January 12, 2025, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
All right, dear ones, we’re going to go through Romans this year. All right.
So as I’m winding down my career as a preacher, I guess, I don’t know, I’ll preach. I’ll preach till I drop, though. I’m a preacher as long as I can. I love it. I want to.
I realized in all these years that I’ve preached. I’ve preached through three of the four Gospels, John. And the only Gospel I haven’t preached through all the way through is Matthew.
But I did a Bible study all the way through Matthew a few years ago. Preached through Acts probably at least three times. And I just realized, oh, and Philippians. Love Philippians. Gone through that a few times.
I realized a couple of years ago there were books that were just powerful, and I hadn’t really just, you know, taken the deep dive. And so two years ago, if you remember, we went through Hebrews, and I thought, well, that would be challenging. Hebrews was a challenging book. And I just realized, I thought, you know what?
I haven’t spent any time in Paul for a long time. And so my first thought was, oh, Philippians. I love Philippians. I got all sorts of notes on Philippians. I can be lazy. It’ll be easy. And I just felt like the Holy Spirit said, yeah, that would be lazy and easy. So why don’t you do Romans?
I thought, why not do Romans? All right, why not do Romans? And so this is Paul’s biggest epistle and most of his. By the way, do you know what an epistle is? What’s an epistle?
No, most people think that, but actually an epistle is the wife of an apostle. It’s a joke. You’re right. You were correct the first time. It’s a letter.
And most of Paul’s letters are written to address some, like, specific situation. He’s writing to the Corinthians because they were abusing. They were proud and immature and abusing spiritual gifts and indulging or at least accepting gross immorality in the church. There were factions. The church was a mess. And so he writes the first letter to Corinthians, Galatians.
He’s writing to combat what we would call the Judaizers, people who would follow Paul as he would preach in different regions. They would come in and say, oh, that’s great that you believe Jesus is Messiah and he rose from the dead. Now the last thing remaining for you to do, Gentiles, is to become a Jew and to obey our Jewish dietary customs.
And you men all have to have surgery, and they’re like, what? Paul didn’t say that. There’s a little bait and switch. But Romans, Paul is on his way to Rome, if you remember.
He goes to Jerusalem. He’s arrested, and he goes before a couple of Roman officials, two Roman governors. He goes before and presents his case. Neither of them find any reason to leave Paul in prison. But one left him in prison. I think it was Festus who left him in prison to appease the Jews.
The next one saw no reason to keep him in prison. But Paul does what a Roman citizen could do back then, like we can do in the court system, which is make an appeal. And he made an appeal.
And you can make an appeal to Caesar. You can say, I want my case to go before the highest court in the land, to Caesar. And so they granted his appeal to Caesar.
And therefore he stayed as a prisoner until Caesar could see him, and he was taken to Rome. As he’s heading to Rome, the Christian movement has begun in Rome.
And Rome has the same situation as every other city. It has Jews and Greeks. Now, there was a time where the Jews were driven out of Rome, but now at this point in history, they had been allowed back in.
And so he’s writing to the Christian church in Rome, and he’s writing about the Jewish and Greek controversy in the church, which, by the way, this is the central controversy in the letters of Paul.
We miss it because we’re 2,000 years later and we think, what’s the big deal about Jews and Gentiles? And, you know, most of us are Gentiles. And we think, what’s the big deal about that?
It’s a huge deal in the first century. And the question was, okay, Jesus is the Messiah, which is very much a Jewish thing. He’s the King of the Jews. Can Gentiles be included under the covenant blessings of the Messiah of Jesus?
And if the answer to that question is yes, the next question is, do they have to then become Jews first? Back to the letter of Galatians. Do they have to convert to Judaism to be what we would now call Christians?
And Paul’s adamant throughout his letters that it is not your relationship to the ancient covenants of the Jews that make you right with God. It is your relationship to his Messiah, his son, Jesus Christ.
And that relationship for both Jewish Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free, that relationship is based on faith. That relationship is based on trust. That relationship is based on belief, believing, loyal, trust in Jesus, the raised Messiah, and you are included then in the New Covenant.
You don’t have to eat Jewish by Jewish dietary laws. You don’t have to be circumcised if you’re a man. You don’t have to go to the temple on feasts. And none of that, none of that. It is a totally New Covenant, and it is universal in its scope.
It is what the Old Covenant was pointing to and is now realized in Jesus the Messiah, and it is for everyone. And so Romans, he kind of explains that in great detail and, and talks then at the end about the ethical implications.
In the middle, he talks about, well, why is it that God seems to have abandoned his relationship with Israel and is now moving on to the Gentiles, which is Romans chapters 9, 10, and 11.
But in the beginning, he just starts to share the Gospel. And we’re just going to look at his introduction tonight. So, Romans 1:1-7.
Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle and set apart for the Gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures concerning his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who was a descendant of David according to the flesh, and was appointed to be the powerful Son of God according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection of the dead.
Through him we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the Gentiles, including you who are called by Jesus Christ. To all who are in Rome, loved by God, called saints, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
1 Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God 2 which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures 3 concerning his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who was a descendant of David according to the flesh 4 and was appointed to be the powerful Son of God according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection of the dead. 5 Through him we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the Gentiles, 6 including you who are also called by Jesus Christ. 7 To all who are in Rome, loved by God, called as saints. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. (Romans 1:1-7, CSB)
And God, may the words of my mouth, meditation of our hearts, be acceptable in your sight.
And so this is Paul writing an introduction to his letter to the Romans. And there are many familiar characteristics in all of Paul’s introductions. He uses this word, servant or slave, can be translated as either. We’ll get into that.
He talks about his apostleship, and he often talks about grace and peace to the church through God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Those appear in almost all of his letters.
That kind of an introduction in Romans, though there’s a big parenthesis in the middle where he really starts to spell out what his apostleship is about, what the Gospel is about, what his mission is about, who it’s for. He kind of summarizes this Gospel presentation in his introduction.
I mean, it’s thick with a lot. As I kind of went through it, I thought, oh, that’s two sermons. But lucky you, you get both of them tonight, so count yourself blessed.
All right, so Paul, he’s a servant. The word there that he uses, the Greek word. And, you know, don’t you love it when preachers say, you know, the Greek says, well, you know what the Greek says, pretty much what the scholars who are better than me translated it in the Bible as.
It always kind of cracks me up when people like me say, well, you know, I know more than the people who translated the Bible. There’s only a few places where I kind of struggle a little bit with translations and think they’ve relied too much on some traditions, but what do I know?
But I do know the word doulos is a difficult word to translate. And I’m not sure what translations use slave instead of servant. Most do not.
Probably there is some cultural bias in that, in that the word slave in the United States and Western cultures conjures up some images that probably weren’t similar to what Paul would have thought when he used the word slave in that ancient culture. And so servant is probably more accurate.
But really, a doulos was what we would call a bond slave. And a bond slave was somebody who was serving in a household as a slave, but with the term limit as kind of like an indentured servant.
You know, you’ve got to work off your debts, you’ve got to serve this family for seven years as a slave. And once the seven years is up, they have to grant you your freedom. you’ve served your indentured servantship.
And though we don’t like to think about it this way, because slavery has its negative connotations, there actually in many cases would develop a love relationship between the slave and the family that they would serve. The family was generous and kind to the servant.
The servant was willing and hardworking for the family, kind of like a loyal butler or something. You know, I don’t know if anybody watched Downton Abbey. As a good husband, I watched a few episodes, you know, but the butler was so loyal to, you know, he’s a downstairs guy, but he’s so loyal to the upstairs family. And the family so, you know, so loves their butler, and there creates. There comes this bond.
And oftentimes, what a slave would do is, after the service was done, especially if they didn’t have necessarily family or any prospects and this was their life, they would go to the master and they would say, I want to serve you the rest of my life. I want this to be my family. I want this to be my job.
If the family wanted them, they would make them a bond servant. They would take them over to a wall and they would take like a.
And they would take their earlobe, and they would take some kind of, like, awl and some kind of nail, and they’d pierce their ear with a big fat piercing, and they put a ring in it. And then you would be a bond servant, you, basically. And that’s what the word doulos means.
So it’s kind of a cross between servant and slave. But here’s the point I want to make with all that. Paul calls himself that in relation to Jesus Christ. And dear ones, that’s what it means to be a disciple.
Jesus, I serve you for the rest of my life. I am. You know, I used to say, Lord, I’m your dime. Spin me however you want.
John Wesley has a great prayer. He says, use me, use me and make me famous or use me and make me anonymous. Set me aside or set me to some great work. And he simply says, I am yours.
All right. I’m the pawn, you’re the chess master. your wish, you know, the genie. your wish is my command, Jesus.
This is not like where I go to you and say, well, you know, looked over the list of spiritual gifts and I’ve looked over the list of possible roles that a disciple of Jesus could play, and here’s the ones that I’m selecting that I’d like to do. Alright, so I want to apply for that job.
There was an old movie about a woman, Golihan, who was the star, and she joined the army and it’s called Private Benjamin. And when she joins the army that, you know, the recruiter sells her. Oh, yeah, the army’s great.
You get to see the world and you can do this and do this and do this and do this. And then, of course, she joins the army and finds out none of that’s true. You know, they just tell you what to do. You crawl through the mud. You crawl through the mud. No, this isn’t the army I want. Many of us sign up with eternal fire insurance. Oh, I don’t want to go to hell. I want to go to the good place.
All right, Jesus, I sign up and then he’s like, okay, now here’s what you’re going to do. It’s like, no, this isn’t the Jesus I want. This isn’t the good American dream life that I had lined up for myself that, you know, you were going to give me if I followed you.
I saw a woman the other day on TV on one of those talk shows, and she’s talking about her divorce and she says, you know, I have a right to be happy and I thought, no you don’t, you selfish twit.
I’m a kind, not least bit judgmental, but no, you don’t. Where is that? You have a right to be happy. Shut up. Really set me off. It’s like, you don’t have a right to be happy.
You got married, keep your promise, you had kids, raise them. In fact, I can’t think, actually, ironically, I can’t think of any road that will lead to more misery than the road of entitlement that starts with, I have a right to be happy.
Because you will always be disappointed because everybody else around you isn’t out, their lives aren’t out to fulfill that right. You know, I just don’t go through my life going, oh, that person has a right to be happy. I’m going to go give them a couple hundred bucks. It’s not on my mind, you know.
And when you, when you live in a world full of entitled, selfish people, guess what? Nobody’s happy. I tell people this all the time.
People don’t like this, but I tell people, they say, you know, young people, it’s like, how do I have a happy marriage? I tell them, lower your expectations. Lower your expectations. Don’t expect that person to make you happy.
I say on that end, lower your expectations. On the other side, raise your expectations and say, here’s my job to make that person the happiest person on the planet. In fact, the exact opposite is your best shot at happiness.
Giving your life away in humble service to God and others has a much greater shot at making you happy in this world than some entitled view that says, I have a right to be happy.
And when you became a disciple of Jesus Christ, guess what you did with your rights? Gave them up. Jesus is Lord. We say that Jesus is Lord. What does that mean? It doesn’t mean he’s giving us several options at the salad bar of life on how we’re going to live.
I am a doulos. And Paul describes what his doulos looks like. It’s not the same as your doulos. You have a different call. Unless you’re called to be an apostle to the Gentiles, then you have the same call as Paul.
1 Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God (Romans 1:1, CSB)
But Paul says, I’m a bond slave of Christ and I’m called to be an apostle,set apart for the Gospel of God. And later he says, very specifically to the Gentiles, I’m an apostle. That means a sent one. That means one who is sent to pioneer new works, to break into new ground, and to establish kind of a foothold for the Gospel of God.
And Paul is sent specifically to do that to the Gentiles, which is so amazing because he hated, as a Jew and before he met Jesus, the idea that this Jewish Messiahship was going out to the Gentiles and including the Gentiles. He thought that was a heresy and an abomination.
God just flips the switch, and that becomes his mission in life. And I’ll tell you what, man, if you want to have an impact on this world, be a one-focused person. Live for one thing, live for one.
Paul, you know, apart from his master, Jesus, I don’t know of anybody who’s had a greater impact on 21st century Western culture than this converted Jew. And you know what? He didn’t have a big bucket list. You know, before I die, I want to go see this, but, well, you got to go see lots of places, usually in chains. I want to take a cruise in the Mediterranean.
Okay, you’ll be shipwrecked and almost die, get bitten by a snake, and by the way, preach the gospel on the island of Malta and establish another kingdom outpost there.
You’ll go to Rome, preach the gospel there. you’ll be imprisoned maybe. Historically though, I don’t think so. There’s debate on this. Maybe get released and go to Spain and then come back to Rome and beheaded. But I think his final trip was to Rome. That’s not here nor there.
But he had. This is who Paul is. I am a slave to Jesus Christ. And he said, I’m going to be an apostle to the Gentiles, and I am going to proclaim the Gospel of God. And that’s what he did. He was set apart for the Gospel of God.
1 Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God (Romans 1:1, CSB)
What is the Gospel of God? The Gospel is God’s good news, and it’s God’s plan, and it’s God’s idea. Here is what I’m going to do to restore this fallen world. And Christianity is the only religion you and I couldn’t have made up. Seriously, we could have made up most every other. In fact, that’s exactly what happened.
Human beings did make up every other religion except for Judaism. Christianity is revel. And with some help from the devil, I’ll give them that. But Christianity is the only one.
I mean, basically Judaism and Islam, you can make those up. They’re gospels of law. They’re religions of law, right? You obey Allah, you get blessed, you disobey Allah, it’s not going to end well for you.
Israel covenants, obey Yahweh, you get these blessings, community-wise. Disobey Yahweh, these bad things happen, community-wise. Hinduism, or most Eastern religions, basically all is God. It’s just this pantheistic oneness.
And you know, in college, you smoke enough weed with your friends, you can come to that conclusion. Dude, I think that pool is God. Yeah, man. Star wars, it’s the Force. There’s a Force out there. Some people use it for good, some people use it for bad. Polytheism. Oh, there’s lots of gods. That’s why there’s all this confusion. We can figure that stuff out.
But a God who is three but one, but three but one who becomes a man born into poverty, lives 30 years in obscurity, and for three years of his life preaches the kingdom of what he claims is his Father in heaven. And there’s nobody who has a good answer against that.
Nobody can refute it, because the life he lives is 100% consistent with his message. Wouldn’t that be great if our lives were 100% consistent with our message? I would like that. Except it’s probably going to cost me too much. But yeah, I would like that.
Till I want to sin, then I don’t want it. But whose life was 100% consistent with his message? And what he earned with that was nails and obedience and a mocking and a cruel and horrible death.
And yet somehow in that death, not in his victory, not in his beating up the bad guys, in his surrendering to the bad guys, he utterly defeats the bad guys and then rises from the dead and says, all you broken humans, okay, now try really, really hard to be really, really good and you can join me.
No, he says, now just align yourself with me. Just humbly, in your brokenness, come to me and then let me fill you with this new resurrected life by my Holy Spirit, and you become a part of my covenant community, my eternal family.
And you then become a part of this same mission, set apart for the Gospel of God. Paul was set apart as an apostle to the Gentiles for the Gospel of God. You and I, we’re still set apart for the Gospel of God. We are set apart for the Gospel of God.
That’s your life. That’s your master, who you serve. That’s his mission. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
10 Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. (Matthew 6:10, CSB)
That’s why you’re here. That’s why you had babies. That’s why you live where you live. That’s why you have the job you have. That’s why you have the money. You have it is all set apart for the gospel of God. And if you want to be happy, buy into that. Buy into that, because there’s nothing more miserable than a halfway Christian, right?
If you don’t want to be a Christian, then be happy in alcohol and women chasing and money chasing and experience chasing. You know, have your bucket list and say, oh, I’ll be happy if I get to the Mediterranean, or I’ll be happy if I get to travel to Europe.
Or I’ll be happy, you know, if I. If I have enough money and enough security, I’ll be happy if I, you know, my goodness, you know, shoot golf in the 70s, can get a great score or my team wins the football game.
Well, that does have an effect on my happy. Well, anyway. But no, no, all those things are so. They’re vapid, right? They disappear the instant you take your last breath, never to be touched again. Be set apart for the Gospel of God.
1 Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God (Romans 1:1, CSB)
You’re thinking, all right, he’s only on verse one. This is God’s plan. It’s God’s idea. And it’s given by revelation, not human invention. It was promised through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures.
2 which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures (Romans 1:2, CSB)
We just finished in our class finding Messiah in the Old Testament. And yet it’s veiled. It’s there. It’s veiled and revealed.
And if you believe, as I think Michael Heiser is right, the reason it’s veiled is he’s not disclosing his plans to the Spiritual forces of wickedness, but he’s disclosing enough in the Old Testament so that in hindsight we can look back and say, oh, look, Isaiah did say a virgin would have a son.
Oh, look, Isaiah did say he would die a vicarious death. Oh, look, Micah did say he would be born in Bethlehem. Oh, my gosh. The puzzle pieces now start to fit together. The puzzle pieces now start to fit together.
And so when the apostles began to preach the gospel, they used no other Scripture. They didn’t have any other Scripture. They were writing the Scripture. They used the old covenant Scriptures and showed that Jesus was the Christ.
And so it is the mystery until the right time. And Jesus comes at the right time. Listen, you can’t outsmart God. You might think. I’ve heard people say, well, why didn’t Jesus just come right after Adam and Eve sinned and save us all? That problem? Humanity wasn’t ready. It wouldn’t have worked. He came in the fullness of time.
Listen, there is a timing to things. You know, one of the things that drives me nuts on social media is people saying, oh, we hate you conservatives. You’re out there banning books. No, we’re not banning books. We don’t want six-year-olds to read gay porn. There’s a difference. If you’re a 30-year-old and you want to read gay porn, I don’t want you to read it either. But I’m not going to stop you.
If you want to destroy your life at 30, go ahead, but you’re not going to go after and prey on six-year-olds. Why? There’s an age appropriateness to things, right? There’s an age appropriateness to things, you know, and kids don’t always get it.
That’s why you have to resort to, because I said so. Why can’t I put this bobby pin in the light socket? Well, because there’s this thing called electricity. Well, what is electricity? Actually, I don’t know what it is either. It’s like, I don’t know, but it’ll jolt you, it’ll get you.
Well, what do you mean by get you? You will hurt. You will hurt. It could kill you. Well, let me try it. And if you’re a good parent, you’d say no. And if you’re another parent, you say, well, that’ll learn. You try it once, you’ll learn. And then if you do it after that, that boy ain’t right.
But you know, mommy, where do babies come from? Well, where did I come from, mommy? Oh, you came out of my belly. How did I get there? We’ll talk later. There’s an age appropriateness.
The same is true of the gospel. The whole Old Testament is leading up to the fullness of time historically through the prophets. When Jesus comes, it’s the exact right time in the exact right place.
And dear ones, we’re like that. Even in our prayer lives, we’re one of the most impatient because we live in this fast food society. We live in this instant gratification society.
You know, we cry out to God, God, you got to do this. God, you got to do this. God, you got to do this. And he doesn’t do it. And we, oh, I’m just going to deconstruct my faith. It’s like, no, there’s a fullness of time.
How much of the Bible says, wait? Abraham, Sarah, you’re going to have a baby. Make a nation. Great. 25 years later. We were old when you told us this. We’re a bunch older now. Wait. Just time and time again. Wait for God knows, he reconciles us when the right time comes, the mystery is revealed.
And there’s a timing in your life, people. There’s going to be a right time for things that you’ve been praying for. Here’s something you’re going to have to deal with. Maybe the right time for the thing you’re going to be praying for is going to happen after your death. It did for thousands of Jews.
We want the Messiah. We want the Messiah. Okay, he’s going to come. you’re going to die. What does he say in Hebrews? They longed for these things. These Old Testament heroes long to see the age we get to live in.
So the gospel then comes. And the gospel concerns Jesus Christ, our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the fulfillment of the covenant that God gave David according to the flesh. God told David that there’s going to be an everlasting king that’s going to come from you and Jesus, fully God, fully man, comes from the line of David.
He is that promise to that final covenant, that final Old Testament covenant that a king is coming and everything’s going to change. Daniel talks about it, other prophets allude to it. And Jesus then is the fulfillment.
He is David’s son and he’s God’s son. He is fully man and fully God. He’s a better Messiah than we’d hoped for. Israel was hoping for a king who’d kill the Romans and be even bigger and stronger than David.
We got a king who would destroy sin, Satan and death and is bigger and stronger than every principality and power. We sang it tonight. Only king forever. There’s only one king forever. His name is Jesus. He is the Son of David.
But better than that, he is the Son of God and God himself. the Spirit lived in him and he ministered through him. And that same spirit is available for us. That same power that raised Jesus from the dead, working through us.
I prayed for a young man today who was sick. And it’s like God. Come on, let’s start getting these instant healings going. Let’s start bringing that power. He didn’t get instantly healed, but I did tell God what I wanted. I want this. I want to see.
And we see some great miracles, but I want to see more. He raised Jesus from the dead. All right, a dead guy got up. Now, Jesus raised people from the dead. And the Old Testament people were raised from the dead. But there was always another agency.
There was always a prophet who prayed for them. Or Jesus called out Lazarus. But Jesus was just in the tomb. Nobody laid hands on him. Nobody prayed for him. But boom. He rose from the dead, and he is the victor over death.
And that is why he is the king forever. And all history has changed because of him. The gospel is about Jesus Christ, our Lord. That is our message. Jesus Christ our Lord. Paul received power, received grace to preach this gospel to the nations.
God’s grace is God’s power, his enablement to do what he has given you to do as a gift. He gives it to you as a gift. All right. You know, God says, go do this. God, I can’t do this. I know, but I can. Through you.
We’ve got to start believing in grace, people. And I don’t mean grace that. Oh, yeah, God’s given me his mercy. Yeah, God’s given me his mercy, but God’s giving you power. Well, God, who’s going to help my neighbor? You are.
Well, I don’t know the Bible well enough. I’ll be with you. Yeah, but I need to go to seminary before I can help my neighbor. No, no, no. Go help your neighbor. All right. Will you show up? Yeah, trust me, I’ll show up. He’ll show up. That’s grace. It’s given as a gift.
Apostleship is God’s specific calling to preach the gospel of the Gentiles. As I already said that Paul had. You might not have apostleship, or you might, I don’t know. But you got something. You got something.
You’re a disciple. Whether or not you’re an apostle, you’re a disciple, you’re a follower of Jesus. And you are living in the place you are living. You are working in the place you are working.
You are serving in the place you are serving. And God is using you. And he will use you to expand his kingdom as long as you make yourself available to him through his grace.
I remember as a young boy, a new Christian, I was working in this restaurant. It’s kind of a cool restaurant. It’s called the Garrett. It was one of the first restaurants to have a big screen TV. And it was one of those. It had an upstairs and a downstairs, and the downstairs was kind of a nightclub. And, you know, we’d have performers come every night and we’d serve fondue and wine.
It was kind of a cool place to hang out. Upstairs was kind of like one of the early sports bars, and people would eat peanuts. You throw the peanut shells on the floor. Same menu, but just two different atmospheres. It’s cool because I like both those things.
And I would work. I would work at the Garrett, and there was a manager there. And his name was Carl. And Carl was he was old. I mean, he was mature.
He was in his late 20s, and most of us were in high school or, you know, early college, early college age. And you know, Carl was cool. He dated the prettiest girl. He dated the prettiest waitress in the restaurant. And he smoked clove cigarettes. Cool. He liked jazz music.
We were just all a bunch of rock and rollers, but he was cool. He liked jazz music. And you know, he had been to two years of college. He was smart. He had taken a philosophy class and could quote the names of some philosophers.
And I thought, oh, Lord, I want to share the gospel with Carl. Sure enough, I closed one night with Carl as the manager and this young man named Tony. Tony asked me for a ride home. I said, sure, I’ll give you a ride home.
And then Carl started peppering me with questions about my Christian faith. And the Holy Spirit showed up, man. For two hours, I answered Carl’s questions about the Christian faith.
This is so cool. I’m going to lead Carl to Christ. And I said, Carl, you want to come to church this Sunday? Nah, I got other stuff to do. He never asked me questions again. But, you know, he was a philosopher, so he liked to discuss ideas. So we discussed ideas.
So I’m walking out. Too bad Carl’s not going to come to church with me. And Tony’s. Tony had sit there silently for two hours. This poor guy wants a ride home. He has to wait two hours while Carl and I talk. And Tony just sitting there, poor guy, walking to my car.
Tony’s like, hey, Kev. Yeah, Tony. What? Can I go to church with you this Sunday? I said, no, man, I’m trying to save Carl. You’re not cool. You’re just one of us. That’s not how I responded, but it just caught me, right? It caught me. It’s like, oh, God, you’re so clever, right?
Tony is hungry and in need. How am I going to get him a hearing of the gospel? I know I’ll use Carl’s ego and Kevin’s eagerness to reach Tony. Isn’t that great? Isn’t that great? God equips you and he’s full of surprises. your job is the gospel. The gospel goes into all the world.
It is a universal call. It is to the end that people will believe and obey, trust and obey. You know, Romans is the big gospel of justification by faith. Justification by faith. The reformers just latched onto that. You are justified by faith, but real faith leads to a transformed, obedient life. And faith is the first act of obedience. Faith is the first.
Believe on me. I don’t want to believe on me. Give me your life. I don’t want to give you my life. Do it. It’s the first act of a lifetime of doulos. Obedience.
Turn to somebody next to you and say, I already knew you were a doulos. You start calling each other that you doulos. All right, so faith is that first step of obedience that leads to a lifetime of obedience. And it’s for the sake of his name.
This faith brings glory to Jesus Christ. You are supposed to be different. you’re not supposed to fit in. Don’t be alarmed that you’re not comfortable in this world. Don’t be alarmed that the things this world dreams of are not your dreams.
Don’t be alarmed that when they criticize your Christian faith, you know, one of the things that gets me is people just pound on Christian nationalism. Nobody even knows what that is. Nobody even knows what that is. But it’s, oh, those Christian nationalists.
Well, as best I could figure out, I’m trying to figure it out. As best I can figure out, a Christian nationalist is somebody who wants Jesus to so pervade the fabric of our country that his values and his agenda move forward in our land. And if that’s the definition, I are one.
Now, if it means that I want some kind of theocracy and we beat every, you know, we put people in prison who aren’t Christians. No, I don’t want that. There’s just certain people who aren’t Christians I want to put in jail. But, no, I don’t want that power.
But I sure want to see Jesus shine in our land. And so don’t be buffaloed. Don’t be. Don’t. When the world criticizes or accuses or, you know, we don’t fit, you’re not supposed to fit. That’s a good sign. It’s a good sign that you don’t fit. All right. We do it for the sake of his name.
5 Through him we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the Gentiles, (Romans 1:5, CSB)
The faith that we have brings glory to Jesus. And if you believe, you are included. you’re included.
You know, I was just praying. I’m driving up here, said, Lord, I don’t want to go to hell. I want to go to heaven. And I looked at my life and said, it’s iffy. You know, if this thing is based on, you know, doing more good than bad, you know, I’ve been a Christian 50 years. Why do I still have a problem with anger? Why aren’t I better about that?
You know, why do I still use food to comfort me? Why aren’t I better about that? Why aren’t I perfect? Well, if I was, then I could tell God, hey, God, I deserve it. But every time I get to that discussion of, like, I’m not good enough, I remember, oh, yeah, he was good enough for me.
That’s not an excuse to remain, not to grow. But it is a great comfort that if you believe you are included. Now, I know all of you are better human beings than me, but I’m still included. I’m still included.
Now, this is how bad I am. I hate filling out forms. I hate it if I die and I go to a line, and it’s a long line, and there’s somebody that looks like an angel, but they’re a little sketch. I’m not quite sure. And they hand me out a form and say, here, fill this out to get in. I’m going, oh, my gosh, I’m going to hell.
And I got a bad back. You know, I got a bad back. And it’s actually, I’ve been getting. It’s been getting better. Been going to the chiropractor.
Haven’t been doing any exercises. The chiropractor said, do these exercises, let’s see if you can fix it. Before I put any effort in exercises, then my doctor says, you go to physical therapy. I don’t want to go to physical therapy.
And my physical therapist, they say, okay, here’s this big form online you have to fill out. I don’t want to fill that out. They say, well, you can show up literally an hour early to fill out our intake form. An hour early to fill out a form?
That form is going to take an hour to go to a glorified gym. Now, I got so mad at that. Like, who do they. An hour? Come on. You think people think you’re so important. you’re going to give me three exercises that I have to do, and I got to fill out a form that takes me an hour.
And I just started talking to God. I said, what is that? Why do I get triggered by that? Why does that bother me? You know, maybe it’s not a form for you.
I don’t know what triggers you, but don’t give me a form, alright? You can. If your kid’s going to college and they need a reference, you can give me a form. I’ll fill it out. I’ll grumble a little bit. I’ll fill it out. All right? I’m not perfect.
Guess what? If you believe, you’re included. The first faith is the first step of obedience. And God will get you there. We’re called saints. We’re loved by God. And. And we’re called saints. We’re loved by God.
You know, the people Paul was writing to with Romans were the same as me. They weren’t perfect, yet they were still loved by God.
Dear ones, I just want to tell you tonight, you are loved by God. Isaiah, Brian, Karen, Aiko, Atz, Micah, Emmy, Mark, you’re loved by God. Kevin, you’re loved by God.
Thank you, Karen. And you’re a saint. I grew up Catholic. I thought a saint was somebody who had to jump through all these hoops and perform so many miracles and then, oh, my gosh, then be approved by a committee.
That can’t be God’s plan. That can’t be God’s plan to be approved by a committee. Well, in the abundance of counselors, I guess there is wisdom. But no, a saint simply means what a set apart one. And we’ve already established if you believe you’re included and you’ve been set apart for the Gospel of God.
So you are Saint Isaiah of Silverdale. All right, well, we’ll start on that. We’ll work on that. Want your parents to address you Saint Isaiah of Silverdale? Dinner’s ready. That would be great, Isaiah. Good luck with that. Saint Aiko of Hansville. All right. That’s what you had to call her, wife. My beautiful saint. All right.
We are set apart ones. We have grace. And here’s where Paul concludes with what he usually concludes with. He says, we have grace. We have God’s spirit living within us to do the things we’re called to do as disciples of Jesus. And that is, grow in the character of Jesus and expand the ministry of Jesus.
And God empowers us by his spirit to do that. It’s not based on how clever you are, how gifted you are. It is based on his spirit. And then he gives us peace. We have been reconciled to God through the blood, the life, death and resurrection of his son, Jesus Christ. We have peace.
1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. (Romans 5:1, CSB)
10 For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, then how much more, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. (Romans 5:10, CSB)
And none of that came because we demanded our right to be happy. It came because we sang it tonight. How good is he? How good is he? How loving is he? That while we were yet. Paul. We’ll get to that. We’ll get to this later in Romans. But while we were yet enemies, Christ died for us.
8 But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8, CSB)
How good is he to seek and save the lost? How good is the God of the universe to take a rebellious, angelic, and human attempt to overthrow his kingdom and to say, I’m going to save them.
He said there’s no plan to save the angels. You don’t know that. We just know the plan that applies to us. We don’t know what plan he tried with the demons or how that works. It’s not up for us to know, but this is for us to know. He came to seek and save the lost, you know, people.
All right, here’s what’s going on now, right? LA. Fires, LA. Fires. You got to just know by now. This is pet peeve number one for me.
Oh, Jesus is coming back soon. There’s disasters on the Earth. There’s fires and blizzards. I saw this the other day. There’s fires, there’s blizzards. What was the other one?
So I just went. First of all, I’m not really convinced that Matthew 24 is about the end of the world. I think it’s more about the destruction of Jerusalem. You know, the Olivet discourse. You know that about me.
But I went back and I just looked. Does it say in there fires and blizzards? No, there are only two natural disasters. Actually, only one natural disaster that’s mentioned in there. Earthquakes. Then the other. The other thing that’s mentioned is famines.
And I thought there is no demonstrable scientific data that says there’s more earthquakes now than there have been throughout history. And in fact, there is demonstrable scientific data to show there are less famines now than there ever have been in history. Oh, Pastor, there’s people starving. Yes, there are.
And a far less percentage of the population than ever before. In the 1800s, 90% of the world’s population lived on the edge of starvation. That is completely reversed now. 10% live on the edge of starvation. That’s not good. Let’s make it zero.
Because the increase of his government and peace, there will be no end. But 10% is better than 90%. Well, but there’s more people who are on the edge.
6 You are going to hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, because these things must take place, but the end is not yet. (Matthew 24:6, CSB)
Well, yeah, there’s 8 billion people. There were about 8 million back then. So, yeah. Oh, but there’s wars and rumors of wars. Yeah, that’s novel. That’s never happened before.
Look what’s happening in Israel. Yeah, everything that’s been happening in Israel has been happening since 1948. It’s still going on. Russia and Ukraine, we’re gonna have World War Three. I don’t know if we will, but in the last century, we had World War I and World War II, and the world didn’t end then.
All right, maybe Jesus is going to come back because there’s fires in LA. But dear ones, what is that to you? It is a LA-centric worldview. Imagine that the people who live in Hollywood are self-centered.
No, I would never thought that. We’re the most important people on the planet, dear ones. It’s tragic. We should pray for it. I don’t think it’s ushering in the rapture.
If I’m wrong all the way up to heaven during the Rapture, I’ll turn to all those dispensationalist friends of mine and go, I was wrong. I was wrong. I was wrong. Last time you’re going to hear it from me because I’m going to be wrong up there. But I was wrong. I was wrong.
What is that to you? And here’s how people use that. By the way, the end is coming. Preach the gospel. That seems like that makes no sense to me. your neighbors are dying. Preach the gospel.
You know, sometimes I’ve talked to people and they say, oh, Pastor, I went to the doctor. He says, I’m dying. I always feel like saying, me too. I mean, you’ve got a more precise date than I do, but me too, me too. Preach the gospel.
You’ve been called to advance the kingdom. Oh, Kevin, I’m not a preacher. All right, pray everybody in. Send them to me. I’ll preach to them.
All right. Pray that your neighbors will come to church, and then invite them, and then bring them to me and say, pastor, fix them. And your prayers will work, and my feeble attempt at the gospel will make an impact.
And I’ll preach the gospel to them because. And I’ll close with this, dear ones, my first use of it in 2025. I’m paid to be good. You’re good for nothing. So bring them to church, and I’ll preach the gospel.
All right. The Lord bless you tonight.
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