be united with him as a resurrection. Yes, we know that our old self has been crucified with him. The body of sin might be done away with that we should no longer be slaves to sin so free because we’ve died to sin with him.

Now if we die with him, we believe that we will also live with him. But we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again. Death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all and the life he lives, he lives to God. So, do not let sin reign in your moral body so your body and it’s evil desires and do not offer the parts of your body to sin as instruments of wickedness.

Offer Yourself to God

Rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought to death to life and off the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. For sin shall not be your master because you are not under law, but under grace. What then shall we sin? Because we’re not under law, but under grace, by no means don’t you know that when you offer yourself to someone to obey a slaves, your slaves, the one whom you obeyed, whether your slaves to sin, which leads to death or to obedience, which leads to righteousness.

But thanks be to God that though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You’ve been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things that you are now ashamed of? Plus things result in death.

But now by dying by what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we now the benefit leads to holiness and the result is eternal life because the wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. You’re not, no brothers. I’m speaking to men. Notal law, the law has authority over man only as long as he lives. For example, by law, a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he’s alive.

But if her husband dies, she’s released from law of marriage. So then if she marries another man while her husband’s still alive, she’s called an adulterer. But if her husband dies, she’s released from the law of marriage is not an adulterous. Even though she marries another man. So are my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ in order that you might belong to another.

To him who was raised from the dead that we might bear fruit to God. But when we were controlled by the sinful pattern nature, the sinful passages aroused by the law where work within our members. So we bore fruit for death. But now by dying to what once bound us, we’ve been released from the law. So we now serve in the new way of the spirit, not in the old way of the written code.

Sin and Law

What shall we say then? It’s a law of sin. Certainly not. Indeed we not known what sin was except through the law. I would not have known what a coveting really was. If the law had not said do not covet but sin seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment produced in me every kind of covet desire.

And so I was alive apart from law. When the commandment saying sin sprang to life and I died, I found the very commitment that was intended to bring life, I actually brought death. For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment deceived me and through the commandment put me to death. So the law is holy and the commandment is holy, righteous and good to that which is good then become death to me by no means, but in order that sin might be recognized as sin if we produce death in me through what was good.

So that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful. And we know that law is spiritual, but I’m unspiritual sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do for what I want to do. I do not do, but I hate, I do. And if I do what I don’t want to do, I agree the law is good as it is. It’s no longer I would do it, but it’s sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is in my sinful nature for the desire to do what is good, but I can’t carry it out for what I do is not the good I want to do. No the evil I do not want to do this I keep on doing. It’s as I do these things, it’s no longer I would do it, but it’s sin living in me that does it.

So, I find this law at work and I want to do good evil’s right there with me and my inner being a delight in God’s law. But I see another law at work within the members of my body waging war against the law of law of God at work within my mind. What a wretched man I am. Who will rescue me from this body of death. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

So then I myself, my mind was slave to God’s law, but in the simple nature, a slave to the law of sin. Therefore, therefore, therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Because the law of the spirit of life has set me free from the law of sin and death. For the law was powerless to do and then it was weakened by the sinful nature God did by sending his own son and the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering.

And so he condemned sin in sinful man in order the righteous requirements of law by be fully met in us who do not live according to sinful nature according to the Spirit. So those who live according to the sin sinful nature have their mindset of what that nature desires. Those who live according to the spirit have their mindset of one, the spirit desires mind of sinful man is death, mind controlled by the spirit. It’s life and peace.

Man’s Sinful Nature

The sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. The sinful, those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. You however are controlled not by the sinful nature, by the spirit. It’s the spirit of God lives in you. If the spirit of Christ and your body is dead because of sin, your spirit is alive because of righteousness.

And if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, then he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal body through his spirit who lives inside of you. Therefore, brothers we have an obligation and it’s not the sinful nature to live according to it. For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die.

But if by the spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live because those who are led by the spirit of God are sons of God. You did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear. You received the spirit of son ship. And by him we cry, Ava, Father, the spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. And if we’re children, then we’re heirs, heirs with God, co-heirs with Christ.

If indeed we may share in his sufferings one day we’re going to share in his glory, I consider our presence sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits an eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed for the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, by the will of the one who subjected it in hopes the creation itself will be liberated from its present of decay and brought in the glorious freedom of the children of God.

We know the whole creation has been groaning as in the pain of childbirth right up to the present time. We ourselves are the first fruits of the spirit grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies for in this hope we were saved. But hope that seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has. But if we hope for, we do not yet have we wait for it patiently in the same way the Spirit helps us in our weakness.

Share The Gospel With The Nations

We don’t know what to pray for, but the Spirit intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express and who searches our hearts knows the mind of the spirit because the spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will. And we know that all things work together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose. For those God for knew, he predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and those he predestined, he also called those. He called he also justified. Those He justified. He also glorified. What then shall we say in response to this?

If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also along with him graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It’s God who justifies. Who is He that condemns Christ? Jesus who died more than that, who’s raised a life is at the right hand of God and is interceding for us.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword as it’s written for your sake? We face death all day long. We’re considered as sheep to be slaughtered. No, no, and all these things. We are more than conquerors through him who loves us for I’m convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons through the present, nor the future, nor any powers, neither I nor death, nor anything else in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. This is the gospel and this gospel is good.