Romans No.32 Paul's Programme

Bible studies which have now gone into their 33rd week, although I think we've, I think actually the numbers are wrong, I think we missed one somewhere and it's literally number 32. There'll just be one or maybe two more before we're through the whole of this marvellous epistle. And now we're in a section which is easier for us to grasp, as have been the last two or three studies, because Paul is dealing with very practical issues and especially telling us a little about himself.

Romans 15, 14 through to the end. I myself am convinced, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, complete in knowledge, and competent to instruct one another. I have written to you quite boldly on some points as if to remind you of them again, because of the grace God gave me to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles, with the priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God, so that the Gentiles might become an offering acceptable to God, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.

Therefore, I glory in Christ Jesus, in my service to God. I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me in leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done, by the power of signs and miracles, through the power of the Spirit. So from Jerusalem all the way round to Illyricum, Yugoslavia for the uninitiated, I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ.

It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else's foundation. Rather, as it is written, those who were not told about him will see, and those who have not heard will understand. This is why I have often been hindered from coming to you, but now that there is no more place for me to work in these regions, what an incredible statement, but now that there is no more place for me to work in these regions, and since I have been longing for many years to see you, I plan to do so.

When I go to Spain, I hope to visit you while passing through, and to have you assist me on my journey there, after I have enjoyed your company for a while. Now, however, I am on my way to Jerusalem in the service of the saints there, for Macedonia and Achaia were pleased to make a contribution for the poor among the saints in Jerusalem. They were pleased to do it, and indeed they owed it to them, for if the Gentiles have shared in the Jews' spiritual blessings, they owe it to the Jews to share with them their material blessings.

So after I have completed this task and have made sure that they have received this fruit, I will go to Spain and visit you on the way. I know that when I come to you, I will come in the full measure of the blessing of Christ. I urge you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me.

Pray that I may be rescued from the unbelievers in Judea, and that my service in Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints there, so that by God's will I may come to you with joy and together with you be refreshed. The God of peace be with you all. Amen.

Well, we are grateful to the Apostle that he was personal in appending the last couple of chapters to this mighty theological letter that he addressed to the Romans. It's easy for us to forget that the leaders of the Christian Church in the early days were just men and women like ourselves. They had their own hassle.

They had full diaries. They were able to cope without laptop computers and dictaphones, which for many of us makes the miracle of the establishment of the Church even more wonderful. And here is Paul, lifting the veil, so to speak, on his own life and his own activities and commitments, and telling us a little about himself.

He does that on other occasions in Scripture, but not very often. And you might like to check up later on, or perhaps if you go through these studies again, the references in Corinthians, when he shows us a little more about the cost of his very full life as an ambassador of the Lord Jesus. Somebody said, and it's a very pregnant phrase, it's stuck in my mind ever since I read it, and it must be more than 20 years or so ago, that to follow the Apostle Paul and his tracks in Asia Minor is like following the footprints of a bleeding rabbit in the snow.

He certainly paid a great deal in terms of cost, personal expenditure, to establish the churches of Jesus Christ. And the road that we are to take may also be a difficult one, perhaps for most of us here, not as difficult as that of the Apostle Paul, but nonetheless it is to this way of life that our Lord Jesus has called us. And the Apostle writes, all who live godly will suffer in Christ Jesus.

So the Apostle, as he starts to tell us a little bit about his successes, and actually says nothing about the personal sacrifice that it has been to him to establish churches, he commences with a congratulatory statement. Now he's not the man who throws bouquets around without justification. He has a high esteem, does he not, of the churches, or at least of the church in Rome, the quality of Christian brothers and sisters there.

Look at verse 14, I am convinced, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, complete in knowledge, competent to instruct one another. I mean, he's just spent 13 chapters or so with packed theological reasoning, and in effect he's saying, well, I'd no need really to put this down because you could have worked it out for yourself. Well, maybe there's a little bit of hyperbole in this, but I do believe that the Apostle Paul is to be taken literalistically when he says that he is of the opinion that Roman Christians are able to instruct, or perhaps better translated, able to counsel one another.

And that, with one fell of the axe, cuts down this wretched distinction between the so-called ministers and the laity, as though the latter are not competent to instruct one another. That's an utter absurdity. We all have gifts to exercise in the cause of our Lord Jesus and for the benefits of each other.

Well, after that introductory statement, it seems to me that what the Apostle now has to say can be divided into three categories, not because it's obviously in three categories, but it will be helpful to us as we make our way through. So I want to talk to you about the goals he is achieving, and then the plans he is making, and then the requests he is asking. Not watertight compartments, but nonetheless helpful for us to hook our thoughts on.

The goals he is achieving, I suggest you find them from the 15th verse right down to the 22nd verse. Someone has quipped that if you don't have any goals, or rather if you aim at nothing, you're sure to hit your target. I was asked the other day when I was in the south of France, not exactly basking in the sunshine.

I never even saw the sea when I was in Marseille. I came away feeling very, very cheated indeed. They kept me busy, those people from Africa, no, the Arab world mission, all the time that I was there.

But I was asked by them, by one of the missionaries in a sort of open question and answer session, did I consider myself to be a goal-orientated man or a driven man? And the truth of the matter is that I'd never considered myself in either category. But as it was an American who asked the question, I thought I'm not going to play the part of an English humble man, because English I may be, but humble was never the greatest of my characteristics. And so I said, well, actually, trying to sound a little bit intellectual, I think that they're both the same.

And in one sense, if you have goals, then you do drive towards your goals, don't you? And I do think it's right for us as Christians to set certain targets. I tried to get folk in Maybridge, with an overspill here in Worthing at the beginning of the year, to set themselves the target of reading through the Bible during the year. I tried to set the target for at least 20 men to be in at our early morning Saturday prayer meeting.

I think that targets are a legitimate thing for a church as a whole and for individual Christians. Well, the Apostle Paul certainly had targets, didn't he? And one of his targets is revealed here, and it is to win Gentiles for Jesus Christ, verses 15 and 16. I've written to you quite boldly on some points, as if to remind you of them again, because of the grace God gave me to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles with the priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God.

If you want that literally from the Greek, it's with the liturgy, with the liturgical duty of proclaiming the gospel. That word liturgy is a very interesting one in the original setting. It really is depicting the sort of things that a good, benevolent citizen of Greece might do.

For example, you're aware of Greek plays? Well, they looked for sponsorship in those days, and the person who was a sponsor of the play was known in the classical sense as being the choreographer. Now, we use that word slightly differently, but nonetheless in an entertainment setting today, don't we? Well, it's the person who performed the act of providing finances, who was engaging in a liturgy, in service for the community. Another example of the use of this word would be the Athenian warships.

If you were a very prosperous man, you might engage as your duty as a citizen to finance a warship for one year. And there were many others, at least several other ways in which this word liturgy was used, generally a secular thing. And then it was pushed through into the service of the gods at the temple, and eventually the Christians came along, and as they sometimes did, they took out the Greek word and they poured something very wonderful into it, they sanctified it.

And the concept of serving the Lord Jesus, your liturgy, became a very honourable thing to have as a goal. Well, for the Apostle Paul, it's that priestly duty of winning souls, proclaiming the Gospel of God so that the Gentiles might become an offering acceptable to God, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. Paul will not have the Jewish Christians saying that the Gentiles are inadequate, that they're only sort of 50% Christian simply because they are Gentiles.

No, says the Apostle, they may not have the law, they may not have had Jewish benefits, but they are fully sanctified and acceptable to God through the empowering of the Holy Spirit. So the Apostle has as a goal winning Gentiles for Christ. And as he does that, his second goal is also achieved, the glorifying of the Lord Jesus.

Verse 17, therefore I glory in Christ Jesus in my service to God. I glory in him and he is glorified in me. The Apostle Paul understands successful Christian service, he does so by saying that actually what really happens to make you successful is that the power of the Lord Jesus is released in your life so that you and I become little Christs, an extension of the ministry of the Lord.

That's the reason why you're often reminded, I'm sure, that the Acts of the Apostles is a misnamed book. It's really the Acts of the Lord Jesus through the Apostles. So Paul glorifies the Lord Jesus as his power pulsates through him and as he's effective as a communicator of the Gospel.

Says William Barclay, it is when a man ceases to think what he can do and begins to think of what God can do with him that things begin to happen. And nobody perhaps was more astonished than the Apostle Paul as to the success of his ministry. Now what Paul was achieving through the Lord Jesus' power, so in degree we can achieve today.

The third goal, well Paul was a pioneer, wasn't he? He didn't work by choice on the territory of somebody else. Rather, he wants to minister in areas where the Gospel has not penetrated. Verse 19, by the power of signs and miracles through the power of the Spirit, so from Jerusalem all the way around to Elyricum, I have fully proclaimed the Gospel of Christ.

It has always been my ambition to preach the Gospel where Christ was not known. Pioneers I think are difficult people and yet they're people who we ought to honour. I remember one brother who loves George very dearly, says that every time George flies into Lahore, he moves to Islamabad.

He can cope with George at a distance of a few hundred miles. I know what he's saying, when George comes in it's like a whirlwind blowing. Pioneers are difficult people because they have a specific target and for the Apostle Paul it was always his ambition to be breaking into new territory, to be going into the centres of that territory, causing a church to be formed and then that becomes a springboard whereby the Gospel can be proclaimed by those people.

I think this is how we must understand him, obviously he's not spoken to everyone in that large area, we're talking about Syria, Cyprus, Galatia, Asia, we're talking about Achaia, we're talking about Yugoslavia, obviously many, many thousands of people packed into this area and the Apostle feels that he's fully proclaimed the Gospel in as much as he's strategically established Gospel centres and now he feels claustrophobic, he needs more elbow room, this man of the wide spaces, this man who's not satisfied just to sit back on his laurels and reap the benefits of his ministry, he must go on. I have a facsimile of a letter from Charles Spurgeon to Douglas Crouch, the founder of the Tabernacle. Now you may not know this but Douglas Crouch actually used to be the pastor of Shoreham Baptist Church and it was a well-established church, in fact I believe he pioneered it and he wrote to the great Spurgeon who was his mentor and he said that he was thinking of moving from Shoreham to Worthing and Spurgeon tried to dissuade him from so doing and the reason was this, he felt that he had laboured for so long in Shoreham that he ought to really sit down and just enjoy the benefits, the fruits of that ministry and then in a typically Spurgeonic fashion the great preacher went on to say, nonetheless Mr Crouch, if you move to Worthing I shall sit back and applaud but I won't be as one of those who when the lifeboat has to be pushed out to sea, puts his shoulder to the boat, you get to Worthing on your own, under your own speed and what happens there if it's good, well God bless you, I'll be praying for you.

Well that was a summation of what Charles Spurgeon said to Douglas Crouch. Now it seems to be that Mr Crouch had more of the Pauline spirit because he wanted to come here and to establish a Baptist church in our town many years ago. Well the apostle, he's like this, he wants to pioneer new territory and so I summarise those verses in terms of the goals he is achieving but then the plans he is making.

He needs more elbow room and so he's got something else at the back of his mind that he now brings central stage and he tells us in the 22nd verse or specifically the readers of his epistle that the reason why he has been prevented from going to Rome which has been his evangelical pipe dream for such a long time is simply the securing of those prior goals but now things are changing and his plans therefore can be revised and sharpened and he has in his mind an even more enticing ambition than simply to go to Rome and that is to go to the furthest flung parts of the empire which as you all know was Spain in those days, not America that hadn't yet been discovered but the place where so much was happening in the Roman world was Spain. It had become a centre of learning. Nero's prime minister came from Spain, so many scholars came from Spain and you can imagine the apostle with his incisive mind and this revelation that he got of the Gospel of God desperately wanting to go to Spain so he can establish churches there and as a result influence the rest of the empire as so many of the leading politicians and scholars and intellectuals came from that particular country.

So he's got Spain on the horizon of his mind. To Spain he must go and Rome will be a convenient stopping off place but before he can go ultimately to Rome he has to go immediately to Jerusalem. Now as far as my homiletics are concerned it would have been happier for me if Paul had dealt with Jerusalem first but he doesn't and so we can't.

We have to talk a little bit about his ideas of going to Rome, Rome ultimately. Look again at verses 21 and I've got 21 there. I think that's wrong actually.

Let's look at verse 23 or 24. I have been longing for many years to see you. I plan to do so but so when I go to Spain and then drop down to verse 32 because references again to him calling off in Rome so that by God's will I may come to you with joy and together with you be refreshed.

Paul will go to Rome on his way to Spain. It's his ultimate plans. He's not going to come with his tape recorder or his video camera.

He's not going to come with whatever is the equivalent of that in those days because he's no tourist. He's already said why he wants to go to Rome. He tells us that in the opening chapter doesn't he? He comes to impart some spiritual gift and to learn from them so that together with spiritual intercourse Paul will be encouraged by the Roman Christians and they will benefit from his company.

And he's going to look to them for hospitality. He wants them to refresh him on his journey as he spends time with them and prepares to go further west to Spain. He's anticipating coming to them also in the overflow of blessing.

Look at the latter part of verse 29. I want to come to you in the full measure of the blessing of Christ. Well, where is he going to receive this? Well, if Rome is where he's going to be ultimately, Jerusalem is where he intends to be immediately and in Jerusalem he's really going to be blessed or so he believes as he has further intercourse with the Christians there.

Look at verse 25. Now, however, my immediate plan, I've checked my file of facts and I discover Jerusalem has a number of weeks allocated to it. I'm on my way to Jerusalem in the service of the saints there.

And then this must have pleased the apostle as he dips into the experiences that he's had in Macedonia and Achaia where he has been used by God to convert a number of people from heathen to Christianity. And they have together made a large, munificent contribution for the poor among the saints in Jerusalem. Now, I quip that this is the beginnings of tear funding.

In one sense, the quip has some justification. This isn't the first time the apostle has been concerned to raise money for the saints at Jerusalem, is it? He did it before in Syrian Antioch. Why were they in difficulty in Jerusalem? Well, the reason is probably this, that Jerusalem economically was controlled by the Sadducees.

They were really in for a quick buck or for a quick shackle and they really had their hands on the tills of the exchequer in the holy city. Now, the Sadducees had no truck with the Christians. And as they control the whole of the Jewish economy, it's fairly reasonable to conclude that when a man became a Christian in Jerusalem, having been an Orthodox Jew, he would make a surrender to Christ and he would forfeit his job.

And so you would have an increasingly large problem in terms of feeding the Christian community in Jerusalem. So what more wonderful act could Gentiles be engaged in? Gentiles whom Paul has reminded us in his theological treatise earlier on in these chapters, who have benefited by Jewish blessings which have been deflected to them in the grace of God, how more wonderful an act could it be than for them to show their concerns and in one sense repay their debt to Jewish Christians by helping them in their time of need. So out of the abundance of the material possessions of the Gentile Christians, they show their agape, they show their fellowship to Jewish Christians in the capital.

And of course this was warming the heart of the Apostle Paul. He's now heading towards Jerusalem, Jerusalem the temple, where the temple is. Jerusalem where Paul had first been commissioned as a Pharisee, where he sat at the feet of Gamaliel.

Isn't it now right that he should bring, so to speak, sacramentally the fruit of the Gentile ministry to the place where God used to meet with the Jewish people in ages gone by? My, you can understand why the Apostle speaks about eventually going in the fullest of blessings from Jerusalem to Rome and on to Spain because in Jerusalem he will recharge his batteries. So that's what he has in mind and he's very enthusiastic about it as he shapes up his new plans, Rome ultimately and Jerusalem immediately. So we've looked at the goals that he's setting, the plans he's making and now finally let's close down on the requests he is asking.

And this is astonishing really, isn't it? Verse 30, I urge you brothers by our Lord Jesus and by the love of the Spirit to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me. Why do I say that's quite an interesting verse? Well, you wouldn't really expect the Apostle Paul to be expressing himself like this. After all, he's talked about the great miracles that God has done through him.

Look at verse 19, by the power of signs and miracles, through the power of the Spirit, he's been so successful as an evangelist, as a pioneer, as a Holy Ghost anointed Apostle. If there was ever a man who was self-contained or could legitimately have claimed to be self-contained, that man was the Apostle Paul. I'll tell you something, that man was never born who can be self-contained in his Christian service.

No matter how great you are, no matter how phenomenal your success may have been, you are what you are by the grace of God and you require the support and the prayers of your brothers and sisters because the ministry in which you engage is a ministry of great struggle and great difficulty. That's why the Apostle Paul says, let he who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. That's why you'll never get the sort of televangelist scandal or even a whiff of scandal in regard to the Apostle Paul.

He's utterly dependent upon this God and the prayers of the saints to keep him in integrity proclaiming the Gospel. So here he is with all this to his credit and he dashes off this final chapter to the Christians at Rome and he says, I urge you brothers, strong language there, I urge you by our Lord Jesus and by the love of the Spirit to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me. My intonation brings out, not theatrically for the sake of, but simply because I want to show you that this is a very deep felt thing on the part of the Apostle he wants to be prayed for.

It's a great thing, says William Barclay, to go on knowing that we are wrapped in the warmth of the prayers of those who love you. Paul knows that he's no charismatic jet-setting celebrity going from place to place feted and honoured. He doesn't see himself like that.

He sees himself as a soldier, a commoner garden soldier, a combatant in the struggle that there is between the forces of righteousness and the forces of evil and he knows the dimensions of the latter forces and therefore he's asking that believers will continue to pray for him as he continues as a combatant in the army of the Lord Jesus. So Paul's plea, expressed so feelingfully as he appeals to them and to the Lord and to the love of the Spirit, that they join him in interceding for his success as he moves on towards Jerusalem. Well, if that's his plea, look at his insights.

He's got some idea that there's going to be difficulty, hasn't he? Pray that I may be rescued, verse 31, from the unbelievers in Judea. But he could only have had a snippet of intuition in regard to what actually was going to happen. He would not have known that a couple of years would pass before he would be in Rome and when he's in Rome, he's not in Rome as a free man.

He's in Rome as a prisoner. He will have sweated for 24 months in the dungeons in Caesarea Philippi. He will have been badly handled by the Jewish authorities.

He needed to ask for the prayers of the people. God moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. Did the apostle have any inkling that actually he will arrive in Rome having been so badly treated by the unbelievers, paradoxically, by appealing to an unbeliever for fairness and for justice? I appeal to Caesar, you remember? God has strange providences.

Anyone who believes that they've got the purposes of God in their lives reduced to a simple formula is deceiving themselves. God does not work in this way. I wish he did in many senses.

It would make my life much more easy speaking personally. It would yourselves. We don't always have the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle and sometimes there are dark colours as well as light colours that God builds into our experience.

If this is your problem today, then my brother and sister, take heart. It was also the problem of the apostle Paul. He could not have perceived what was going to happen in Jerusalem, though he had some intuition that there would be difficulty when he got there, but he could not have had any idea as to the enormity of the problem.

But you see, he's got the prayers. He's got the prayers of these dear people and he's got his own belief in the sovereignty of God that my service in Jerusalem will be acceptable. This gift will be received by the saints there and that in all things somehow by God's will, first part of verse 32, I will continue to map out in my life what God wants me to do.

Paul's plea, Paul's insights, Paul's wishes. He submits to the will of the Lord in his life so that by God's will I may come to you with joy and together with you be refreshed and there he leaves it, but not completely. It's time just to squeeze in a little benediction.

Though he's ministered to Greeks, he's still a Hebrew of the Hebrews and Jehovah God is a God of peace, a God of shalom. So when Jews meet one another, they invariably say, shalom. Paul directs his shalom to his Gentile readers, the peace of God be with you all.

Amen. Go into God's peace until such time as we physically meet. So here we have it, my brothers and sisters, such a lovely insight into the diary and into the psychology of the apostle, what God achieved through him so in degree he can achieve in us.

Let us pray.