August 31, 2025 - Faith the Gospel Requires - Jabin Stevenson

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Have the privilege of introducing a guest speaker to us. This will be his second time preaching at Livingstones Church. And it's my son Jabin. And I just wanted to say he went through a stint where he was covering books and he covered this Bible for me and gave me this and he wrote this on the inside. This is just a part of what he wrote. But it was such a great quote from John Wesley. It says, I am a creature of a day. I am a spirit come from God and returning to God. I want to know one thing, the way to heaven. Anybody want to know the way to heaven that maybe doesn't know the way to heaven, Come see me after the service or even right now when I go down there. God himself has condescended to teach me the way. He has written it down in a book. Oh, give me that book at any price. Give me the book of God. Let me be a man of one book. John Wesley, what a great quote. And Jabin has he just finished his Masters of Theology last spring and majored in the New Testament. And I know that the call of God is on his life and I think he knows that as well. God in his time and in his way and what God wants for us. You know, I was challenged in my preconceived ideas of what ministry should look like. And if we would all relax that way and just let God be God, it's amazing what he would do in all of our lives and never say to ourselves again, I can't do it. Because you're the candidate. If you feel you can't, Jabin, come up and share with us. So I've known Jabin for 44 years and he's been a great son. And I'm very proud of you this morning, son. So preach away. [00:02:00] Speaker B: Thanks, Dad. I love worshiping with you guys. I don't normally sit in the front. Our quadrant is kind of back there usually, but you can't really get to hear you guys when you're up front. And it's so good to be together, isn't it? I'm reminded this morning I haven't thought about this for a while because I've tried to block it out. But you know, a few years ago, in the Times that Won't Be Spoken, I was actually working at a different church and they were even stricter than all the rules required. And there was just like no singing in church. And then my wife and kids came here for a Good Friday service, I think it was, and everyone was singing and it was like, today, everyone's full of joy. We're singing the name of Jesus and it's so good to be together. Amen. So we're going to talk about these first seven verses, I guess behind me from Romans, and we're going to focus on a couple different things. But Pastor Paul talked about the faith that the gospel requires. We're going to talk about gospel and we're going to talk about faith. Pastor Paul, a few weeks ago, he's going through the book of James and was on the passage where James speaks about faith. And Pastor Paul highlighted that genuine faith manifests itself in outward works. Works or outward acts that edify the body and that glorify God. Right. And works or faith that doesn't come along with these works. How does he describe it? Faith without works is dead. And so Paul, he emphasizes justification by faith alone, right? Not by works, but by faith. And so people misconstrue Paul and James and say these guys are saying the opposite thing. Right? Luther, the reformer, famously called James the epistle of straw. He's like, works. No, he genuinely said this should not be in the canon. He didn't like it. But hopefully today we're going to reconcile these two guys and we're going to realize that they're just two different authors with two different audiences using different language and different words to say the same thing about what serving Jesus should look like. Okay, so like I said, we're going to talk about what Paul describes the gospel as being and then what the response to that gospel should be, namely, the obedience of faith. So we're going to read our passage here, but before we do that, let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, we are so grateful to be here. We are blessed beyond measure. We are your children. We are needy. And we come to you today to offer our lives again. We offer our hearts and our minds. We ask that as we submit ourselves to your word, as we submit ourselves to the Bible and what it says about you and about how we should act. Father, we just ask that your spirit would convict us. And we ask that your spirit would teach us and that your spirit would empower us to live the godly lives that you have called us all to live in Jesus name. Amen. Let's read our passage here. Romans 1, verse 1. Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God. And here he goes on to define it, the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures, the gospel concerning his son who was descended from David, according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead. Jesus Christ our Lord to all gods through him, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all Gentiles for the sake of his name, including yourselves, who are called to belong to Jesus Christ. There it is. To all God's beloved in Rome who are called to be saints. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. So as we read here, the Apostle Paul is the one who's writing this letter to the church in Rome. And, and we're introduced to Paul in the early portions of the book of Acts. And here he's referred to as Saul. Later on his name changes to Paul. So we're going to call him Saul here for now. But we read of like an early problem in the church where the Jewish widows were being neglected. Provision by the church. The church was providing for the widows because by virtue of being widows, they were poor. So the church was taking care of them, it was doing its job. But these Jewish, Greek speaking widows were being neglected. So they come to the apostles. The apostles say, you're right, this is a problem. We don't have time to deal with this, we're busy teaching. Let's get some men involved. They gather some men to deal with this problem and one of them is Stephen. And Stephen is described as being full of grace and power and performing great wonders and miraculous signs. And so just as with Jesus, this really ticks off the Jewish leadership. And so they, they drag him in before the council, they like grab him, they arrest him, bring before and say, what's this you're preaching? And they even bring people to lie. They bribe people to lie against him just as they did with Jesus and say that he's committing blasphemy and all this stuff. And so Stephen defends himself and he gives a recounting of Jewish history and the law and says, I'm faithful. But he ends it with this rebuke of the Jewish leaders which gets him in a little bit of trouble, a lot of trouble. Chapter seven, verse 51. He says, you stiff necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you are forever opposing the Holy Spirit, Jesus, just as your ancestors used to do. Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute? They killed those who foretold the coming of the righteous one. And now you have become his betrayers and murderers. You are the ones that received the law as ordained by Angels. And yet you have not kept it. As you can imagine, this didn't make the Jewish leaders very happy and describes them as gnashing their teeth, yelling, and covering their ears. They drag him out of the city to stone him. And as he's preparing to die, he commits himself to Jesus. And we see Jesus in heaven standing at the right hand of the Father. It's this beautiful moment. And as they begin to stone him, we get this almost cinematic view of all the witnesses and the men about to stone. Stephen laying their cloaks at the feet of Saul. Okay. Who later becomes the apostle Paul. The one overseeing the martyrdom of the first Christian martyr is this Apostle Paul. So he continues. He continues to persecute the church in Jerusalem. It says he was ravaging the church, scattering the Christians, putting men and women in prison. He was breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord. He goes to the high priest. He gets basically a permission slip and blessing to go into the surrounding areas and round up these Jewish Christians and bring them back for trial. So on his way to one of these cities, he's going to Damascus to grab some more Christians. Acts 9:3 says, now, as he was going along and approaching Damascus, Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying, saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? He asked, who are you, Lord? The reply came, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city, and you'll be told what you are to do. The men who were traveling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one. Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. For three days, he was without sight and neither ate nor drank. Paul gets saved. He meets Jesus. Or rather, Jesus meets him rather violently. Right. And I just want to add a side note. How many of you have people in your life that you've been praying for that. That just seemed beyond the reach of God, Right. Pastor Paul has said, I'm not. I'm not sure exactly what the reference is, but he's been praying for something for 30 years. I have a feeling it has to do with a person, you know, and he's just waiting for God to answer. There is no one who is further from the hand of God than the apostle Paul breathing murderous threats and murdering Christians. Right? But when Jesus decides to meet you, you get met. Okay? So that Paul then embarks on three missionary journeys, preaching Jesus to whomever will listen. And planting churches. Now this is what makes our, the letter of Romans and our passage fairly unique. See, Paul didn't plant the church in Rome, did he? He wrote the letter as a precursor because he wanted to visit and then continue on to Spain. So he wanted some support from them, but he didn't plant the church and he didn't know them. He knew a couple people there that he had kind of crossed paths with, but he didn't know the church. And if we compare this to the church in Corinth, he plants that church, right? And he stays there for a while. And we have first and second Corinthians in our Bible, but that's actually the second and fourth book that Paul writes to that church. We don't have the first letter he wrote and the third letter he wrote. And there's actually, we know that they wrote letters back to him, right? So not only did he plant it, but he was there in person and he had like regular, not like text message regular, but regular correspondence with this church. And so he had an opportunity where he's preaching his gospel. He's saying we're justified by faith alone and not works. He might have a question like, well, why don't we go on sinning all the more so that grace may abound. Then he would have the chance in person to say, no, you're not getting it, God forbid. That's not what I'm saying. Right? Is this making sense? The church in Rome didn't have that opportunity. So he's writing them a letter and he's actually writing partially in a self defense or his reputation has preceded him and they've heard he's this justification by faith business, right? No works required is what they're thinking. And he's setting them straight with this letter. Okay? And so like I said, we're going to talk about gospel and faith. And we need to understand that whenever we translate from one language to another, there isn't ever, not once, one word in one language that means the exact same thing in another language. Okay? So take the word, like the simplest word, the. In English, okay? The word the, it's called the definite article. In Greek, there's a definite article as well. The word the, but it's only in a few circum. Well, it's regular, but it's not all the time where it means the, it means a whole bunch of other stuff that we can't just correlate one to one. Okay? So faith is one of these words where there's a whole spectrum of meaning for the word that we've mostly adopted as well. It means belief. Okay. I have faith right now on this stage. I have faith that Jesus is God. What does that mean? I just believe that Jesus is God. Right. It can mean a little bit more. It means I believe he's God and I trust him. Okay? So I have faith in Jesus. Salvific work for me. I trust that it is enough. Right. We sang that today. It means something similar to religion, right? I'm a part of the Christian faith, okay. And it all means all the way from belief to trust to a religion to loyalty and even like all the way to allegiance. That when you give your allegiance to a ruler, you're giving them your faith, you're putting your faith in them. And they use the same word. It's the same word used for all these different contexts. And so we have to look at the context to see what specific meaning they're going for. And Paul does that for us, thankfully. Okay. And we're going to get to it. But the first word he defines as we've already gone over, is the gospel. We'll read 1 to 4 again. Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures. The gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead. Who is this person? He hasn't mentioned, who is this Jesus Christ our Lord. So we need to notice a couple things. Just trying to see what my. We need to notice a couple things before we go there. First of all, who's the gospel about Jesus? It's describing who Jesus is. It's a royal announcement of Jesus as king, right. Descended from David and that he's a resurrected son of God and that it's V shaped. He begins with the Father. I love this word that's in that quote. I didn't plan it. He condescends to us, right? Is put to death for us, resurrected and ascends back up to the Father. Okay, so the gospel, let's break it down a little bit. First off, it is promised beforehand through the prophets in Scripture. Okay. If we go through the whole New Testament, there's lots of aspects to the gospel that Paul isn't talking about here. He doesn't. He doesn't bring them up. He emphasizes these things because they buttress up the rest of his Letter and it's the foundation upon which he builds the rest of his argument. Okay, there's other stuff that we could say, but we're just talking about Paul and Romans chapter one right now. So it's promised beforehand through the prophets in Scripture. So that means it isn't an afterthought. He's not cleaning up some mess he didn't see coming. Right. It's been promised like it's been coming. God has known it concerns his Son. What about his son? That according to the flesh, he's a descendant of David, which means he's king. Right. So he's saying, he says all that to say Jesus is king. He's also appointed son of God by the resurrection. Okay, so and again, who is this Jesus Christ, our Lord. Gotta get used to this clicker. So in short, Jesus Christ is the resurrected son of God and the long expected king and Lord. This is just a short version of how Paul describes the Gospel in Romans. Now I want to place. So, okay, sorry. We see this is like a royal announcement. Correct? We see that he's king and the resurrected son of God. And it's not like the gospel writers. You know, we have the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And then Paul uses the word gospel all the time. They didn't make this word up. You know, it's the good news Evangelion. But they didn't just like pull this out of thin air. It's like good news. Sounds like we should adopt this word. It actually existed in the Greek language and was used in similar contexts in the secular world. So in 9bc we have the pre end calendar. It has an inscription on it celebrating Augustus birthday. It says the birthday of the God Augustus. Now Roman emperors thought of themselves fairly highly. So he, he said he was God. And if you wanted to live, you also said he was God. The birthday of the God Augustus was the beginning of the good news for the world. Because of him, we're celebrating the birth of the one who's going to make the world. Right. And this is the gospel, this is the good news. Right. It's like a, it's a technical term that was used in these political instances later on after Jesus. Josephus writes in the same Roman political language, speaking of a military victory. So even for us, the victory is good news. Right? It brings this sense of an event that brings human flourishing to the corporate people, whether it's to like to the city state or to the entire empire. It's a technical word that describes an event that brings peace and brings Wholeness to the empire. So we see that this royal political language that was adopted to suit the message of who Jesus is important for us today is that it informs how we read what it means for us to have obedience of faith. Okay, so all that background is to define the gospel and the foundational argument and idea that Jesus is Lord, he's the Resurrected, long anticipated son of God and King. Okay, so we can move on here. We're going to read it one more time. Oh, there's the pre end. Yeah, forgetting. Okay, I'm getting ahead of myself. Well, I'm going to read the one to seven again for us. Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the Gospel of God, the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures. The Gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness, by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord. There's the proclamation, there's the Gospel through whom we have received apostleship, grace and apostleship. Why? Here's Paul's mission to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for the sake of his name, including yourselves, who are called to belong to Jesus Christ. So this is Paul's describing who Jesus is, what the Gospel is and then what his mission is to bring about the response of the obedience of faith among Christians, among Gentiles, to the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Is this making sense? So this obedience of faith encapsulates Paul's entire call from God. After persecuting the church, he undertook three missionary journeys around the Mediterranean, planting churches and proclaiming the kingship of Jesus. And he received grace and apostleship for one purpose, to bring about the obedience of faith among the Gentiles. That's us by the way, if you ain't a Jew, you're a Gentile. It's just the nations. There's two people in Jewish culture there's two people. If you're a Jew, if you're a child of God, you're a Jew. And everybody else, okay, there's two types of. And he's called to the Gentiles. So I want to keep Paul like firmly in his world. Now try to make this quick. We see this language again other places. Faith and obedience. Okay, Faith and obedience. Alexander the Great takes over the world. Goes from Greece around down to Egypt and all the way east to the borders of India. He dies in 323. His empire is split up between his four generals over on this little sliver, this Judea on the corner on the side of the Mediterranean is Judea, and it rests between two of these generals. Naturally, they fight back and forth. Power is exchanged. This guy is leading. Now this guy's. Now it's this son back and forth for 150 years. And then we come to 175 BC, and Antiochus, a guy named Antiochus IV comes to power, and he sees his mission. I'm getting ahead of myself. So there's infighting amongst Alexander. Well, these people, the secular, the Greeks, they're fighting over Judea. And then not only are they infighting, Antiochus comes to power, and then the priests start fighting, the Jewish priests start fighting over the high priesthood, and they're bribing Antiochus, and it's going back and forth. And because Antiochus sees himself as the ruler and. And he's the only one who appoints high priests, he sees these priests fighting among themselves as an open rebellion against him. So he just decimates Jerusalem. He plunders the temple, he massacres the population. He forbids Jewish practices, especially circumcision, Sabbath and dietary laws, which are the laws that most distinctly set out the Jews from the rest of the people. He erects a statue of Zeus in the temple, he sacrifices a pig in the temple, and then just demands that every single Jew, man, woman, child, adopt Greek customs, Greek worship, and Greek religion. Now, all this leads to. Later on, there's a Jewish revolt, the temple is rededicated, and that's where Hanukkah starts the Jewish tradition of Hanukkah. Okay, but before that, during his massacres, when he's decimating the Jewish population. Fourth Maccabees, my favorite, almost made it to the Bible book. It's so good. It describes an event that happened while Antiochus is just reigning terror over the people. And it describes this. Elder Eleazar, seven brothers and their mother. And so first off, he goes to the Elder Eleazar and he says, turn your back on God, eat pork, eat defiled things. Forbid your covenant, your religion, your God, and serve me, or I will torture you to death. And Fourth Maccabees describes the torture that happens, and it's brutal. It's like as bad as you can imagine torture getting. That's how bad it was. And so Antiochus moves on to the seven brothers, and he says, you can see what I am capable of, but I'm going to make the deal a little bit sweeter for you guys. I will give you land. I'll Give you titles, I'll give you power, I'll give you political position, I'll give you wealth, and I'll give you my friendship. And then he uses this one word. He says, all you have to do is giving your faith. And what that meant was turning your back on the covenant, right? Turning your back on your God, turning your back on your heritage, your people, all this stuff. All he wanted was their faith. And he uses the word, just uses the word faith how we would the word we have in the New Testament. And then he goes on and says, and anything else, put your faith in me. Anything else that you do, other than putting your faith in me, I will consider disobedience. And we know what disobedience leads to. A brutal, torturous death. And so we see in 4th Maccabees that this idea of faith in a ruler and our obedience to them are inseparable. The expectation is not that you have faith and you can disobey. That's not how it works. They're not the same thing. They're not synonymous, but they're inseparable. Okay? If we have faith in Antiochus, if we give him our lives, it's a complete surrender. Antiochus isn't looking for just half. He expects nothing less than complete obedience. We see in Antiochus interaction with the brothers that the options are faithful obedience or death. Faithful allegiance, after all, is the proper and appropriate response to the generous offer of a patron. And here we can kind of start seeing how Paul and the Fourth Maccabees are using the same language, right? Like when we learn about what Antiochus expects, we can look at Jesus and Paul's using the same language. And there's a connection here. And Pastor Paul a few weeks ago talked about, mentioned briefly patron client relationships. And this is kind of the patron client relationships. It's the kind of the glue that held ancient society together. And this is basically what is happening between Antiochus and the seven brothers is he's the patron, right? He's offering wealth, power, status, land, you name it. And the patron in need of those things, Antiochus thinks they need them. Spoiler alert. They all go to gruesome deaths along with their mother. And they are. They're praised for it in the Book of Maccabees. But he offers them what are called benefits or graces. And if they were to accept them, what is their response? They return in gratitude and in faith. And so we can see how obedience can't be separated from faith and how patron. This patron client relationship was circular, okay? Now we are in need of a patron to provide what we lack. Correct. Our need is rescued from the tyrant of sin and death. Jesus comes and offers to rescue us, to redeem us, to restore us, and to bring us back to life. And he does require faith in return. Okay, Obedient faith, loyalty, public praise, service, and ultimately allegiance. So this patron, client relationship and this giving, it's called reciprocity. This gift giving of graces back and forth is described artistically. I learned this in the first. This is called the Three Graces. And it's three maidens dancing hand in hand. And each one of them represents an action in this gift giving, relational cycle. Seneca describes it in his book On Benefits or On Graces. They the three graces are made to hold hands and to stand in a ring because a benefit must pass from hand to hand and it comes back to the giver. The beauty of the whole is destroyed if the course is anywhere broken. And some have thought that there are three of them, because a benefit has a threefold nature. It is received, it is given, and it is returned. So that's the ancient context that Paul is writing into. And this describes the faith. Go back to our title. It describes the faith the Gospel requires. It describes Paul's obedience of faith. Obedience of faith that we would, in response to the grace given us, return to Jesus our faith, our trust, our faithfulness, public praise and allegiance to him as Lord and King of the cosmos in our lives. So he is Lord and there are benefits and graces that he bestows on us. Correct. He brought us from death to life. We get to taste the new creation that will come at the end of time. Now we're made new creations. We're forgiven of our sin, freed from condemnation. We have reconciliation with our Creator and Father. We have reconciliation with one another. We're empowered by the Spirit. We're given the Spirit of God to enable us to live. We're not just forgiven of our sins, but we're made clean so that we can be inhabited by the very Spirit of God who enables us to live a life that pleases God. We are welcomed into the family of God as His children. We're adopted as sons and daughters. You know, we could go on and on and on and on about the graces and the gifts that God has given us. So in return, obedience of faith. What is obedience? It does. Well, it seems to imply rules, doesn't it? It's like, okay, Jesus does these things for me. Now there's rules to follow. But the thing that God is Interested in is not so much rules, but he's interested in us pursuing things that give us life. Right? He's interested in us pursuing things that lead us to flourishing, right? The Greeks called it Eudaimonia. We could maybe call it the good life, but my mind just goes to a beach, not in Canada in the winter, but to human flourishing, right? And he's also interested in us avoiding things that lead us back into death. Right? He doesn't want us to be enslaved to that tyrant anymore. So what does Paul say? What does he write? He tells us. Romans 12:6. This is obedience. This is obedience according to Paul. Notice the gift giving language that we receive from the Father. And we have been given different gifts according to the grace given to us. Given, given, given, given. We're given to. Given to, given to. If the gift is prophecy, that individual must use it in proportion to his faith. If it is service, he must serve. If it is teaching, he must teach. If it is exhortation, he must exhort. If it is contributing, he must do so with sincerity. If it is leadership, he must do so with diligence. If it is showing mercy, he must do so with cheerfulness. Verse 9. Love Must Be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil, cling to what is good. Would we want to call these rules? I guess we could maybe do that. But he's describing a life that leads to life and a life that leads away from death. Verse 10. Be devoted to one another with mutual love. Showing eagerness in honoring one another. Do not lag in zeal. Be enthusiastic in spirit. Serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope. Endure in suffering. Persist in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints. Pursue hospitality. Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Do not be conceited. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Consider what is good before all people, if possible. As far as it depends on you. Live peaceably with all people. In other words, be like Jesus. And that's what the Spirit does for us, right? Makes us a new creation that is just like our Lord. That's what Deuteronomy, Moses gives the people of Israel an option. He's like, I put before you a choice today. Choose life or choose death. Choose blessing or choose curses. And we have that same choice today. Because we can choose to go back and live in sin and death. Can't we sin is always the tyrant that enslaves. And we like to think that it's not zero sum, non. Like, it's a binary option. Okay, we serve Jesus or enslaved to sin. And we like to think, you know, it's like, I'm a Christian, I can flirt with the tyrant, right? As long as I keep my balance on this foot, I guess I can dip a toe. But tyrants never let go of the chains they put you in. Obedience to a tyrant always leads to slavery. Obedience to Jesus is true and everlasting freedom in the service of the Lord. And. And this is the obedience of faith, recognizing who Jesus is. So here's the thing. Faith, it's not a. It's not a. It doesn't mean this, it's this, or it doesn't mean this, it's this. It's like, yes, I believe the Bible is true and what it says about Jesus. And because I believe that I have. I don't have a choice as to how I respond with my life. This is what, this is what James is saying, right when Pastor Paul is preaching. It's like, you don't. You don't get a choice. If I say that Jesus is the resurrected son of God and the long anticipated king, and I believe that, but I don't serve him and I don't obey, can you really say you believe that? Because I know what the Bible says about Jesus, and that's the king. I can't help but serve. I can't help but obey. We have been rescued from death. How could we return to it? How could we return to our sin? Romans 6:2. Oh, here we go. Maybe it'll catch up. Romans 6:2. How can we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that as many as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death, therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death in order that that happens for a purpose. In order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may live a new life. That's so good. Is that so good? He continues. Verse 16. Do you not know. Oh, I want to say, if any of you are in here, are Christians and are not baptized, I encourage you to meditate on that little passage for the rest of the week and then get baptized. Do you not know that if you present yourselves as obedient slaves. There we go. Do you not know that if you present yourselves as obedient slaves, you are slaves to the one you obey? Either of sin resulting in death? Or obedience resulting in righteousness. But thanks be to God that though you were slaves to sin, you obeyed from the heart that pattern of teaching you were entrusted to. And having been freed from sin, we're free from sin. We don't have to do that anymore. We don't have to live in it. You became enslaved to righteousness. It's either or right or we're enslaved to one or the other. But just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification. Sounds like pretty good news to me. Amen. Is it good? We have a choice. We've been free from sin and death. Jesus is Lord. He's the resurrected Son of God, the long expected king. Again, Paul's mission, and it's going on this morning. He wrote this letter and we're preaching his words. They're that important that we need us Gentiles. Maybe we have a few Jewish brothers and sisters in here. Welcome. But as Gentiles, we need to be saved, right? We need our Savior. So we are called to obey the the obedient Lord, right before we even look to him for salvation. He's done it all. He obeyed the Father in the garden, right? And what did he say? What did he pray? Not my will, but your will be done. How can we not surrender to this kind of king? We need to pray for obedient hearts. We need to pray not my will, but your will be done. And this is not popular in our culture, is it? It's never popular amongst human beings. We're all about self actualization, you know, I need to be true to myself. I've been true to myself and I'd rather be true to Jesus. Amen. We become truly human when we become more like Jesus. We don't become better versions of ourselves. When I just like sink into myself and be true to myself, I become truly me. When I'm true to Jesus, he changes me and the Spirit changes me. So this isn't popular today and it never has been, but it's what us human beings need, isn't it? Now I also want to be wary and I want to warn us about approaching this legalistically. Our obedience of faith that we give to our Lord and Savior is our response to the grace he has given to us and bestowed upon us. It is not the means by which we achieve the grace. Okay? Our faith in Jesus, our service, our loyalty, our allegiance, our trust in him, our hope, all of that is in response to the Gospel. It's in response to what he's done. It's in response to his grace. It's not how we get his grace. We don't do things to earn his favor. We don't do things to get his grace. He gives it to us and then asks us to respond in gratitude and faith. It's like thinking, if I do the right things, if I go to church, if I serve in the church, if I work hard, if I'm a good dad, if I'm a good father, then God owes me. Or if I give to the church. You've probably seen these characters. If you give money to the church, you know it. You put God in your debt. He owes you. God doesn't owe you anything. Think about what he's done for you. And you want to ask for more. You think you can put him. I say you, we. We think we can put him in our debt by doing good. Ridiculous. And there's been times where I know it's not true. But I think I don't deserve this, God. I deserve better. I deserve better. What have I done to deserve this? And what I'm saying is like, I've put you in my debt. You owe me a perfect life, right? Not true. He's done everything. He's done it all. So do not approach God's grace as if you can achieve it. It's been already given to you, it's already done and you've done nothing for it. Okay, we've done nothing for it. Stop using the you's. I'm included. Trust me, I'm included. So let's close. Let's conclude. We're going to conclude by reading the conclusion of Romans. And I want you to think about the Gospel as we've. Just as he described it in chapter one. And listen to how he describes. Listen to how he concludes the message. This is the last couple verses. It says now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and a proclamation of Jesus Christ, like who God is, who Jesus is, according to the revelation of mystery that has been kept secret for long ages, but now is disclosed and through the prophetic scriptures has been made known to all nations according to the command of the eternal God. Why? To bring about the obedience of faith to the only wise God through Jesus Christ be glory forever. Amen. The Westminster Shorter Catechism starts with a question. And it says, what is the chief end of man? Does anyone know the answer? It says, the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. We made it. We're there, right? Let's glorify God and enjoy him. He's worth it. He's so worth it. Let's stand. Let's pray. Good and gracious Father, we praise your name. We ask that your kingdom come and that your will will be done. Your will will be done. Here among us, your children. We are needy and we can do nothing on our own. We humbly ask for you to provide. We repent now for where we have disregarded your will, where we have violated our commitments to you. We ask that you help us to have the same grace and forgiveness for those that you have had for us. We need you to guide us. We are so prone to following our own desires that lead us away from you and back into death. We need you to help us. All of this is yours. My world. Our world. This community. This church. This city. This nation. We recognize your greatness today. We recognize our deep and abiding need for you. And we pour out our hearts in gratitude that you would see fit to make a way for us to know you. You are great. You are good. You are beautiful. We love you. And we commit today to serve our God and king. And in his mighty name we say amen. Go in grace and peace.