Romans No.1 Proud of the Gospel

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 in the holy scriptures regarding his son who as 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 his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord. Through him and for his namesake we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith and you also are 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 with my whole heart in preaching the gospel of his Son is my witness how constantly I remember you in my prayers at all times and I pray that now at last by God's will the way may be opened for me to come to you.

I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong. That is that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith. I do not want you to be unaware brothers that I 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 as I have had among the other Gentiles.

I am bound both to Greeks and non Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish. That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are at Rome. I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes, first for the Jew then for the Gentile.

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. It was the year 56 AD.

Paul was in the company of his friend Gaius. He was wintering in Corinth and Gaius possibly was the one who made available to him a secretary by the name of Tertius. Paul as the year went by and 56 broke into 57 was planning his evangelistic strategy in the years to come.

You see he done a fairly good job in fact an amazing job of preaching the gospel in what we now as Turkey and Greece. He got one or two things left to do and then he thought in the providence of God it would be good for him to move into territory where he not penetrated before. The work that was still in hand was for him to get to Jerusalem at Passover time and also to disperse in that holy city a collection which he had been responsible for taking amongst the churches in Macedonia for the poor Christians in Palestine.

When he was through with that particular piece of service of practical Christian love then he wanted to set out for regions beyond and so he determined that he would go to Spain. He hadn't been there before and the attractions of going to Spain were not just the fact that this was an area where the gospel had yet to be preached but it would mean that in passing he could call in at Rome. Paul was a Roman citizen he had dual nationality two passports he was a Hebrew and he was also a Roman but he had never been to the capital of the Empire and so he thought as he was wintering during those years that I've referred to 56 and 57 how good it would be for him to stop off on his way to Spain and see Christian friends many of whom he hadn't met who were congregated together in Rome.

You say where do you get all that from? Well if you check through the 15th chapter in the last few verses you will discover that what I've put to you is deductions that you could quite easily have made yourself. Now what does he decide to do before he goes to Rome? Well as he's wintering with his friend in Corinth he utilizes the services of his secretary Tertius. I always used to feel very sorry for George Verver's secretary thinking that that is one of the most difficult jobs in Christendom today to keep Verver happy.

Well I reckon it was even more difficult for the secretary of Paul to keep him happy because he determined that he would write a note to the Romans to let him know that he was coming so that preparation could be made and in writing this note to the Romans he decided that he would give them if you like a short summary of the gospel and that short summary became one of the most brilliant statements of all time as to what Christian people believe. Now that's exactly how Paul came to write this particular epistle and I hope you'll read through the final two chapters which will give you the material that I've just shared with you. I got up early this morning I hope you did it was a lovely sunrise.

I find it very nice to take my Bible into the garden and just flick through its pages and to commit the day to the Lord. There was a man by the name of Augustine who didn't always get up early but on one occasion he was in his garden. I don't know that it was early in the morning but he was certainly in the garden and the sun was shining and in the next garden some kids were playing.

I don't know what the game was but in the middle of the game they started to shout out take read take read. It was childish chatter but Augustine as he was in his garden happened to have a volume in front of him which at that particular moment he took up and read believing that within the voice of the children there was another voice that was compelling him to lift this particular book. Now Augustine had a mother whose name was Monica.

Monica was a Christian. Augustine at this time was far from a Christian he was profligate he was a promiscuous man and when he took up the book that he was to read which actually was a copy of the New Testament it happened to fall open at the 13th chapter and the 14th verse. Letters of the 13th verse.

Let us behave decently as in the daytime not in orgies and drunkenness not in sexual immorality and debauchery not in dissension and jealousy rather clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature. Those two verses became like an arrow that penetrated the heart of Augustine and as a result of taking this epistle and reading it his life was utterly transformed and he became one of the greatest preachers and theologians that the Christian church has ever had. Do you ever go to Fleet Street London? Well just by Fleet Street is Aldersgate.

Centuries after this experience that Augustine had a man by the name of John Wesley went into a meeting hall where there were a group of Christians. They happened to be reading a book by another man who had been remarkably changed as a result of coming across the epistle to the Romans. I refer to Martin Luther.

They were reading his commentary and as they read his commentary John Wesley said this. It was about 845 at night. The man was describing the change which had come in his heart through faith in Christ.

I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ. Christ alone for my salvation and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins even mine and saved me from the law of sin and death.

Augustine influenced an empire. He helped to bring Rome to Jesus Christ in part. Martin Luther influenced a continent.

He was able to be used by God to repulse the influence of the Catholic Church and bring the church back to the pristine to the pure gospel. John Wesley influenced a nation and saved us probably from the outbreak of a terrible civil war. Three men affected in different ages by reading the epistle to the Romans.

You have been warned what God could do in your life if you really came to grips with what Paul has to say here as he merely dashes off a 16 chapter summary of the Christian faith. How do you approach such a book as this? Well the first 11 chapters as I try to indicate and I'm not just following my notes, my notes are a handout to help you to prepare. The first 11 chapters could loosely be described as doctrinal and the final few chapters as practical.

I say loosely because you see the problem with the Apostle Paul is that he can't keep to a subject. This is why I have some sort of sympathy for his secretary Tertius. You see he sets up a clause, then he goes to a subdivision, then he qualifies his subdivision, then he qualifies his sub-subdivision and then ultimately he might, though he doesn't always, return to his initial clause.

It's the most remarkable way of writing. The reason for this you see is that he's not just in an academic fashion setting down a logical argument, this fire in this man's belly. There really is.

The gospel is so gripped him that from time to time he will do with the Greek language what I sometimes do with the English language and that is he'll murder it. Because there are occasions when what you're trying to say emotionally you don't have the intellectual verbal equipment to get across and at that stage you have to appeal to the sensitivities of whoever's reading or listening to what you have to say so they can empathize with what you're trying to do and feel something of the burden of the message. So here's old Tertius as Paul is dashing off this particular letter and as he sets out various divisions and subdivisions and so on and so forth.

The first 11 chapters, roughly as I say, doctrinal, the last few chapters practical but there will be practical also within the doctrinal and doctrinal within the practical. He has one main goal that dominates him in the first 11 chapters and that is to prove to all men and women that outside of God they are utterly in a hopeless condition, outside of God's revelation to them in Jesus Christ. He's like a lawyer in the way that he analyzes the condition of both the Gentile and the Jewish world and he brings in a particular conclusion that the whole world is guilty before God.

The whole world is guilty before God. He tells us, for example, at the end of the fifth chapter, moving into about verse 17, For if by the trespass of the one man death reign through the one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in him through the one man Jesus Christ. There he's contrasting what Adam does and discovering all men to be guilty in Adam with what the Lord Jesus Christ has done and he discovers all men who believed in Jesus to be proclaimed innocent by the grace of God.

If you want that expressed a little bit more pithily, a little bit more concisely, then jump to the third chapter and in the ninth verse, which perhaps I should have gone to before I quoted the fifth chapter, the Apostle Paul says, What shall we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at all. We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin. As it is written, there is not no one righteous, not even one.

Verse 18, There is no fear of God before their eyes. So in the first chapter, spilling over into the second, the Apostle brings the Gentile world on trial before God. He interrogates them and he comes to the conclusion that they will never be saved unless God in an extraordinary fashion manifests his grace.

Then he jumps to the Jew and so to speak says, Wipe the smile from off your face. You're claiming that you've got some religious tradition that somehow or other is going to render you pure before God. I will deal with you on the basis of the religion that's been revealed to you and I will prove to you that having broken God's revealed law, you if anything are in a worse state than the Gentiles.

And having made us all feel very, very hopeless, then the Apostle Paul starts to speak about God's provision in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's at the end of the third chapter. But he doesn't take that into any prolonged treatment until you get to the sixth and seventh chapter because in the fourth and fifth he's going to deal with the Jews again, talk to them about Abraham, take them back to Adam and ultimately when you get through to the sixth and seventh chapter you feel utterly miserable.

He'll lead you into a glorious eighth chapter which leads off with words that you all know from the authorised version of the Bible. There is therefore now no condemnation in Christ Jesus. And then he'll fascinatingly from the ninth chapter through to the eleventh chapter come to tell you about what God's interests still are in his ancient ethnic people, the Jews.

Well there we are. That summarises the whole thing in eleven chapters. Let's sing the doxology and we can all go home.

But you would not expect me to let you off would you with just 15 minutes. No way. So let's now having set up something of the programme that's in front of us, let's dip into the first helping of what the Apostle Paul has to say through his good friend Tertius who manages to cope with the nervous breakdown that most ordinary mortals would have had trying to keep pace with Paul.

How do you write a letter? Dear so and so and then ultimately finish up with your signature. Well they did it the other way around. They started off with their own name.

X writing to Y. Paul verse one writing to Y verse seven all in Rome. Now it would be too simple for Paul to leave it like that. So Paul verse one will start on one of his many tangents one of his many subdivisions and speak a little bit about himself.

Who is this Paul? Who are we as those who in some senses identify with Paul? Well we are servants better slaves douloi of Jesus Christ called to be an apostle. The word called as you know has for Paul a very special relationship because before he became a Christian he was a Pharisee. A Pharisee was a man who was set apart from the rest of Jewish society to follow more closely the laws of Moses.

Well says Paul the time came when instead of being called in that special group that special religious elite he was stopped on the Damascus Road and he was called to follow the Lord Jesus. But he knows full well as he's writing to the Galatians and as you and I know that God's call to us sort of anticipates our conversion. In other words it was known by God as Paul was in his mother's womb that ultimately Paul would come to a knowledge of him.

How you work out predestination well tune in when we get to the ninth through to the eleventh chapters and I'll get Andrew Bryant to take us through those I think as he probably knows far more about predestination than I do. But here is Paul setting up the fact that he was called to belong to the Lord Jesus called to be an apostle set apart for the gospel of God. So you see that little qualifying statement he's telling us something about himself but he's now mentioned the gospel of God so he's got to qualify that hasn't he? And so he does that from the second verse almost through to the end of the sixth verse but not quite.

What is this gospel Paul that you're called to preach? Well it's nothing newfangled rather it's something anticipated in the Old Testament. He's going to teach his Jewish readers that time and time again that all he has to share is actually encapsulated in the first 39 books of the Bible. In fact the only books that they had at that stage.

It was promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures. What is this gospel all about Paul that you're called to preach that you've been set apart for to promote on whose behalf you're now living in effect? Well says the Apostle verse 3 this is regarding his son Jesus Christ. Now there are two things that Paul wants to tell us about the Lord Jesus.

First of all his human nature he descended from David he is the son of man. But the Lord Jesus is more than just son of man isn't he? He's also son of God. Ah yes but how do we know Paul that there is an infinite distinction between Jesus Christ and any of the Apostle and any of the prophets or any other man for that matter who ever lived? Well says Paul anticipating his theme he is declared to be the son of God more than just mortal by the power of the Spirit of Holiness operating on him.

Why what did the Holy Spirit do? Well the Holy Spirit raised Jesus Christ from the dead. That's what he says isn't it at the end of verse 4 declared with power to be the son of God by his resurrection from the dead. Jesus Christ our Lord.

So says the Apostle this is what I've been called to be called to this gospel to preach this gospel and it's for him through him for his sake that we received the gift of Apostleship and that gift of Apostleship means that Paul because Apostle really is the same term as missionary in this sense has as his reason for existence to call other people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience of faith. In other words what's happened to Paul on the Damascus Road he is now by God's grace in the proclamation of the gospel to try to encourage other people to have the same experience. Now here he's going to identify with his readers you see he identifies with us.

Paul is called to be an Apostle but hold on folk you're not out of this business of being called by God. Verse 6 you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ to all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints. Isn't that wonderful? What's the most privileged thing in your life when you estimate your blessings? I heard the voice of Jesus say come unto me find rest.

The voice of the Lord Jesus who called the Apostles the disciples to follow him on the seashore of Galilee the same Lord Jesus who stopped the Apostle Paul before he was an Apostle of course on the Damascus Road. And do you remember that the the amazing news of Paul's conversion hit the Christian community at Damascus and they didn't believe it. You read Acts 9 and you come across a man by the name of Ananias one of the leaders of the Christian community and God said you've got to pray for this man Saul of Tarsus that he receive his sight and Ananias objects Lord what he's done in Jerusalem is nobody's business.

Ananias get this right he has been separated by me for a specific ministry he is going to be the Apostle to the Gentiles. Do you recall that in Acts 9? Now it's amazing to Ananias but it never ceased to be amazing to the Apostle because when he's writing to Timothy in the opening chapter of the two letters that he writes he speaks about the grace of God being revealed to him who is less than the least of all the Apostles. Why is he less than the least? Well because of what he did.

Do you ever have a hang-up about what you did before you were called to belong to Jesus? You know it's it's more easy for God to forgive our sins so to speak than for what it is for us to receive the forgiveness and very often the memory of what we did yesteryear lives on in our mind not so? Now what did Paul do? Well he ransacked Jerusalem of Christians he carted off the men folk to prison he saw the women folk in tears and he was an accomplice to the death of Stephen. Do you think he ever forgot that? Someone anticipates Paul in heaven. Campbell Morgan has this quote in his one of his books.

Saints, this is Paul speaking, saints did I say with those remembered faces dear men and women whom I sought and slew ah I shall weep when in the heavenly places with the disciple Stephen and with you Paul to belong to Jesus but Paul was never proud amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. My friends never lose thought of the wretchedness that is naturally yours because that will enhance in your understanding the amazing nature of God's grace who calls you to belong to him and commissions you to a ministry as he commissioned the Apostle Paul. To all in Rome call to be saints that there would be saints in Rome? Saints in Soho? For that's what Rome was like in those days but the same calling had come to a community within a community at Rome and there were the people of God called saints.

The word is never in the singular in the New Testament it never describes one person it describes a group of people who have been made holy not by their own disciplined effort though that comes into it but basically by the grace of God operating in their lives. Paul called to be an Apostle sends grace and peace that's his salutation to his readers from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. So then what does he do? Well having reminded them that they're called to belong to the Lord Jesus he fills in his own personal curriculum his own personal itinerary.

He thanks God for their faith. You see Paul is is a good pastor he compliments his readership. It's a good thing because he's going to meet them sooner or later it's always good to lead off isn't it with what people are strong in and these people were very strong in their own evangelism.

He thanks God because their faith was reported throughout the world. God whom I serve with my whole heart in preaching the gospel of his son is my witness as Paul how constantly I remember you. Now I think that my own prayer agenda is already too full but here is the Apostle Paul who's been used to strike churches throughout the whole of Turkey and Greece he's never been to Rome and yet he's constantly praying for Christians there.

What's your prayer life like over against that? Is it developing? Do you have a world concern for the advance of the gospel? Now says the Apostle as far as my personal agenda is concerned I long to see you. Verse 11 longs in the same way that he longs for the conversion of his own people. Now why does Paul want to come to Rome? Why do you want to come together when we meet on a Sunday when you have fellowship with Christian people? Isn't it to help them to attain a greater degree of spirituality? Well that's what Paul says I long to see you verse 11 so I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong.

But then Paul is nothing if not a gentleman and he's also not just a man who's concerned to be congratulatory not in a false sense but but but he does appreciate that it's not a one-way thing this ministry. You see Paul is not a clergyman in the modern sense. He will go to Rome to take some of the blessings of God with him but he hopes to discover from them something that they have learned of the Lord so that together the end of verse 12 both congregation and guest preacher may be mutually encouraged.

Now Paul has had in mind to come to Rome for some time but he's been put off from so doing. Why? Well he's got a very tight packed agenda, tight diary, so many many things that he's had to do. Look at those little words in brackets in the at the end of verse 13 or in the middle of verse 13 but have been prevented from doing so.

So what does he want? Well in the authorized version it says that he wants a prosperous journey to come to Rome. Wouldn't that be nice you know? A sort of two days on the Cunard although perhaps sometimes on these big ships it's not so such a comfortable experience according to what happened in what was the ship that's just gone to America and they gave him a 40% reduction? The QE2, that's right. Well he wants a prosperous journey to go to Rome.

I mean it would be nice. I once years ago caught a ship from one of the Palestinian ports and I sailed across the Mediterranean. It was beautiful, really was nice, never had a trip like it before nor since.

But the way that Paul has his prayer answered is very striking isn't it? How did he get to Rome when he got to Rome with a ticket issued by the Roman police? He got to Rome manacled. He got to Rome having suffered shipwreck. He got to Rome in a pretty awful condition as far as his experiences were concerned.

He prayed for a prosperous journey but this is the way it fell out. It's good for you to realize that. It's not very much in keeping with the line that some of the prosperity boys these days in the way that they preach that everything will fall in pleasant places.

It doesn't always do that. Sometimes God will bring you to the point that you've wanted to go but it'll take you on such a route that you wish that you never asked in the first instance to get to that point. But when you arrive by that route you'll be much better equipped to do what God wants you to do there.

This is what Paul will be able to teach you and me. So he planned to come but many times he was prevented and when he did come he came in such an unexpected fashion. He wanted a prosperous journey and arrived in handcuffs but they hadn't gagged him.

The Word of God is not bound. He's going to tell Timothy that later on and it's amazing what he did. You see if I'd have been Paul and if I could have put in my sort of telegram to the Lord I'd have wanted a pulpit in the main Coliseum you know and bring the Emperor in and get all the people and have all the posters all placarded, a nice choir at the back.

It would have been wonderful wouldn't it? But when God handles it he seems to make a right mess. I speak reverently. I mean here's the star preacher coming along with handcuffs and instead of some great auditorium he's in a cell.

Well if I dare use comparative religions for an analogy I've got myself into this one I don't know how to get out of it. If Mohammed can't go to the mountain then bring the mountain to Mohammed so the people come in and listen to Paul and he starts to influence the praetorium God. That's the crack regiment of Caesar there in his cell in Caesar's dungeons and people come and listen to Paul and eventually the gospel flows out from his cell and remarkable things happen.

Paul why are you so concerned to get to Rome? Well verse 14 will tell you he feels that he's under bondage. Not the bondage of a sort of spiritual restriction that doesn't allow him any sense of inner harmony and freedom. It's the bondage of obligation.

Verse 14 I am bound, I am obliged, I am under obligation. For what Paul? Well to preach to the Greeks and the non-Greeks, to the wise and to the foolish. You see he's the apostle to the Gentiles as Peter was the apostle to the Jews and he's eager, he's straining at the bit to get some fruit in Rome as he's had in Turkey and also in Asia Minor.

But this gospel that he wants to bring is a gospel that has so gripped his heart to the extent verse 16 leading into one of the two most well known verses in the whole of Scripture, he's able to say he's not ashamed of it. I'm not ashamed of the gospel. Why not? Well because it's God's dynamic, it's God's dynamite.

There is greater power Paul believes in the gospel of Jesus Christ than there is in anything in the world. Now Paul believed that. Now very often the distinction between you and Paul is you say it but he believed it and he acted upon what he believed.

I don't want to be heavy in my preaching this evening and I'll apply that to myself. The apostle Paul was really gripped by the power of the gospel and the need for everyone to come to believe in the message. First for the Jews because Paul, dual passport carrier remember, was primarily a Jew but he's also a Roman and therefore he's concerned for the gospel to go to the Gentiles and feels a basic responsibility for disseminating it in Gentile areas.

Now what is it? And here we can sum up all that Paul has to teach us within these first 17 verses and come to a conclusion for this evening. What is it Paul that is so unique about the gospel? Well you see within that gospel there is a righteousness from God. What does righteousness mean? God's way of righting wrong.

Now the most fundamental question for an intelligent person to ask is this, how can I be right with God? And there are many well-meaning people who put the wrong answer, though sincere they are in their attempts, to that question. You see this was the thing that was bedeviling Martin Luther. Why did he go into a monastery? Well he had a most extraordinary experience when he was a lad.

There was a bolt of lightning, a flash of lightning and he felt himself to be miraculously preserved. He believed that somehow God had got an interest in his life but he was terrified of this God. Absolutely terrified that one day he would come under the judgment of this God.

He knew of the wrath of God. He knew of the terror of the Lord and he knew that his own life was blotted through and through with mistake after mistake after mistake and the only way where he could get any peace of mind was by going into the Augustinian monastery and he nearly drove his tutor mad. You see his tutor had confessions and Martin was always at the front of the queue and his confessions were the longest in history and his tutor couldn't cope, the priest couldn't cope with the amount of confessions that Martin was bringing up.

He was going back through his childhood making a note of them all and then he'd, having got one lot of his plate, he'd come back with more until the confessor was so fed up of Martin confessing. What did Martin want to do? He wanted to change the heart of God so that God was gracious towards Martin and he realized ultimately that he couldn't do that, that all the confessing in the world would never give him a sense of relief and then one day Martin as Augustine and as John Wesley later on, one day he read the 17th verse. In fact he was lecturing, he was preaching on it and he got converted through his own preaching.

Not a bad thing to happen. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed. God has taken the initiative and made it possible for me to be right with him.

A righteousness which is not drummed up but a righteousness which comes down. A righteousness that is not as a result of what I do, my activity, but rather as a result of faith from beginning to end as it is written, quoting Habakkuk, the righteous will live by faith. What is this God's, what is God's way of writing wrong? Well, we'll discover more of that next time, but obviously it has to do with our Lord Jesus Christ, God's own son who comes into the world to take from you and from me the consequences of our sins.

And that basically is the gospel. And that's good news. It's good news to the Gentile.

It's good news to the Jew because it's the only means whereby a man can be assured that on the point of death he's taken immediately into the presence of a God who is holy and who is kind and who has forgiven him his sins because of what the Lord Jesus Christ has done. My friends, how grateful we should be for this gospel and how great should be our determination to take this gospel to other people, to long for fruit in this locality, in my neighborhood, amongst my family as the Apostle Paul was, because it's for this reason that you were called, because at that sense you are an apostle, a missionary, to take what you have received to other people. Well, more of this in two ends this time.

Let's sing a little hymn, shall we, that will help us to think a bit more about the blessings of the gospel How about, We Have Heard the Joyful Sound, Jesus Saves, 541. By his death and endless life Jesus saves. Sing it softly through the gloom.

When the heart for mercy craves, sing in triumph o'er the tomb, Jesus saves. Let's stand and sing. We have heard the joyful sound, Jesus saves.

Spread the gladness all around, Jesus saves. Spread the news to every man, climb the streets and cross the waves. Onward is our Lord's command, Jesus saves.

Sing above the battle's strife, Jesus saves. By his death and endless life, Jesus saves. Sing it softly through the gloom.

When the heart for mercy craves, sing in triumph o'er the tomb, Jesus saves. Give the winds a mighty voice, Jesus saves. Let the nations now rejoice, Jesus saves.

Sing the islands of the sea, echo back the ocean caves. Shout salvation full and free, Jesus saves. Please be seated.

Now let's come to the Lord and let's thank him for the gospel. Let's pray for this successful proclamation of it in our many ministries here at the TAB. We had a fellow in at Wednesday at 1 who I'm told will only come to this type of meeting.

He won't go to a church, confessed atheist, and yet he comes along Wednesday at 1 and listens to the little word that I bring. I've been on John's gospel at Wednesday at 1 now for three years. And it's amazing how those people listen.

It really is quite incredible. Let's pray for this man. Someone did seek me out after Sunday morning.

Let's just pray that through. Those of you who were present will know what I'm specifically referring to in terms of the way that I closed down my address. I'd like you to pray for the meeting on Monday at the, at least pray against it at the pavilion where another spiritist has been allowed to hold a meeting.

I've just been in touch with the town fathers, so to speak, to let them know what I think of them letting the pavilion out again. Whether it'll make any difference or not, I don't know. Graham Jefferson at New Life Church, he's got a response from the council.

I haven't got one yet, but I'm hoping that there will be something. 7 o'clock on Monday night, if anyone is interested, feels the challenge to do this at the Elam Church. Friends from New Life and the Elam Church are just getting together for a little bit of prayer and then they're going down to the folks who will be going into this spiritist meeting to distribute literature.

They'd be glad of your help if you can be present. We've been asked to pray about the karaoke club. Maybe you don't know that club.

It's one of the dives here in Worthing. A group of Satanists meet there with all the attendant problems that that brings. We've been asked to pray against that.

I'd be glad if you would pray about these meetings that I've got in Belfast. I leave on Saturday. I'm preaching in Lisbon on Sunday morning and in the heart of Belfast Sunday night, Ted Davis preaching here, remember him.

And I think I've got two preaching engagements on Monday, three on Tuesday, and two again on Wednesday before I fly back here Thursday morning. So I'd be grateful for prayer. Let's just come to the Lord.