00:00: I've had times in my life when life was hard.
00:05: How many of you have been in that place where life is just hard sometimes?
00:09: I'm assuming everyone that didn't raise their hands has arm difficulty because we've all been there, right?
00:16: We've all had those times.
00:18: I've had times when I just wanted to give up and quit and be done with whatever thing was overwhelming me at that point.
00:28: I've had times when something or some things in my life were just so hard.
00:34: I wanted to quit having to face the difficulty.
00:37: I wanted to just be done with it and wash my hands of it.
00:40: Times when I thought about giving up on what God was calling me to in that moment, at that time and place.
00:49: If I'm honest, it wasn't just times when I thought about it.
00:51: Times when I dreamed about it.
00:54: Times when I thought if I could just be done with this thing, if I could just walk away from what God is calling me to in this moment, oh, that would be great.
01:04: And if I'm truly honest, I'd have to say there have been times when I fantasized about running away from what was too hard, what was overwhelming me because it was just too painful, too exhausting.
01:21: I know you've had times like that when you face those temptations.
01:24: But in the hardest times that I've faced, I didn't quit, I didn't give up, and I didn't run away.
01:32: I stood fast.
01:34: Now, I come from stubborn stock.
01:36: None of you have had the opportunity to meet my father.
01:38: He passed away a number of years ago.
01:40: But he was the most stubborn man that I have ever met in my life.
01:47: I come from very stubborn stock.
01:49: But it wasn't this inherited stubbornness of my father, of which I only got a small sample, that sustained me.
02:01: It was God's word that sustained me.
02:04: I thought, oh, I just want to run away from what God's calling me to right now.
02:08: But I've read about that.
02:10: I've read what happens when God calls someone to something and they try to run away.
02:15: There's a book in the Bible called Jonah.
02:18: It's the story of God calling a prophet to bring God's message to a pagan, sinful people and to call them, in effect, through that to repentance and toward the one true God.
02:28: But Jonah didn't want to do it.
02:30: He runs away.
02:32: And I know how that story goes.
02:34: God chases him down and says, oh, no, you don't.
02:36: Every parent in here has had some time when they told their young child to do something and the child said, no, using that new word that they've got and like so much.
02:48: And good parents, when their child says no, they give that child their full attention and they double down and they win that fight because they know that their child needs to learn to obey.
03:01: And God is a good father who knows that we need to learn to obey.
03:07: And so I knew that if I tried to avoid what God was calling me to and asking me to do, that he would chase me down.
03:14: And like a good father, he'd say, no, we are going to do this and you are going to do what I'm telling you to do.
03:22: I thought about Jonah's experience.
03:23: He runs away.
03:25: He still has to go and do what he was called to do.
03:27: But because he runs away, he gets to spend three days and three nights in the belly of a fish.
03:34: Try to imagine this.
03:35: Three days of pitch black.
03:38: Three days of stankiness.
03:42: I can only imagine what he looked like when the fish coughed him up near Nineveh.
03:48: Three days in liquid.
03:51: In fish guts, essentially.
03:53: When he walked into town, he must have looked horrible and he must have smelled nasty.
04:01: And I'm thinking, he's got to do it on the heels of that.
04:05: I don't want to add the Jonah factor to my story.
04:08: It's hard.
04:09: I don't want to do it.
04:10: But better to say yes than have God guide me back where I need to be after resisting.
04:17: Now, I'm no Jonah.
04:18: I'm not him.
04:20: But Jonah's God is my God.
04:21: And I know that my God is faithful and does not give up on his people.
04:28: Philippians 1, 6, Paul tells us, I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus.
04:38: God's never going to give up on me.
04:40: Now, there may be a lot of times when somebody less than God would be like, that's a lost cause.
04:46: Throw in the towel.
04:47: Dylan's not worth it.
04:48: But God doesn't work that way.
04:50: If he has brought you to a saving faith in Jesus, he will see his redemption through in your life.
04:56: He will continue to keep you following Jesus, trusting in Jesus.
05:01: He will continue to transform you.
05:03: And so my confidence in God's gracious, sovereign, unthwartable purposes for me, blood-bought, Jesus-centered purposes, kept me going through the hardest times that I have faced in my life.
05:16: I knew that God would never give up on me as a believer in Jesus Christ.
05:21: And it's no accident that it was confidence in the God who loves me through Jesus that strengthened me and kept me established through those times.
05:33: I praise God for it.
05:35: In fact, these are exactly the issues that we have before us in Romans chapter 16.
05:40: As we reach the finale of Paul's letter to the church in Rome, as we reach this final doxology section, we're dealing with God strengthening his people through the gospel message, through the news and glorious truth about Jesus.
05:58: Follow along.
06:00: Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages, but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God to bring about the obedience of faith to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ.
06:29: Amen.
06:31: Amen?
06:32: Amen.
06:33: You know, at first glance, we can get lost in there.
06:35: You probably got lost as I went through it fairly quickly.
06:40: It can feel or seem like just a bunch of God-centered talk tossed in a bowl and tossed together like a salad and yeah, throw it out and see what sticks.
06:49: But it's actually glorious, profound, Christ-centered truth that will build you up and sustain you that deserves to be considered carefully.
07:01: We call this a doxology.
07:04: That's what this section is referred to as.
07:06: Doxology is from the Greek.
07:08: It's a compound word.
07:09: It's doxos, which means glory, and logos, which means word.
07:13: It's literally a word of glory.
07:15: It's a word that, a message, a saying that ascribes glory to God.
07:20: Now, it doesn't make God glorious.
07:23: He is already glorious.
07:24: But it's recognizing.
07:26: It's declaring what it already is and saying, this God is amazing.
07:33: Brad is no fool.
07:35: And so on his wedding day, when he looked down the aisle and he saw Courtney coming toward him, he thought in his very talkative way, wow.
07:48: Am I right?
07:49: Yeah, yeah.
07:50: And when he said wow, he was describing Courtney.
07:54: He didn't make her suddenly become wow.
07:56: No.
07:57: He was simply observing what already was and giving credit where credit was due.
08:04: Amen?
08:05: Amen.
08:06: Good answer, Brad.
08:10: A doxology is declaring and affirming what is.
08:14: I use doxologies from scripture all the time in benedictions at the end of service.
08:20: There's lots of them in the Bible.
08:23: Now, it's an ascription, ascribing of glory to God.
08:28: But as you read through it, you kind of get lost in the shuffle.
08:32: And so what I want to do is I want to condense it.
08:34: I want to chop out the middle for a moment so you can see the simplicity of it.
08:39: If you take just the beginning, now to him, and you go to the end, be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ.
08:49: Amen.
08:50: You have the heart of the doxology right there.
08:53: Now to him, God, be glory forever through Jesus Christ.
08:56: Amen.
08:57: That's the point.
08:58: That is the heart and soul of this doxology.
09:01: To God be the glory through Jesus Christ.
09:04: Through Jesus Christ has to be included.
09:07: You can't say simply, now to God be glory forevermore.
09:11: That's not enough.
09:12: Because at the heart and soul of the scripture, at the heart and soul of Christianity is Jesus.
09:18: If you put Jesus out of the equation, you've walked away from God, you've walked away from Christianity.
09:23: Jesus says, no one comes to the Father except through me.
09:27: There's so many places where it's clear.
09:30: If you reject Jesus, if you take Jesus out of the mix, you don't have access to God.
09:35: You don't have relationship with God.
09:37: And so the glory that God deserves hinges on, depends on, is based on Jesus, who he is and what he has done.
09:48: Sometimes I have these little internal mental conversations with the apostle Paul when I'm studying New Testament epistles.
09:55: And I say to Paul here, okay, Paul, I'm on board.
09:57: Give God glory.
09:58: Yeah, yeah, I get that.
10:00: And because of Jesus, yeah.
10:02: Why all this stuff in the middle?
10:05: Why does this deserve to be given?
10:08: Why does this glory deserve to be declared forever on account of Jesus?
10:12: And that's when Paul's like, oh, I'll tell you.
10:16: If you've studied the New Testament epistles at any length of time, you find that Paul has a freaky aversion to punctuation.
10:25: He lets his sentences go on and on and on and on and on.
10:30: Most English Bibles have sentence breaks where Paul does not because you just get lost.
10:36: You have, where are we, Paul?
10:38: He has so much going on that he wants to squeeze in.
10:41: And so why, Paul?
10:43: Why this glory through Jesus forever?
10:46: Oh, I'll tell you.
10:47: Look at the beginning of the dexology.
10:49: Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ.
10:59: That's interesting to me because he doesn't just say, glory to God because he's God.
11:03: Glory to God because he's eternal.
11:05: Glory to God because he's infinite.
11:06: Glory to God because he's holy and perfect.
11:09: All those things would be legitimate to say.
11:12: But he says, now to him who is able to strengthen you.
11:20: Him who is able to strengthen you.
11:23: How many of you sometimes need more strength than you have?
11:27: All of us.
11:28: We're all there sometimes.
11:31: And Paul says, I'm worshiping the God who makes weak people strong.
11:37: That God, the God who can make weak, frail, anxious, worried, insufficient people, strong.
11:48: That's the God who's worthy of worship.
11:50: That's what he's saying here.
11:52: Well, I like that.
11:54: I like that a lot because I need God's strength.
11:56: I need strengthening.
11:57: Well, how does he do that, Paul?
11:59: Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ.
12:07: God strengthens us through the good news of Jesus Christ.
12:12: The good news, gospel means good news, through the good news of who Jesus is and what he has done.
12:18: That's where the strength comes from.
12:21: Do not, do not, do not substitute for the gospel anything else.
12:28: Do not think that you can read a book on 17 steps to have a healthy Christian marriage or five steps to be the ideal Christian parent or three easy ways.
12:38: Just click here and find out how to make this work in your life.
12:41: No.
12:42: You need Jesus front and center in everything.
12:47: Not Jesus, some made up version of him that's like, just try harder and be better.
12:52: No, the Jesus who died to accomplish everything that needs doing for your rescue.
13:01: Everything that needs purchasing was purchased in his blood for you to be restored to God, transformed into the likeness of Jesus and made secure and safe for eternity.
13:17: God makes us strong through the gospel.
13:20: That is, through the preaching of Jesus Christ.
13:22: I want every single one of you to become a gospel preacher.
13:25: Now, I don't want you to do it from up here.
13:27: That's my thing.
13:27: Okay?
13:28: Not all of you are called to be gospel preachers up here, but you're called to be gospel preachers in at least three ways.
13:33: Number one, be a gospel preacher to yourself.
13:36: You need to be reminding yourself of the gospel daily.
13:41: The Psalms give us examples of David preaching to himself.
13:45: Why so downcast within me, O my soul?
13:48: Forget not the Lord and all his benefits.
13:50: He's addressing himself.
13:51: He's talking to himself.
13:52: If you're one of those people who talks to themselves, as the church secretary sometimes does, I'll be in my office and I'll hear something and I'll be like, you talking to me?
14:03: 50-50 people.
14:05: 50-50.
14:06: Talking to yourself is biblical.
14:08: David does it.
14:10: Talk to yourself.
14:11: Preach the gospel to yourself.
14:12: Number two, you know who else you need to preach the gospel to?
14:15: Me.
14:17: And one another.
14:18: That's what Paul talks about in chapter one, verses 11 and 12.
14:22: He's writing to a church that he did not plant and that he's never visited and he says, I want to come preach the gospel to you.
14:28: He says that to already Christian people.
14:30: He says, I want to come tell you about the gospel and I want to have us mutually encourage each other with our Jesus-centered emphasis and time together.
14:39: Paraphrased.
14:41: We need the true message about Jesus preached from Christians to Christians on an ongoing basis.
14:48: And number three, I want you to be gospel preachers to the non-Christians in your life, the people around you who don't know Jesus because they need to know Jesus.
14:59: They need to understand accurately about Jesus so that they can trust in Jesus and turn to God and be saved and have their life transformed.
15:06: They're not going to hear about it if we don't tell them about it.
15:09: Nobody's going to flip on the evening news or show up in a public school classroom and suddenly hear this clear, concise, accurate gospel presentation.
15:20: It doesn't happen.
15:21: The culture, the world around us is at odds with God.
15:25: They are enemies of God.
15:26: And the only way they're going to hear it is if somebody who has been reconciled to God obeys God and brings the message to them as God has commissioned us to do.
15:37: Christian counselor David Powlison famously said, don't ever degenerate into giving advice unconnected with the good news of Jesus crucified, alive, present, at work, and returning.
15:57: He understood you don't start with the gospel, this message about Jesus and become a Christian and then move on to bigger and better things.
16:04: There are no bigger and better things.
16:06: You can't upgrade from Jesus.
16:09: You start with Jesus.
16:10: You continue with Jesus.
16:11: You keep the focus on Jesus.
16:12: And that's how you continue in the Christian life and cross the finish line.
16:16: Don't ever divert away from the emphasis on Jesus Christ.
16:21: That's where God's word is centered from cover to cover.
16:24: It shows us our need for Jesus.
16:26: It shows us our insufficiency to fix it on our own and therefore we need Jesus.
16:30: It tells us about the coming of Jesus.
16:32: It shows us what he's like, what he's done, his promises, how he's working.
16:36: And then it shows us that at the end we get to be with Jesus forever.
16:41: The Bible from cover to cover is about Jesus.
16:47: Stay fixed on Jesus and you will have the strength you need.
16:51: Hebrews chapter 12.
16:53: Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles and run with perseverance the race marked out for us.
17:07: fix your eyes on Jesus.
17:14: You want to persevere?
17:15: You want to resist sin?
17:17: You want to avoid getting tangled up in non-sin things that will still slow you down?
17:21: Keep your eyes on Jesus.
17:28: That's where our strength comes from.
17:31: What does that strength look like?
17:33: What kind of strength are we talking about?
17:35: We're talking about the courage to go against the grain and swim against the current if others are headed the wrong way.
17:44: It's about choosing what's right in God's eyes, not what's popular, common, or easiest.
17:52: It's the strength to step out of your comfort zone when God calls you into something new or unfamiliar.
17:59: It's the strength to keep going when you're dreaming or even fantasizing about quitting and running away.
18:07: It's the willingness to speak up about your faith in Jesus to someone who needs to hear the good news, especially if that someone is a friend or a family member and you're afraid of their possible negative response.
18:21: It's the courage and trust in God to speak up and share your faith even if you are an introvert.
18:33: God calls introverts and extroverts alike to Jesus Christ and calls introverts and extroverts alike to represent him to the world around them.
18:45: And I'll be honest, extroverts, it tends to be a little easier for them to share.
18:50: Sometimes you can't shut an extrovert up, right?
18:54: But sometimes the introverts are like, hmm, too much when they interact with some of those extroverts and they need a fellow, quiet, reserved person to talk to them.
19:07: And that's you, introvert Christian.
19:11: It's the courage to vote yes to leaving our denomination if faithfulness to God requires it, even if it means losing the assets that God has entrusted to us to this point.
19:26: It's the refusal to excuse your own sin as something that can't be overcome, can't be conquered, and instead saying, I will, by the power of the Holy Spirit, wage war against my own sin day by day.
19:39: And as often as I may fail, I will get back up in the strength that God provides.
19:45: It's, to quote another pastor, the strength that comes from being so confident in God and who you are in God as a son or daughter of the king of the universe.
19:56: So confident in what he has done for you and promises to do for you and to be for you in Jesus Christ that you fear nothing but God.
20:05: And you laugh at the time to come no matter what it holds.
20:08: You need strength day by day and you will find the reserves of strength available to you that you need as you fix your heart and mind on Jesus Christ.
20:24: Paul begins his doctology by saying, this God makes weak people strong.
20:28: And I think Paul knew that from personal experience.
20:31: We think of Paul as this victorious, mighty apostle and in some ways he was.
20:35: But you start reading carefully, you got a guy that gets beat up, shipwrecked, jailed, mocked.
20:43: There's a time where he's even God's like, hey, this next one's going to be a little easier ride.
20:48: Like, there was no need for God to tell him that generically.
20:53: It must be that God knew that he needed that in that moment that he just needed a little breather, right?
20:59: Paul struggled with health issues of some sort.
21:02: He wrote in really big letters.
21:04: I think maybe he possibly had some sort of neurological hand, he couldn't write small work.
21:10: Maybe he just couldn't see well enough to write small enough.
21:13: It was not always easy going.
21:17: Strength comes from God.
21:19: And notice where he goes from there.
21:22: According to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages, but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings, has been made known to all nations.
21:35: according to the command of the eternal God to bring about the obedience of faith.
21:42: And there's a lot in there, but let's get to the heart of it.
21:45: The command of God has resulted in what was unknown becoming known.
21:52: The New Testament uses the word mystery to describe this.
21:55: We didn't know what it was and now we do know what it is.
21:58: That's mystery.
21:59: We think about mystery as being something and we don't know what it is.
22:02: In the New Testament, the mystery is something that was hidden, is now revealed.
22:05: specifically, the gospel, the good news about who Jesus is and what he's done, has been kept secret for a long time, for long ages, it says.
22:16: But God began revealing it through the prophetic writings.
22:20: That's the Old Testament writings for these various prophets.
22:23: The Old Testament is all about humanity's need for a Savior in order to make us right with God.
22:27: It's full of promises and hints and descriptions of God providing a Savior and what he would be like and what he would do.
22:36: It's this long ages past plan that then manifests in history as God set apart a people for himself.
22:43: God worked with the Jewish people distinctly, primarily, for about 2,000 years before Jesus arrives on scene.
22:52: And so, God is making it known.
22:54: He's revealing the Savior story.
22:59: And it's for everyone.
23:00: Paul says that it has been made known to all nations.
23:05: Now, he doesn't mean every country on earth.
23:09: At the time that he wrote, there were nations out there that hadn't encountered it.
23:13: The people living in what we would call Japan had not heard the gospel at this time.
23:17: The point is, it's not just for the Jewish people anymore.
23:20: It's for the non-Jewish people too.
23:21: That is the Gentiles.
23:23: Everybody is supposed to get in on this.
23:26: Everyone is supposed to be told about this.
23:27: Paul and company were at work to make that happen.
23:30: They were traveling out saying, we want to go tell everyone.
23:34: In fact, we saw in chapter 15 of Romans, Paul's like, hey, Rome, nice to meet you.
23:39: I'm Paul.
23:40: I plan to come through your area on my way to Spain.
23:44: Try traveling from Israel to Spain by foot or ox cart.
23:48: He's like, oh, yeah, yeah, I'm going to do that.
23:50: Maybe, you know, mission support letter here, you help me on my way?
23:54: He is part of the team that's making sure the gospel gets out to everyone.
23:59: Anyone and everyone with whom they could get an audience needed to hear about the gospel.
24:05: And so on to this day.
24:07: And let me be direct.
24:10: It's now our turn.
24:12: It is our turn.
24:13: And I don't mean our, the contemporary Christian church, though that's true.
24:17: I mean you and me, personally.
24:20: It's our turn to be sharing the gospel with the people around us.
24:26: I've got friends who are Christians in other places and other parts of the country and abroad.
24:30: It's not their job to share the gospel in Green Bay.
24:34: It's your job and my job.
24:36: I say share the gospel.
24:37: I don't mean invite them to church as though that's the end of it.
24:40: I'm talking about explaining the good news of Jesus.
24:43: God had a plan to fix what's broken in this world and to rescue us from the consequences of our wickedness.
24:55: Every one of us does bad things.
24:57: You've never met a perfectly good person in your life.
25:01: We need rescue and God makes that rescue possible and certain in Jesus Christ.
25:07: God himself entered into our experience, wrote himself into history, became a human being.
25:13: We celebrate that at Christmas.
25:15: Everyone around us knows about Christmas.
25:18: We celebrate the baby in the manger.
25:20: Even if you're not really a Christian, you're familiar with that, that's what we're talking about.
25:25: We're talking about God entering the world as a human being, living finally the perfect life that nobody has ever pulled off before or since, and then being punished as though he was guilty as a substitute in place of those who trust him.
25:42: And because Jesus volunteered to get punished in your place, God will not punish you because he already poured out his punishment on Jesus.
25:51: If you entrust yourself to Jesus, if you believe in him, trust in him, rely on him to have done everything to make you right with God, you are saved, and you will be saved.
26:03: You are already forgiven, you are saved, done deal, and you will be preserved by God, crossing that finish line and get to spend forever with him in glory, in a place and in a context where there is no sin, but there's only joy and gladness and positive, right, good, glorious things.
26:24: That's what's going on.
26:26: It's our turn to be sharing that.
26:28: We say here at Faith Chapel that our mission is for every believer to become, make, mature, and multiply fully surrendered disciples of Jesus Christ.
26:38: I guarantee you, if you trust in Jesus and you increasingly say no to self and yes to Jesus, you will be happier and more satisfied than any alternative.
26:48: Joy comes in following Jesus and everyone's included, everyone's invited.
26:54: There's nobody in your life that God says, man, don't bother with them, I don't want them in my team.
27:01: If he had that attitude, you wouldn't be on his team, nor would I.
27:07: And it was God's command to make this mystery about Jesus, this wonderful news about Jesus known, it's according to the command of the eternal God.
27:15: Does that strike you as weird, the eternal God?
27:17: I mean, just say it's according to the command of God, right?
27:21: God is inherently eternal.
27:23: He's the uncreated creator.
27:25: He's the one from whom everything else comes.
27:27: So why does Paul bother to describe God as being eternal here?
27:32: Because the command of God regarding the gospel reaches back into eternity with the God who is eternal.
27:41: God did not create the universe and then watch Adam and Eve blow it and say, oh no, I gotta fix it and come up with a plan then and there.
27:51: God's plan for the gospel and for sending Jesus precedes creation and goes back with him into eternity.
27:59: What God purposed to accomplish through Jesus, all that Christ died to accomplish, God's plan for that was before creation.
28:09: 2 Timothy 1 line talks about God's purposes for his people in Jesus because of his own purpose and grace which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began.
28:24: You wanna do a timeline?
28:26: Before time, God's plan, Jesus.
28:29: Time begins, that's when it begins to flesh out.
28:33: God's plan for you personally and for all who would come to trust in Jesus precedes time.
28:39: Ephesians chapter 3 talks about many of the same things that we're looking at in this doxology and says this was according to the eternal purpose that he, God, has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord.
28:51: What God is doing in your life, in your life personally, has roots back into eternity, before creation, before there was mankind on earth, before Adam and Eve blew it.
29:02: God had plans for you.
29:04: Does that encourage you?
29:06: I'm encouraged by that.
29:08: I'm edified by that.
29:09: I'm strengthened by that.
29:13: Because whatever comes my way is no surprise to God.
29:16: He knows what his plan is.
29:18: And he's got a good plan for me in Jesus Christ.
29:21: According to the command of the eternal God to bring about the obedience of faith.
29:26: We looked at that a couple weeks back.
29:27: The obedience of faith.
29:29: This obedience that God intends to produce in us that is the overflow of faith.
29:33: Right?
29:33: I loved when my kids were little and they would jump off the edge of the pool or jump off the changing table into my arms.
29:40: That was just so beautiful.
29:42: You get this moment where they jump and you grab and you bring them in close for the hug.
29:46: Just this exercise of faith.
29:51: They trusted me.
29:52: They put it into action and it was amazing.
29:56: That's what the obedience of faith is.
29:58: We looked at that a couple weeks ago so I'm not going to belabor it.
30:00: Other to point out this.
30:02: go back to the beginning.
30:04: To creation.
30:06: There's God.
30:07: There's the angels.
30:08: There's the demons who have rebelled against God.
30:10: There's Adam and Eve.
30:11: They're perfect.
30:11: They have no sin and they rebel.
30:15: They don't trust God and that lack of trust in God overflows in disobedience.
30:24: It's a very simple formula.
30:27: Distrust God results in disobeying God.
30:30: trusting God results in obeying God.
30:35: And so what we really need is not simply to try real hard to obey self-righteous works efforts like the Pharisees.
30:42: What we really need is a transformed heart that says I trust you God.
30:47: I don't understand it all.
30:48: I'm confused on some points but I trust you.
30:52: And that's where the obedience that we need and that honors God comes from.
30:57: That's what God is about in his work.
31:01: He's not just saving us from the consequences of our sin.
31:04: He's saving us from our sinfulness.
31:06: How many of you don't name names.
31:08: How many of you have at sometimes seen a child disobey and the parents erase the consequences?
31:16: They somehow do what it takes so the kid doesn't face the consequences of their blunder.
31:21: And the parents do it again and again and again for that kid.
31:26: And the kid grows up to be spoiled rotten brat.
31:30: You've seen it.
31:32: We've seen it.
31:33: Good parenting doesn't simply want to protect the child from the consequences of their wrong action.
31:40: It wants to help that child be transformed and not produce those kinds of behaviors anymore.
31:49: God is not simply rescuing us from the consequences of our sin.
31:55: He's interested in fixing us, remodeling us, restoring us to a place where we don't want sin anymore, where we don't then choose sin anymore.
32:08: That's what good parenting looks like and you have a great and glorious heavenly father.
32:17: Finally, I want to end on this note.
32:20: The eternal God has a perfect plan and Jesus is the center and sum of that plan.
32:26: No better plan could possibly have been conceived.
32:30: If you got all the angels together and gave them a billion years to strategize, they would not come up with a better plan than God's plan for saving the world through Jesus Christ.
32:40: God is perfectly wise.
32:43: Verse 27, to the only wise God be glory forever more through Jesus Christ.
32:51: Paul turns as he thinks about this salvation, this rescue in Jesus, he turns and says, how wise is God that this is his plan?
33:01: Now, unless you misconstrue Paul here, he's not saying, you know, there's a lot of gods out there, but I'm talking about the one that happens to be wise.
33:09: He's not distinguishing this God from other gods because this one's wise.
33:13: He's saying there is only one God and that God is wise.
33:16: We know this because elsewhere, Paul says, for example, 1 Timothy 117, to the king of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever.
33:28: Amen.
33:29: So Paul's clear, there's only one God.
33:31: There's only one God.
33:32: We heard that in our scripture reading this morning.
33:34: There's only one God and that God is wise.
33:39: Unimaginably wise.
33:40: Our men's Bible study spent an extensive time studying the book of Proverbs and digging and digging.
33:46: That book, the book of Proverbs, is about wisdom.
33:49: And as we studied it, we learned this.
33:51: Wisdom and knowledge are not the same thing.
33:55: Wisdom assumes and requires knowledge, but goes further.
33:59: Wisdom is about knowing the best way to live in any situation, the God centered, God pleasing way to live, and then actually living that way.
34:11: If you know somebody who always knows the right answer, but never does that right thing, you would not call that person wise.
34:19: You call him a knucklehead, right?
34:20: Like, dude, you know better, what are you doing?
34:22: It has to do with the right choice being enacted.
34:29: One writer describes biblical wisdom as knowing what the greatest goal is in any situation and what the best way is to achieve it.
34:39: And that's what Paul here is celebrating about God, that God's plan in Jesus Christ is perfect.
34:44: It's beyond improvement.
34:46: It's ideal.
34:47: It's the best possible plan that could be conceived, and God has not only conceived it from eternity, but determined to bring it to pass.
34:57: God's there in existence before time begins, conceives of the plan that we call redemption, salvation.
35:05: I'm not even sure if that's quite the right way to talk about it with him transcending time, but the way my little brain can think about it.
35:13: And then God creates the universe, creates angels and demons and ants, plants and animals and people, allowing them to rebel against him, knowing full well before he creates them that it will play out that way.
35:27: And then he's going to send his son Jesus into the world after 2,000 years of prep work with the Jewish people, giving the scriptures, showing his faithfulness, giving a foreshadowing by rescuing his people out of slavery in Egypt and into the freedom that he had promised them.
35:45: After all that, then he sends Jesus and Jesus comes, becomes one of us, lives this perfect life, dies in our place, rises from the dead, ascends to heaven, and now God is working out the consequences of that throughout the whole world.
36:01: The gospel is being preached as a testimony to all nations.
36:05: Matthew 24, 14 tells us that's going to happen.
36:07: To all nations, and then the end will come and the final consummation when everything is brought to its completion.
36:13: Think back over the book of Romans.
36:15: Paul starts off with his little intro.
36:16: Hey, it's me, Paul, writing to you guys in Rome as a little introduction.
36:19: We've not met.
36:20: Let me make acquaintances.
36:21: Then he spends the next two chapters, halfway through chapter one, all the way through chapter two, halfway through chapter three saying, y'all need a savior.
36:28: I don't care if you're Jewish and have the scriptures, you don't obey the scriptures all the time.
36:32: If you're not Jewish, you don't have the scriptures, but your conscience, you don't even live up to your conscience.
36:37: You don't treat God like God deserves to be treated, so you need forgiveness, you need rescue.
36:42: Then chapter three, halfway through, he says, let me tell you what that looks like.
36:45: It's God's righteousness given simply by faith in Jesus.
36:50: He explains the gospel.
36:51: That's what the second half of chapter three is.
36:54: Then chapter four, he's like, yeah, I know this sounds hard to believe, but let's look at Abraham and I'll prove it.
36:59: This is exactly how God has always saved people, through faith.
37:03: He says, let me show you how this works.
37:05: Let me go back to Adam.
37:05: Let me compare and contrast Adam and Jesus and how God has from the very beginning said, I'm going to have somebody represent others and they're going to get the consequences of that man's performance.
37:18: You're in Adam.
37:18: You're represented by Adam.
37:20: That's not good for you, but you can get out of being represented by him if you get represented by Jesus.
37:26: Chapter six, he's like, does that mean we just go on and sin?
37:30: You know the answer to that.
37:32: No, it doesn't mean you just keep on sinning and he unpacks how we are connected to Jesus.
37:37: We're in union with him and so we live a different life.
37:39: Then he goes into seven, he's like, I ain't claiming I got it all together.
37:41: I struggle.
37:42: There's things I want to do and I don't do it.
37:44: There's things I don't want to do and that's the knucklehead stuff I do.
37:47: Chapter eight, he gets into this glorious vision of the freedom that we have in the Holy Spirit, how the Holy Spirit is going to enable us to and he's like, but don't think that God blew off the Jews.
38:00: Chapters nine, ten, eleven, he deals with that.
38:02: Chapter nine, he deals with the sovereignty of God in election.
38:06: Chapter ten, he deals with human responsibility and our response to God.
38:09: Chapter eleven, he said, and the story is not over, there's more to come.
38:13: And in all these things, Paul is blown away by the redemptive plan of God for all nations, for Jews and Gentiles and how he's seeing it through and he ends at the end of eleven with, oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God.
38:26: How unsearchable are his judgments, how inscrutable his ways, for who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor, or who has given a gift to him that he might be replayed, for from him and through him and to him are all things, to him be glory forever.
38:44: Amen.
38:46: Doxology, at the end of eleven, when he considers the plan of God and salvation, he says, I gotta worship, I gotta praise.
38:53: If God's plan in and through Jesus is so perfect, so ideal that it cannot be improved upon, if the gospel, the good news about who Jesus is for us, who trusts in him, and how God strengthens us with that, if this plan has been revealed and is being revealed, and it's our turn to share it and make it known, if this is what it's all about, then how can we not praise him and give him the glory?
39:20: We don't sing here every week because, you know, we need to tell people some spiritual stuff and we better have a sing-along so they'll show up and listen.
39:28: That's not the point.
39:29: We sing because God's worthy of our worship.
39:32: We need to ascribe to him the glory.
39:34: That's why we exist.
39:36: We were created for the glory of God, we have been redeemed for the glory of God, and we will forever live to glorify God.
39:45: Doxology, ascribing glory, Jesus, the way that God has worked for his glory, and our purpose here at Faith Chapel, where we say that we exist to worship God by enjoying relationship with him and one another through Jesus Christ.
40:03: It all comes together, which is why we need to live on mission as fully surrendered disciples of Jesus Christ, calling others to trust in and follow Jesus, maturing them, helping them to understand what that looks like, to begin to put one foot in front of the other following Jesus, and then to repeat the process.
40:24: That is God's calling on us, and it's a perfect, infinitely wise plan.
40:32: We're going to have just a moment of silence before I pray, and in that silence, I want you to ask God to show you where your faith needs to overflow in obedience.
40:43: obedience.
40:46: Holy Spirit, convict us at a personally applicable, personally applied way.
41:01: Father, I trust that you've shown each of us what we need to see, what we need to know about where our first step of obedience needs to come at this moment, but I ask that you would give us the strength to do it, give us the confidence in Christ to know that you will be with us, you will be at work, and that every risk we take in the path of faith is a risk worth taking.
41:33: We pray these things in Jesus' name.
41:35: Amen.