Well, we continue our study tonight in the book of Romans, so I'd ask you to take your Bibles and turn to Romans, chapter 1, as we are really looking at the theme of the epistle tonight, verses 16 and 17. I'm just going to read three verses, 15, 16, and 17, and those will be our focus tonight. Romans 1, beginning at verse 15. So I am eager to preach the Gospel to you also who are in Rome. For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. May the Lord bless the hearing of His Word. Have you ever thought about how much time in the course of your life you will sit and listen to the preaching of the Word? Have you ever given much thought to it in the whole course of your life? How much time you will sit and listen. Just break it down for a minute. Let's say that you come twice a week. Twice a week in the course of your life. Let's just look at it from a yearly perspective. 52 Lord's Days in a year, that means you'll get what? Roughly 52 hours of preaching per year. Correct? I'm not a mathematician, so if I get it wrong, jump on me after. Just a little over two days in a 365-day year. Now, most churches have dropped a second service, so cut it in half. You now have 26 hours of preaching per year. A little over a day. Now, take it on what's going on today, assuming that a pastor is actually preaching a text of Scripture and giving himself to do what the Apostle says. Woe is me if I do not preach the Gospel. Let's say today we've assumed that people can't listen much to the preaching of the pure text anymore. That's the assumption made in the United States. So we have the problem of sermons being filled up with personal story time. So let's be generous and say that the average person churchgoer today gets 20 minutes. 20 minutes of preaching per week. calculates to about just a little bit over two eight-hour working days. Now here's my point. Do you know what Paul sets before us tonight? The Lord, of course, through His servant. The Lord is setting before us the heart of the Christian religion. He's telling us ultimately that it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. That God had something very specific in mind that He was going to do with a method and a way and a message and this is going to be His chosen way to save people. The few verses that we study tonight in Romans 1 unpack that very truth. They unpack how people are saved from their sins. And what is so moving about this tonight is that in one whole swoop, the Apostle Paul gives us the whole theme of the epistle. He lays it out right in front of us and he tells us the way that God saves, the message that God saves with, and the way that we receive this salvation. And that's got to be the most exciting thing we could ever study. In just a few verses of Scripture, he has laid it out for us. He's laid out everything that we're going to study in these next months through the book of Romans. And we should walk away tonight saying, this is overwhelming. This is too good to be true. This is the best news that I've ever heard in my life. And yet that presents the problem for us, doesn't it? It's so good, we have a hard time holding on to it. So powerful, we really struggle tending to it, keeping it, holding it. If we just stay with this pearl of Romans 1, 16 and 17, you will have everything in your life that you ever need. Striking claim. Striking claim. And yet you have all the world's wise men today trying to answer that, by the way. Dr. Phil and Oprah get their millions by offering answers and guess what, Pastor Gordon tonight through the preaching of the Gospel is going to offer you the single great answer to everything that you need to know to be saved from the wrath to come that it is a free gift of God's grace. This place should be packed out, shouldn't it? This place should be packed out tonight. Remember what the Apostle Paul wrote to the Romans saying that he longed to be with them. He wanted to be with them. He wanted to be with them for a few different reasons that we considered last time. He wanted to strengthen this body of believers in the faith and he wanted to mutually encourage them in the faith. A beautiful pastoral congregational relationship was there set before us of intention, being intentional, and what the ministry looks like and what the purpose of gospel ministry is. But then at the very end, in verse 15, he said something that he explained the ultimate purpose for which he wanted to come to Rome. The single great purpose. The purpose. He said, as much as is in me, I am ready to preach the Gospel to you who are in Rome also. People begin really a Roman summary with verse 16. And I believe that's all wrong. The whole summary begins with verse 15. You don't understand verse 16 and 17 until you understand what he's saying in verse 15. It all begins right here for Romans, if you will. It all begins here in the intentional ministry of the Apostle of what he is saying his purpose is in ministry and what he's going to do in ministry and why this is so essential for them. Do we understand tonight what preaching is? Do we understand? The word, of course, means to herald. It means to announce good news. It means to proclaim, to declare good news of gospel. Paul's going to expound this in chapter 10. When we get to chapter 10, it's really a glorious section of understanding preaching and what we do and why we do it. But in chapter 10, he's going to say something shocking. He's going to say, and he's already setting it up right at the beginning, How will they hear without a preacher? And how will they preach unless they are sent? How are the people going to know? How are they going to be saved without a preacher? Amazing statement, isn't it? Kind of rubs against the individualism of our day. And this came right after a very difficult section that challenged the common mindset of the people who are always trying to get their spirituality elsewhere and by their own means. He's going to say, don't try to go get God by pulling Him down to you from heaven or pulling Him up yourself. You can't bring this to you. You can't get it to yourself. You can't do that. You can't bring God to you in a meaningful way. So there's always this serious tension presented to us in the epistles between churches who are really struggling, trying to get their spirituality their way versus listening carefully to what the writers are telling them over and over and over again and demonstrating to them about the very foolish, the very counter-cultural, the very seemingly powerless way God has chosen to save. You know, this has everything to do with the pressures we face today. It's really one of the most applicational sections of Scripture we could come to. Nothing has really changed. We really do think today that we will be effective in reaching people, reaching our young people, reaching the community if we can make God relevant to the people in some kind of exciting way. And that's why today nothing in the church is uniform. Really, we've created churches everywhere trying to do their own thing in their own creative way, trying to get spirituality for the people. Everyone offering something new. Everyone offering something different. Everybody offering, as the great pitch, something more practical than the last. And on and on and on it goes. And Paul is putting before us here tonight, and he's putting before the Romans under the inspiration of the Spirit, the number one priority above everything else right at the beginning of the epistle, he says, I want to come and I want to preach. And he got that from his Lord. Because in Mark, Jesus says that was the purpose for which he had come. I want to come and I want to announce the Gospel. I want to announce the Gospel. And so from there, he unravels in the following verses why he wants to do this and what that Gospel is. And so we look at verse 16. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. Stop. That's a mouthful. I am not ashamed of Christ's gospel. Now, I find it absolutely amazing that he would start there. After saying, I want to come preach. And then he immediately launches in to that kind of statement. I'm not going to be ashamed. I want to come. I want to do this. What is the Gospel, boys and girls? What is the Gospel? The Gospel is good news, isn't it? The Gospel is a glorious announcement from God. That God gave His only begotten Son. And that God sent Him down. And that the Son of God came. Born of a woman, born under the law. And that the Son of God lived a perfect life. And that He became a curse for us. And that He had the intense wrath of God poured out upon Him in body and in soul on the cross. My sin's causing that. Your sin's causing that. And God raised Him from the dead. And He has freely announced, Whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. His shedding of blood, which is gospel, covers us from all of our sins. We'll get into this in Romans. I'm not embarrassed about that. Why is he saying that? You can't read that without asking the question, was Paul facing some kind of tendency to be ashamed about this? That's a fair question. I mean, he was saying this all over the place. He was constantly saying this to Timothy. Do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, but share with me in the sufferings for the Gospel, O Timothy. Don't be ashamed of it. Join with me in it. Be a prisoner. We are this. This is what we do. Why would he say that? As I look at the New Testament and I think about the context in which the Apostle was writing to the Romans, I believe there are three kinds of pressures that he was facing. And you'll see how much this applies to us today. The first one would have been a very strong cultural one. You know how powerful Rome was? Do you know how many philosophers and how many wise men Rome had? And do you know what they did with their gods in Rome? I mean, you still see remnants of the statues today, don't you? You still see remnants of the former glory of Rome and the powerful statues and their reefs and their gods who were all put up to the people to bow down to. And the way that they were depicted, the glory in which they were depicted. Now think of what Paul's proclaiming. I'm declaring a crucified Savior. Everyone in Rome who heard that ridiculed it. It's madness. You don't crucify your God. And remember, this was the very thing the Jews crucified Jesus for. Because He, they understood, made Himself equal with God. They understood the claim. They knew what the Son of God meant. That was not a biological relationship. They understood that to say that made Him equal with God. They branded the whole thing as atheism. All of Rome's wise men. Then you had an evangelistic kind of problem, didn't you? People weren't real satisfied with this message in Christianity itself. They really struggled with this in Christianity itself. And so they started dressing up the Christian message to not make it so offensive. Corinth really struggled with this problem. The Greeks wanted more wisdom. The Jews were always seeking for a sign. And Corinth said, let's give it to them. And so the church started caving in to the oratory dramas of the day. And they started using all of those oratory dramas and they made their speech sound very heady and very wise and very complex. All the gnosis and knowledge that was going around. In fact, it got so bad in 2 Corinthians that the Apostle Paul would expose that there are these super apostles, there are these super pastors who are rising up and they're coming as angels of light and they're having all these people follow after them. I'm not inferior to them, says the Apostle. I won't accept that. They're leading people astray. He says they are handling the Word of God deceitfully. They were using it to manipulate emotions and people. And lo and behold, guess what happened? Huge cults of personality. People were following the men. And Paul comes along to the Corinthians. It's the same culture. And he says, listen, brothers, when I came to you, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech. I didn't come with wisdom. You'll understand that if you ever read the oratory writers of the day and how they were writing for people how to speak and how to be effective in speech. It was out of hand. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. At the core of my message, this was it. This was the core of what I stayed with. I didn't get into all that other stuff purposely. And when I was with you, I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. and my speech and my message were not with plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power that your faith may not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Do you feel the pressure there? I feel the pressure there. He's saying, this is what everyone's doing. I know they're doing it. But I'm purposely choosing not to do it. And it was sad. With all of the heady language and all of the great oratory dramas and all of the great speech, nothing was being revealed. Nothing was being made clear. And it was an awful thing that Satan had done in the church. I chose not to do the whiz-bang stuff. In fact, he says in 2 Corinthians, we've renounced the hidden things of shame. And I believe it's the same thing as Romans 1 where he's saying, I have chosen, we have renounced that inward tendency within us, and it's in every preacher, inward tendency to be ashamed about what we do. We've renounced it. We know the pressure's there. And we refuse to use the Word of God craftily. We're not going to use our own wisdom to win souls for Jesus. Evangelistic pressure. It was real. It happened. Sound familiar? It's really hard to do what we do when down the street, and I just have to say it today, you can head off to places where you've got super hip pastors, great praise bands, great espresso bars, a whole young people's area where they don't even have to go to church, a children's play center with jumpy things. There was a church up north that was telling people to dress down when they came. They made you sign. And then they would send out flyers into the community saying, are you tired of dry, traditional, dead worship? I had this sent right to my house. Here we are, and we're doing this old thing tonight called preaching. Does it work? Who does this anymore? And we think, how in the world are our children going to stay with this when all of that is going on? I mean, it's a real pressure. It's a real pressure that parents go through. I know it. And then you've got another pressure. You've got a moral pressure. For the Gospel to have any meanings, what do you have to say about humans? It's not good. It's not good at all. In fact, what do you have to say about us? Listen, the first three chapters of Romans are the most difficult sections in the Scriptures. It's like lifting up hell's lid. And guess what hell's lid is lifting up over? It's your heart. And Romans talks a whole lot about sin. And who's talking about sin today? Romans is going to say there's all kinds of hypocrisy in there. Everyone's guilty. No one's good. No one is righteous. Everyone's tongue is like the poison of asps. And God's wrath is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. And guess what? There's no difference. There's no difference. Everyone's fallen short. All of your righteousness before God and my righteousness is as a filthy garment. Now who wants to hear that? Pressure. Pressure. Paul knows that the greatness of God's love and the greatness of God's grace is only comprehended when preaching as we should, People seeing about themselves, their own hearts, the way that God has defined it. So here we are. If God were to huddle us all up tonight and say, listen, I just want you to do what you want to do. I want you to give the message you want to give. What do you think we would come up with? Here's what we would come up with. You're all good people. God loves you all. Stop thinking negative thoughts. Be positive towards yourself. Build up your self-esteem. God is always there for you to make you happy. And it's all about you. That's what we would do. In contrast to that, Paul now explains why he's not ashamed to preach. Why? He says in verse 16, Because this Gospel is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes. Do you feel the weight of that tonight? He just gave you the single answer of God's power to save. And that's why He wants to preach. Psalm 2 this morning, men taunt God thinking they're powerful. We know what Rome used to say. Rome used to say that they had by their great power conquered the world. And here we are. He who is in the heaven shall laugh. Does God come down conquering in this day of laughter with a sword? He conquers with the gospel of his son. And you see, Paul is here saying this is the power. It is the power. It is the message that God has chosen to save people with. And that's what makes our God so overwhelming tonight in goodness and in kindness to us. He will judge the world in righteousness. We saw that this morning from Psalm 2. But right now, He has taken His great power and reigned. And you know what He's doing? Rome was destroying with the sword to obtain that power. Notice what it says? This is God's power to save. I'm not ashamed of it. I won't be ashamed of it. It's a strong word here for power. You know, we get the word dynamite from it. God has chosen this to be His power to deliver us from the misery we're in. And you know what Psalm 2 said this morning about the beautiful time of this power. It said that he would ask of the Lord and what would happen? All the nations would be given to Him as His inheritance. Did you notice that's what Paul says next? That this is God's power for both Jew first and Greek. It's that time. We're in that time. We're in the time where the Son is raising. He has asked. The nations have been given to Him and He has sent us out and guess what He's doing? He's gathering of all tribes, tongues, peoples and nations, Jew and Greek. And don't forget the Jews. Very important. We'll come back to that too. Paul understood and believed this was God's power. And so he says in verse 17, what makes this power so amazing is that in it, in this Gospel, in this good news, the righteousness of God it is revealed from faith to faith. As it is written, the just shall live by faith. This phrase, the righteousness of God, has been under severe attack in our day. It has been under severe attack. And there are many people who have tried to redefine this in various movements. But it's the heart of this epistle. God has revealed something. God has revealed something. He has revealed His righteousness. What is this? What is this righteousness that He has revealed? Since I'm still in kind of introductory section here, you understand that this was Luther's favorite verse. His big verse. Why did Martin Luther... Why was it this verse that started it all for him? Luther understood the law. We looked at it earlier in the Heidelberg. The law was given to show sin, wasn't it? Luther didn't have a problem seeing sin. The problem Luther had is he saw his sin all too well. And Luther struggled and he would go and he would try to keep God's law and he would try to do everything right and he just couldn't do it. And one of his mentors said to him one day, more than a thousand times I have sworn to our holy God to live piously and I've never kept any of my vows. Now I swear no longer, for I know that I cannot keep my solemn promises. If God will not be merciful to me for the love of Christ and grant me happy departure, I must quit this world. I will never with the aid of all my vows and all my good works stand before Him. I must perish. And he said to Luther, he said, look to the wounds of Christ. It is there that the grace of God will appear to you. And Luther, it wasn't until he understood Romans 1.17 that what God provides for the sinner is a righteousness that is apart from Him that He understood His freedom. In other words, it's not a righteousness I conjure up. It's not a righteousness I can do. It's not a righteousness that I can produce. It's nothing to do with me. That's the whole point of the Gospel. It has nothing at all to do with me. This has everything to do with what? Luther said, when I learned how the justification of the sinner proceeds from the free mercy of our Lord through faith, then I felt born again like a new man. In very truth, this language of St. Paul was the true gate of paradise. It's a righteousness that God provides for you. It's a righteousness that God provides for you, not yours. I don't know how many times as a pastor when I think about this and when I first understood it and I teach on it, how I never get over it. And how I stand amazed at the simplicity and the simple message of this Gospel, but that the Lord would announce this and want this announced to you in 2012. God saw you in your misery. God saw you struggling in all of your wickedness. God saw the torment, yes, that your sin has brought to you, that you have chosen. And instead of wrath, He came back and He says, I'm going to give you good news. And my good news is, you don't have to work for this. That from the storehouses of my own resource, if you will, From the fullness of my own good pleasure, of my own holy will, I will send down a righteousness from heaven to you that will satisfy my justice. God revealed in His Word that there is a righteousness that meets all the demands of God's law. Remember, boys and girls, you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your mind, with all of your strength. I'm going to provide that that can be yours. And we work our way through Romans and we come to chapter 10 and we have it explicitly, explicitly said what that is. For Christ is... What does he say? Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. That's the answer. I don't know when you first understood that. But that God would take His Son and that His Son would come down here and that He would fulfill all righteousness saying that at His own baptism. And that He would go and that Son would be pinned to a cross and the excruciating wrath of God in body and in soul would be poured out upon Him. My God, my God, why? have you forsaken Me? And then He would raise His Son and He would announce to the world to Him who does not work but believes upon Him who justifies the ungodly, His faith is accounted to Him as righteousness. That's what Paul is saying here. It's from faith to faith. It never changes. The only way this is ever received, the only way this is ever brought to you is by the instrument of faith. As you embrace Him, as you trust Him, that righteousness, He's going to say, is imputed to you. A word we should memorize. The just shall live by faith. That's our creed. That's our confession. Can you imagine the light that goes on? When we finally understand that, The freedom to now, as he's going to say in Romans 6, be who we are. The freedom to now live in thankfulness because I have a righteousness that covers me. The freedom to know that in life and in death I belong to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. That message, beloved, is God's power to save. And I close with this. No matter how much pressure we face today to be ashamed of this, and I know it's great, no matter how much pressure we face to say something new and something better, nothing else is God's power to save. It's this message alone. And He has told us that when we preach this, when we are given to preach this in the demonstration of the Spirit and of power, He saves. You know, there could have been a little one tonight who heard and he just saved. You believe that? No, no, no. Do you believe that? Do you have confidence in that? I'm not ashamed of this. I'm not ashamed of what we do. I'm not ashamed as a United Reformed Church of what we do, gathering together what seems to be old school. This is God's answer. Paul says, I want to come to Rome and I want to do this. And you know what? It's the same thing we're doing today. Kind of sad we only get 52 hours a year. Even worse would be as if we get 26 hours. Even worse would be if we avoid it altogether. Let us give ourselves to this ministry, this ministry of the Spirit, not losing heart. And you will know this power that the Lord has declared. And you know what's going to happen? It's going to fill this church and our children with life. I believe that. I trust that. Because God has said it. This is the heart of the Christian faith. This is what we do. This is what we believe. Amen. Oh Lord our God, we are so grateful that you have been faithful and that still in 2012 at this late hour You have built this conviction in the hearts and lives of Your people. And we trust You at Your Word that this is Your power to save those who believe. We pray for confidence in this message. We pray that we would believe this message. That we would live by faith. And that, Lord, this message from this pulpit would have a great effect in the hearts and lives of these people and in this community and beyond. Thank You for Your love and for supplying a righteousness. Oh Christ, thank You. Thank You for what You've done. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.