Romans Chapter 1:9-16

Why would Paul say to these Romans, I'm not ashamed of the Gospel?

Friend, let's remember something. There was this Jewish carpenter from Israel from a nation that powerful Rome had conquered. And Paul is saying, this is the guy, the very person that the Roman government played a huge part in executing.

Welcome to Cross the Bridge with David Magee. David is the senior pastor of the bridge in Kernersville, North Carolina. In the book of Romans, Paul talks often about the Gospel and how we shouldn't be ashamed of it, but should share it with as many people as possible. Today, Pastor David continues in his study of the book of Romans chapter one. But before we get into today's teaching, from beginning to end, the Bible shows the special nature of God's relationship with the nation of Israel.

But what does that have to do with you today? Romans chapter 11 tells us that God's covenant relationship with Israel has huge implications for you. To help you understand more, Pastor David wants to send you his teaching video recorded in the Holy Land called Israel, the Bible and You. This powerful resource will encourage and strengthen you as you learn how connected you are with God's chosen people. Israel, the Bible and You is our gift to thank you for your donation to help more people on this station and beyond cross the bridge from death to life. So visit crossthebridge.com to request your copy.

Again, that's crossthebridge.com. Now here's David Magee with his teaching Love One Another. Turn with me to Romans chapter one. We've talked about Paul is the author of the book of Romans, but he's writing this epistle, this letter to Rome before he's ever been there.

And I know that we're taking some time and spending some time in this first chapter. There's just a lot of stuff in here and we're in verse nine. So Romans chapter one, verse nine, for God is my witness whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his son that without ceasing, I make mention of you always in my prayers, make and request if by some means now at last I may find a way in the will of God to come to you for a long to see you that I may impart to you some spiritual gift so that you may be established. Verse 12 that is that I may be encouraged together with you by the mutual faith, both of you and me.

He wants to encourage them and what's going to happen is they're going to encourage him back and comfort together. Verse 13. Now I do not want you to be unaware brethren that I often plan to come to you, but was hindered until now that I might have some fruit among you also just as among the other Gentiles. So again, Paul had wanted to come to him, but got him doing other things. As we go through the book of Acts, it was interesting because Paul wanted to do something. God said, nope, no, don't go there.

There's an amazing thing. He was going there to share the gospel. He was going there to teach the Word and God said, nope, don't go there. Why don't you go somewhere else? He said, okay, well, we'll go over here. Nope, don't want you going there.

Why don't you go somewhere else? See, the Bible points out that our lives are not really our own. We have to do things that God lays on our heart to do and follow the Lord. Now, he mentions here just as among the other Gentiles, so a lot of his audience in Rome was Gentiles. We're going to talk a little bit more about that in a second.

But it's interesting. Always pay close attention to the punctuation that's in the Bible. Because if you're in the King James, this verse says, Now I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes I purposed to come unto you, but was let, and the verse goes on, that I might have some fruit among you also even as among other Gentiles. But if you just move the comma just a little bit, look how this reads now. I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes, see, so you move that comma, the whole verse changes the meaning. So as you're reading, as you're studying the Bible, pay attention to that comma. There's another place in the Bible that talks about let him that stole steal no more. Let him work. Those commas in that verse are very important because if you move them around, then you get let him that stole steal no more let him work.

So you have to be careful with the punctuation. Jesus, when he stands up at the beginning of his ministry, shares a passage. It's very telling. In Luke chapter 4 verse 18, he says, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.

It's like a pronouncement of the year of Jubilee, we believe. Verse 20, Then he closed the book and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on him and began to say to them, Today the scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. It's an incredible passage as Jesus begins his ministry and proclaims this to people. What's very interesting is the passage that Jesus was quoting. It's from the book of Isaiah, and it's identical except for one important thing. Isaiah 61 verse 1 says this, The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to those who are bound, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God. Jesus intentionally stopped with that comma. Now, many of you are aware that the whole book of Isaiah was found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, going back about 2,000 years old.

We didn't fit it together as a jigsaw puzzle so it worked. That was the way it was. It validates, verifies the Word of God that we're reading this morning is the same Word of God that has been in existence for hundreds and hundreds of years. But Jesus stopped with that comma before the day of vengeance of our God. Because one day God says well it's over. We're done. I'm calling an end to everything as far as this world goes. For 2,000 years, friend, we've been hanging on a comma and at some point the rest of the prophecy is fulfilled. Are you ready for that? Are you ready for this day of vengeance? That's speaking of this tribulation that the book of Revelation talks about. Praise God we're hanging on that comma.

But again, are you ready for the fulfillment of that prophecy? Verse 14, Paul says, I am a debtor both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to wise and to unwise. Now our present definition of barbarians is a little different than here. Barbarians now we think are people that are savage. But understand through the Greek mindset you had people that spoke Greek and you had everybody else. And what they thought you sounded like when you didn't speak Greek is you were just babbling or bar bar bar bar bar.

So they labeled those people barbarians. So basically two people groups, the Greeks and the other people. And Paul is saying you know what, I'm indebted to the Greeks and I'm indebted to everybody else. As a matter of fact in the New Living Translation it reads like this, for I have a great sense of obligation to people in our culture and the people in other cultures to the educated and uneducated alike. A sense of obligation. It's powerful isn't it?

So was that just Paul? No. I think we all need to understand that we are indebted to other people that don't know the Lord. Do you have a sense of this obligation? There are several things in your life maybe that can tell whether you have this sense of obligation. I talk about servant. Are you servant? If you are then you probably understand there's an obligation to the believer to be a blessing to other people.

If you're not servant or worse yet if you're grumbling about the fact I'll talk about it. Then you don't understand there's an obligation. When I talk about missions you're like oh wow, why do we got to support missions?

Why do we send so much money to missions? You don't have a sense of the obligation we have. That we have. That I have.

That you have. When you stop to really realize or what about giving? What about tithing? If you're like well I don't see why I got to give ten percent.

Well it's really because it's biblical and it helps us to reach people. And again that sense of obligation. Do you understand how many people in the world don't have cars? And yet most people here have cars. Do you know the percentage of people that don't have clean running water in this world? That we spend time and energy and yes money to reach out to them.

The people that will not eat three regular meals today in this world. So I think we have an obligation as a body to reach out to those people and to share the gospel with them. And as long as there's one person on the face of this planet that doesn't know Jesus as their savior we are indebted to them. To be doing what we can to tell them why we can.

And reaching all we can. Oswald Chambers said this. So long as there is a human being who does not know Jesus Christ I am his debtor to serve him until he does. What a quote. So as long as there is a human being who does not know Jesus Christ I am his debtor to serve him until he does.

If you're in here this morning and you don't know Jesus you wouldn't consider yourself a Christian or believe in Jesus. That means I am indebted to you. To explain these things to you. The people in this church are indebted to you to serve you. To be a blessing to you. So that somehow through that you might become even more curious and one day make that decision. That's what Paul is pointing out here.

That's what Oswald Chambers is speaking of. Now we come to these three I am's in these verses that are interesting. In verse 14 you have I am a debtor in verse 15. So as much as is in me I am ready to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome also. Paul says I'm ready.

I am ready. Paul is sitting on go. It's not God's time to get him there. God will eventually get him there his own way. But Paul is sitting on ready.

And again I think that's encouraging to understand to be ready to be in ministry. We're going to talk more about this another time but the acronym of FAST. F-A-S-T. Faithful. Available. Spirit-filled. And Teachable.

That's what we're supposed to all be doing. Faithful. Available. Spirit-filled. Teachable. And being available to people.

Being ready. You're listening to Pastor David McGee on Cross the Bridge. He'll be back with more powerful insight from God's Word in just a moment. But first, God's grace and mercy is greater than any of us could ever fathom. That's why he's been so faithful to the nation of Israel throughout the ages.

And he's not finished. He's promised to remain true to them to the end. We want to show you what God's faithfulness toward Israel says about his relationship with you by sending you Pastor David's teaching video, Israel, the Bible and You. In this exciting teaching recorded in the heart of the Holy Land, Pastor David unpacks important truths from God's relationships with Israel that impact your life today. Israel, the Bible and You is our gift to thank you for your donation to help more people on this station and beyond cross the bridge from death to life. So visit crossthebridge.com to request yours. Again, that website is crossthebridge.com. This is Pastor David McGee with Cross the Bridge.

You know, I want to thank you for listening to Cross the Bridge. I also want to tell you about an exciting website. The website is lostlovedones.org. And it works very simply like this. You go to the website and you put the first names of up to 10 people that we begin praying that they get saved. Now it takes two things to get saved, presentation and prayer. And what we're offering is prayer. And also there's different tools there to help you present the gospel to them. So we're there with you, helping you with the presentation, helping you with the prayer. There's over 920 people that belong to the prayer team on Lost Loved Ones. And you can join the prayer team as well and help us to pray for others who don't yet know Jesus.

And together we can see a huge revival starting with your lost loved ones. Now back to today's teaching. Verse 16. Powerful verse. Big verse.

Huge. Romans chapter 1 verse 16. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for that is the power of God, the salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. In this verse, and you won't find this in a lot of commentaries, interestingly enough. In this verse, Paul reveals part of the reason that he's writing this gospel and notice what he says. We believe in reading the text plainly and taking its meaning at what it is. So trying to twist it.

What does he say here? To the Jew first. What point in time is this?

What's about 56, 57 AD. If you've ever been told that this whole thing to the Jew first, that's what happened to happen at first. And then once the Jews rejected the Lord or rejected the gospel, God was done with them. Friend, you've not only suffered under poor teaching, but that is almost heretical.

And here's one. What have I said to you? Well, God, you know, a couple of hundred years ago reached out to this country and wanted to bless this country. But, you know, since so many people have rejected the gospel here, God's done with America. Certainly we'd say, well, no, that's not in line with the merciful, graceful God who continues to reach out to this country.

Well, I would say the same thing. In this passage, it says to the Jew first. You understand, we believe we have a responsibility to reach out to Israel, to minister to the Jewish people. You understand that there's people here who were Jewish and have completed their Jewishness or however you want to phrase that, they've come to a belief in Jesus as the Messiah in this place.

And so that's a place of honor. And understand, where you had family members that when you got saved, they were probably like, oh, that's great, that's awesome. You understand as a Jewish person, when they came to a belief in the Messiah, Yeshua, a lot of times their family members said, we're done with you.

As a matter of fact, some families have a mock funeral. So when they commit to Jesus, they do it full heartedly, wholeheartedly. And understand we have this, and I bet you everybody in here has heard, well, the Jewish people rejected Jesus. Well, time out, Jesus was Jewish. The disciples were Jewish. Paul was Jewish. So to say that they whole, all of them rejected Jesus.

I'm sorry, that's just a, that's not biblically accurate. As a matter of fact, we're reading a book written by somebody, Paul, who was a Jew. Now understand the context of this writing is kind of interesting because Claudius had ruled in Rome that all Jewish people had to leave Rome. They had to leave Rome. We know this both historically and the Bible tells us Acts chapter 18 verse 2. It says, and he found a certain Jew named Aquila, born in Pontus, who had recently come from Italy and his wife, Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to depart from Rome and he came to them.

Now Claudius ruled from 41 to 54 AD. This is written a couple of years later. They had opened the door for the Jewish people to come back, but all of a sudden there's this, there's these things going on between the Gentile believers, those non-Jewish believers, and the Jewish believers, those Jews who had accepted Jesus. And so that's part of what Paul is dealing with in this book and certainly illuminates some of the things that he says. He's saying, you know, there's these two groups, Jewish believers and Gentile believers, and boy have we splintered that into a bunch more groups on. I'm this, I'm that, I'm Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, dah, dah, dah, dah. We all have our labels. You're either a believer or you're not a believer.

There's really two groups. We talked about that last week. But understand, we have a continued, and we're going to get in this, if you've read the book of Romans, you need to understand. Our obligation to tell the Jewish people about Jesus didn't end in the first century.

When you start to read Romans 9, 10, and 11, guys, that's still a valid word for the church today. And so we need to overcome whatever our bigoty or our prejudice or anti-Semitism, all these things to reach out, not just to love the Jewish people, but to love everybody, to encourage them. And Paul's saying, you know what, to everybody, the Jew, the non-Jew, to everybody. And there's no place in the body of Christ, there's no place in the kingdom of God for racism either. That's just, so Paul is saying, you know what, I'm not ashamed of these things. In John chapter 4, verse 22, Jesus, these are the words of Jesus, speaking to a Gentile, he says, you worship what you do not know, for what we worship, for we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews.

Again, not ashamed, not ashamed, not ashamed. Hopefully you're not ashamed of the gospel. And Paul writes here that it's the power of God, that word he uses in the Greek, dutimus.

It's where we get our word for dynamite. It's the power of God. Meaning when you start sharing the gospel, you are unleashing the power of God. There is a divine power when you begin sharing that. And don't be ashamed of that.

And so we have these three things. I am a debtor. I am ready. And I am not ashamed in these three verses.

I am a debtor. I am ready and I am not ashamed. Why would Paul say to these Romans, I'm not ashamed of the gospel. What does Paul have to be ashamed of?

But friend, let's remember something. There was this Jewish carpenter from Israel, from a nation that powerful Rome had conquered. And Paul is saying, this is the guy, the very person that the Roman government played a huge part in executing wasn't as the savior of the world.

That was probably hard for him to hear, wasn't it? And understand, we look at the cross differently. We look at the cross differently. The cross to us means something far different than it did 2000 years ago.

Guys, you need to understand. If you were Roman, you were beheaded. The crucifixion was the lowest form of execution for the lowest criminal. The lowest form of execution for the lowest criminal. Criminals were the ones that were crucified.

Let me bring this. I don't mean to be sacrilegious. Let me bring this into a present day context so you can get it. Because we can't even see past this for the cross. Jesus died. It's like saying Jesus died, bringing into a present day terminology, Jesus died in an electric chair for you. Now we go, that sounds weird.

That doesn't sound right. Well, certainly we changed some of our hymns when there's room at the chair for you. This little light of mine.

The old rugged chair. I mean, guys, this is the reality. I don't think we think about this enough. I think we see the cross and we think of this glorious thing. No, it was the lowest form of execution of that day.

Let me put it even plainer. Jesus died a criminal's death for us. See, we look at the cross and go, oh, what a glorious, what a glorious thing he did. No, wait a minute. He died a criminal's death. In other words, you were standing there getting ready to be placed in that electric chair. And Jesus said, no, no, let them go free. And the person said, well, wait a minute. Somebody's got to die. Somebody's got to pay the price for what they did. And Jesus said, let them go free.

Let it be me. There's a beautiful picture of this in the gospels when there was a really bad guy called Barabbas who had done all these things, all these bad things. And they came out and they said, okay, which one do you want us to release Barabbas or Jesus? And they said, Barabbas, release Barabbas.

And a lot of us miss something there because Barabbas bar means in the Aramaic son, Abba is rooted in Abba, son of the father. So on that day, Barabbas, son of the father got to go free and Jesus Christ, who was innocent died in his place. So what do you, what do you do with a truth like this, that Jesus died a criminal's death for you? What do you do with a statement like that? In a world where people are always diving out, knocking out, ratting on other people to lighten their sentence in a selfish way. Jesus comes in the midst and says, you know what? I don't want to lighten my sense.

I want that one set free and I'm willing to die in their place. What do you do with that? Can you really sit here this morning and say, well, appreciate it, but no thanks. See, these things are truth.

What you do with them personally makes the statement. See, Christianity does not, your relationship with the Lord does not start with you changing your behavior. It starts with you changing your mind. That word repentance means literally to change your mind, change what you think, change what you believe. And if you've been thinking, well, I thought I had to change my behavior to become a Christian. You change your mind.

You change your heart. God will change you from the inside out because the Bible seems to indicate we don't have the power to change ourselves, but the spirit of God will change you. And you become to the Lord and say, God, I want you to forgive me.

And you understand he died for you. Let me assure you that is a truth that will change your life. So you trying to muster up feeling bad enough or feeling enough to change that doesn't happen outside the spirit of God. You start by changing what you believe and what you're trusting in. And if you believe you can earn your way into heaven, that has to change. That's the one thing that stands between you and heaven is you're thinking your ability to go there on your own. Friend, do you know for sure that your sins have been forgiven?

You can know right now. I want to lead you in a short, simple prayer, simply telling God you're sorry and asking him to help you to live for him. Now, God wants you to pray this prayer so much that he died to give you the opportunity and the ability to ask him to forgive you.

Please pray this prayer with me out loud right now. Dear Jesus, I believe you died for me, that I could be forgiven. And I believe you were raised from the dead, that I could have a new life. And I've done wrong things. I have sinned.

And I'm sorry. Please forgive me of all those things. Please give me the power to live for you all of my days. In Jesus' name.

Amen. Friend, if you prayed that prayer, according to the Bible, you've been forgiven. You've been born again. Jesus said he would not turn anybody away who comes to him.

And he came for those people who knew they needed forgiveness, those who were sick, not the righteous. So congratulations, friend. You just made the greatest decision that you will ever make. God bless you. If you prayed that prayer with David for the first time, we'd love to hear from you. You can call us toll free at 877-458-5508 to receive our First Steps package with helpful resources to help you begin your walk with Christ. Before we go, we want to encourage you in your faith so that you can experience more of the grace and love of God for you. That's why we'd like to send you Pastor David's teaching video recorded in the heart of the Holy Land called Israel, the Bible, and You.

This encouraging look into the history of Israel and God's covenant faithfulness to his chosen people will help you take bold new steps in your relationship with God. Israel, the Bible, and You is our gift to thank you for your donation to help more people on this station and beyond cross the bridge from death to life. So visit crossthebridge.com now to request your copy. Also, if you're not able to make it to your home church this Sunday, why not join us for our live stream at 9 a.m. and 1130 a.m. Eastern? Just visit crossthebridge.com and click on our live stream link. There you can watch Pastor David teach from his home church, The Bridge in Kernersville, North Carolina. Again, that website is crossthebridge.com. And be sure to join us next time on Cross the Bridge with David McGee to hear more from the Book of Romans. We'll see you then.